THE KILLING JOKE by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland

One bad day. The story theme is that what separates the sane from the insane is an incident—a tipping point—that pushes the sane over the edge. The proposition assumes we are all teetering on insanity. The assumption in this story is that once we fall into insanity there is no going back.

Batman desperately wants to end the suicidal combat between himself and the Joker. The only end he sees in the continuing battle between the two is the death of either or both. Batman is driven to save the lives of his friend Commissioner Gordon and daughter Barbara after the Joker has severely wounded Barbara and abducted the Commissioner with the intent to drive him insane. The Joker’s point is to prove that even the sanest man(person) can be driven mad with the right motivation. In the end the Joker fails, sanity prevails, and humanity is resilient.

At one point, the Joker poses the question of Batman’s sanity and guesses at what drove him mad. But, is the Batman insane as the Joker implies?  Or was the catalyst in Batman’s life that moved him to be a crime fighter (vigilante) more a motivating event?  I’m not Batman expert, but what I remember of the storyline is that a young Bruce Wayne, after witnessing the death of his parents, was never in danger of living a life of crime or becoming a serial killer. He chose the path of protecting the prey from predators. The persona of Batman is a role whereas, the Joker, through some freak chemical accident, became a completely different person from his original identity. He barely remembers the life before becoming the Joker so it is unclear in this reading that the personal tragedy in his life was the tipping point to madness, but rather it was the chemical imbalance caused by his falling into the polluted river. By the way, the EPA should get on that.

If the story was attempting to drive the point home about the tenuous hold on sanity we possess I don’t know if it worked for me or even if I would have gotten that if I weren’t looking for it. None-the-less, to enjoy the artwork and the story I didn’t need to.