Batman: The Killing Joke

So the source material points us to two storylines that execute this flawlessly, although they do it on completely different scales.

We have Batman: The Killing Joke from 1988, and then we explode outward to the Sinestro Corps War from 2007.

Two very different flavors of fear.

Very different.

Let's start with the intimate psychological warfare of The Killing Joke.

This was written by Alan Moore with absolutely meticulous and frankly terrifying art by Brian Bolland.

Yeah, The Killing Joke is a watershed moment for the medium.

In terms of plot, it is shockingly brutal.

The text lists the titles that this one specific comic paved the way for and it is a definitive syllabus of the character's modern era.

Year One, The Killing Joke, Gotham by Gaslight, Arkham Asylum, A Death in the Family, Legends of the Dark Knight, Shadow of the Bat, Batman Black and White

The thematic thread uniting all of those subsequent works is undeniable.

They are atmospheric, psychological and often relentlessly brutal.

Yeah.

So Alan Moore comes in, and he does The Killing Joke, and then you have Grant Morrison come in, and Grant Morrison says, "Well, now I wanna do my Joker take."

Mm-hmm.

Scott Snyder comes in, "I wanna do my Joker take." Everyone wants to do it, and that's what keeps those characters feeling fresh-

Like, like, you know, the, the dawn of sort of the comic book store as we know it.

And, um, just plastered all over the walls, like just high up sorta lining the ceiling were various printings of The Killing Joke, you know, in different colors.

And, and so I was like, "Okay, that looks like that's something that's pretty important." You know, it, it, you know, was probably relatively recent at the time.

And, uh, just, you know, part of this, you know, comic book revolution that I, that I'd sort of been hearing about that had sort of, uh, you know, infiltrated the pop culture.

It's a great book.

When, actually when we went to the Book Outlet, I almost bought The Killing Joke, 'cause I'd saw it.

Oh, yeah?

And I was like, "That'd be a cool one to have." I didn't buy it.

And, uh, my friend had saw this, like, Yankees poster thing, so he bought it.

He was like, "Oh, dude, he'd love this," and it was like five bucks.

And then he saw The Killing Joke there, and then he bought that.

Mm.

And it was, it was just kind of interesting because it...

I, I believe it, it's very explicitly meant to evoke Batman: The Killing Joke, where there's a confrontation between Batman and the Joker, and it, it kind of has similar beats where these two hated rivals share a laugh.

And it's a dark laugh.

It's like, it's like, "Oh, that shit's not funny." You know? That, that kind of thing.

It reestablished him as a lethal threat, proving that his humor was merely a veneer for deep sadistic cruelty.

And this tonal shift laid the necessary groundwork for the story ranked number two on our list, a graphic novel that many consider the definitive thesis statement on their rivalry, Batman: The Killing Joke.

Written by Alan Moore, who remarkably barely ever touched the Batman mythos outside of this specific project, but with The Killing Joke, he left an undeniable permanent scar on the lore.

He really did.

The Joker decides to prove a philosophical point that the only difference between a sane man and a monster is one bad day.

He then kidnaps the commissioner, strips him naked, and tortures him in an abandoned nightmarish amusement park, forcing him to view blown-up photographs of his daughter's bleeding body.

And it leads to an inevitable, deeply unsettling confrontation between him and Batman.

But, but the true horror of The Killing Joke isn't the violence.