It’s not bragging if you can back it up
January 26, 2011
How often have comic book solicitations made promises that couldn’t be kept? You know what I mean, things like “A story that will change the way you look at Hawk and Dove” or “A new Namor saga that will surely be a bestseller.”
In this case, I think calling The Killing Joke “The definitive Joker Story” is, if anything, an understatement. A comic that somehow manages to simultaneously depict Batman’s premier villain at his most evil (shooting Barbara Gordon through the spine, stripping her naked and snapping pictures all the while) yet also his most pathetic (who wouldn’t have gone mad after what happened to him?) merits the most absolute of absolute superlatives.
“What do you think I am? Crazy? You’d turn it off when I was half way across!”
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Jared
blog into mystery 
Eye of the beholder, I guess. I don’t consider it the “definitive” Joker story (that would be “The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge,” if anything) and I don’t even consider it one of Alan Moore’s better efforts. I do however think it’s got arguably the most awesome artwork on any Batman story, ever…which is really saying something.
The truth is any Joker origin is a bad idea; it only lessens the character’s impact. It’s been suggested here and there (maybe by Moore himself, I don’t remember) that the “origin” in this story isn’t necessarily the truth at all; that it’s just the Joker being the Joker and making crap up, and tomorrow the story might be totally different. In that respect, I like the approach taken in “The Dark Knight,” where Ledger’s Joker tells a different “origin” story to anyone who asks. The message being (and rightly so), “Origin, schmorigin, I’m a homicidal maniac, isn’t that enough for you?”
As far as “bragging” goes, I say all’s fair in house ads, but when the story itself brags, it’s a turn-off. I just (finally) read the Englehart Captain America story where Steve Rogers is trying to decide whether to chuck the Cap ID in the wake of the Secret Empire saga, and it starts with something like, “In the future, whenever people talk about great Captain America stories, this one is guaranteed to be mentioned.” The fact that it turned out to be true doesn’t lessen the eye-roll factor. Even the best story is less great if it starts “this is a great story,” just as even the most beautiful man or woman becomes less beautiful as soon as they mention how beautiful they are.
I wasn’t saying anything was wrong with house ad bragging — as they say, if you don’t promote yourself, no one will. It’s just that usually the puffery seems far off the mark. As far as your criticisms of TKJ go, it’s hard to argue with you since Moore himself has practically disowned the thing in recent years for being pointless tripe. I ultimately have to disagree with both him and you, I guess. I still like it. And the Joker does indeed say in the story that the “origin” revealed might not be the real one — “sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another” is his quote, or something like that. I’m fairly certain that The Dark Knight based Ledger’s Joker in part on that “strategic ambiguity,” along with cribbing some imagery from the opening pages in Arkham for the interrogation scene.
And point well taken about when “bragging” is in the story. On that I couldn’t agree more — it makes the “look at me” absolutely insufferrable.
Well of course the problem with “bragging” is that they do it for every book. Whether it’s “Watchmen” or “Armageddon 2001,” they’ll always say it’s the greatest thing ever. It is, as you say, awesome when it turns out the book is actually worth the praise, but honestly I wonder if DC marketing really believed in this book any more than all the others.
BTW, it’s no fault of Moore or Bolland, but I tend to have fonder memories of Batman: Year One, and that’s largely because that “mini-series” happened within the run of the monthly book. A big part of the fun of collecting back in the day was the gamble: maybe this issue will be a turkey, but maybe it’ll be a masterpiece; you have a chance at either outcome for your quarter. Around the time of “Killing Joke,” that started to change, as anything with any potential at all was pulled aside for “special” treatment, leaving the monthlies to unrelenting mediocrity. I mean, I loved the Superman Annual with “For the Man Who Has Everything” because I never saw it coming. If it had been talked up for months ahead of publication as the greatest thing since sliced bread, and sold for twice the price because it was square-bound on glossy paper, I doubt I’d have enjoyed it as much, even if it was the exact same story. But maybe that’s just me.