4. The Killing Joke
In Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, the caped crusader plays second fiddle to The Joker’s klaxophone as we learn the origin of the clown prince of crime. Though there have been many explanations of the Joker’s bleached beginnings, The Killing Joke forges it’s own canon by telling us the tale of a sad, failed comedian who tried to forge some semblance of a life worth living for his pregnant wife by flirting with the golden-haired seductress otherwise known as crime. It’s a tragic tale, told to us in flashback, as in the present the Joker tries to demonstrate to a kidnapped Commissioner Gordon that all it takes to turn a man into a flamboyantly-themed Batman villain is one bad day — a spine-shattering, home-invading, achondroplastic dwarf in dominatrix-cherub gear whipping you in the junk with a cattle-prod kind of bad day. All the while the Batman tries to deal with the increasing brutality of the Joker’s crime spree, hoping beyond hope that trying to reform the criminally insane isn’t an insane task itself.
So if The Killing Joke is one of the best Batman stories, and the quintessential Joker mythos, then why is it so low on this list? Well while not serving as direct adaptations, some elements of The Killing Joke have been briefly touched upon in other DC Animated Works. Batman Beyond’s Return of the Joker featured a Batman pushed beyond his brink pleading with the Joker, borrowing a few key phrases from The Killing Joke, and we witness a glimpse of the man who would be Joker taking a hydrochloric acid dip in The Rise of the Red Hood. Despite these allusions a full adaptation is a perfectly cromulent necessity. When South Park has more direct references to The Killing Joke than you do, it’s due time to get started on an adaptation of your own.
