The Killing Joke ending - Spoilers? Maybe??

[GigiFusc]

So I'm sure all of you know this already, but a friend of mine told me about this... hidden, yet not so hidden meaning, I guess you can call it, at the end of Killing Joke.

It shocked me. I just never realised despite having read it several times since its release in 1988 and despite only re-reading it just last week!

Here's Grant Morrison telling me how stupid I am (and Kevin Smith's expletive filled reaction is also brilliant).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzlekMIf7D4

Still in shock. 8O

[Kurtzberg]

That is one interpretation, and it's certainly valid if that's the way Morrison wants to read it, and if you do too. Various readings are valid to a certain degree. I can say, Alan Moore did not intend that the ending to be interpreted that way at all.

[GigiFusc]

That is one interpretation, and it's certainly valid if that's the way Morrison wants to read it, and if you do too. Various readings are valid to a certain degree. I can say, Alan Moore did not intend that the ending to be interpreted that way at all.

Can you provide further details on that??

[Kurtzberg]

Can you provide further details on that??

The original script has been published before, and it mentions something to the effect that Bats and The Joker are going to kill each other one day. As in not that day. They may as well enjoy this one rare moment of contact while it lasts. It's essentially suppose to be what's on the page, it's ends with them laughing together, nothing more. No one dies that day. The fade to black is just the zooming in on the puddle, it was the artist's choice, as Moore gave Bolland the choice how to do the final panel. Also, I somewhat recall someone asking Moore somewhere in some interview about it and him saying that Morrison's reading wasn't his intention.

[GigiFusc]

I found the script your reffering to:
http://comicbook.com/blog/2013/08/17...ill-the-joker/

It's interesting because that doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't the intention.

There is no need for AM to write into the script his intentions. The tone of the script is very 'matter of fact'. I've read the From Hell scripts and AM gives incredibly detailed panel descriptions but unless he's discussing facial expressions and such like, he doesn't seem to often describe the meaning behind the picture he's portraying.

In this case, he's meticulously describing the change between one panel to the next to the next. The reasoning behind his slow camera pan and the sudden stop to the laughing and then the stop the even the sirens isn't explained - he's just describing the panels.

Morrison's interpretation does seem to fit the pictures.

That same friend of mine has told me that he thinks he read an interview with Brian Bolland where he indicated he had spoken to AM about the end and that the intention was that Batman killed the Joker.

I'm really torn over this one. Now I can't see anything other than that ending. LOL.

[Kurtzberg]

Then that's how you read it, what does it matter? That is the ending you see, you don't have to see another, I see both ways as equally valid. It's an artistic medium, what it means to you doesn't necessarily have to align with what Moore thought, or what Bolland thought, or what Morrison thinks. If Moore meant it was just laughter, or Morrison was right and it was meant as the final Joker story, how you read it is how you read it. It's not an existential crisis, it's a comic book.

[t hedge coke]

It's not an existential crisis, it's a comic book.

The words Moore, Morrison, Bolland, and Batman were involved. That's always the road to existential crisis. That, or the start of a very geeky "... walk into a bar" joke.

But, yeah, it's just a comic. Regardless of plans or intentions, it is an open-to-interpretation ending, if there ever was one.

[SicariiDC]

I thought the ambiguity is part of what made it so great.

[JBatmanFan05]

Morrison's interpretation got a lot of press so many of us know about it. Love Grant to death, but disagree with it.

This article argues against it well:
http://comicsalliance.com/batman-kil...an-bolland-dc/

All in all, that script (which doesn’t even hint at his death) and the article points are good enough to establish to me that Batman didn't kill Joker.

[Aioros22]

Round and round I see this debate pop up. It`s a Reading you can make, if you want to make it there, but I am on the mind that the ending of the comic was barely ever in question until Morrison`s interpretation actually showing that there was little ambiguosly in the pages to start with.

Moore tends to be accurately precise in details he wants to tell and he always come forth about his intentions of that scene. Until I heard Morrison`s take it never crossed my mind that the scene was supposed to show Batman choking Joker. It was Batman laughing with him, at the irony of the whole situation.

And it`s more powerful that way.

[caleb.superboy]

My favorite part is how Morrison sounds like he thinks its completely obvious.

[Kurtzberg]

My favorite part is how Morrison sounds like he thinks its completely obvious.

Morrison has seen the secrets truths of the universe apparently, everything is obvious to him. I love the guy's work, he might be the best ever to write funny books, but he's a kook.

[Scott Taylor]

When I first read it, the art appeared to indicate exactly that to me. But its ambiguous because thats a higher form of art than making everything plain. And that ending is part of why the story has lasted.

[Kingcrimsonprog]

I don't read it that way. I did for a while after the podcast came out, but after all the smoke has settled, I think its just a normal fade out while we wait for the cops.

[Coin Biter]

The key moment in the concluding pages is that Commissioner Gordon refuses to be broken and instructs Batman to bring Joker in by the book. If Morrison's theory were correct, then Gordon's heroic decision to retain his ethical constraints would have been immediately betrayed by Bruce and would ring utterly hollow. I can't say I ever found the theory persuasive

The suggestion probably irks Moore, who already has stated that he doesn't care for the story and should arguably have been reined back over the Barbara Gordon injury, and I doubt would be pleased at the notion that the story be more violent/bleak than he intended.