The Killing Joke - Alan Moore and Brian Bolland

The Killing Joke is not a graphic novel in the same sense as The Dark Knight Returns.  For one, it is about 40 pages long.  It is basically like one-quarter of The Dark Knight Returns.  Having said that, it's arguably better than any one of the four parts of that book.


The story is short and sweet and to the point and while I was afraid of "spoiling" The Dark Knight Returns, and therefore didn't want to even name the villains that Batman faces in that story, I have mentioned it to several people and most of them just admit that they'll never read it anyways, why don't I just tell them?  I do, but I'm doing them a disservice.  They don't know what they're missing.


I was going to buy The Killing Joke until I saw that it was $18 and could be read in one sitting at Barnes & Noble.  One night last week en route to picking up some take-out on a Friday night, I sat down up against the window of second floor B&N in downtown Evanston and ran through the book in about 30-45 minutes. It's brilliantly written, hilarious, very sad, slightly heartwarming, and perverted as hell.  Once again, definitely not a book for little kids.


What is most interesting is that the story is basically the Joker's, and Batman plays more of a supporting role.  Literally!  


The story opens up with Batman saying, "You know, I really, really don't want to, but one of these days, one of us is going to have to kill the other." (Note: I may be conflating this line with The Dark Night Returns, but the idea that Batman sympathizes with the Joker to a certain degree is accurate.)  Batman really doesn't hate the Joker as much as he does in other stories.  What he feels for him is more akin to pity.  And the opening of the story certainly lends a sympathetic air to the Joker.  



This is because it tells his "origin story" and it's so sad.  This is what makes The Killing Joke a real masterpiece (even though Alan Moore later said that he did not think it was very good, and even though most people agree that it does not rise to the level of Moore's other 3 famous graphic novels - Watchmen, V for Vendetta, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen--all of which have been turned into movies ranging from mildly disappointing to downright disastrous).  


The Killing Joke is, in a sense, "turned into a movie" if one combines Batman (1989) and The Dark Knight (2008).  There was much talk in The Dark Knight about how you could not be sure of the Joker's true origin--but Batman left nothing to the imagination.  I think the truth is that it's a combination of the two.


First, yes, the Joker was married.  However, he did not cut his wife's face.  (He does disfigure Alicia, in Batman, but that is irrelevant here).  Instead, he works as an engineer at Axis Chemicals, and he decides that he wants to do what he really loves--which is to make people laugh.  So he quits his job and starts trying to work as a stand-up comedian--and is a horrible failure at it.  In one scene, he and his wife (who has recently become pregnant) sit in a restaurant and dwell upon their impoverished life since he quit his job.  Needing money, he decides to accept an offer from the Mob, who want him to help them break into a building next door to Axis Chemicals (note: I am lifting this is off of Wikipedia--my memory is not so sharp and I don't own the book--but apparently it's a "card company"--now one would assume that means credit cards, but it could actually be a card manufacturing facility, which is certainly more appropriate).  


Then, the police informs him that his wife has just died in an accident.  The Mob forces him to go forward with their plan even though he has been traumatized.  They put a Red Hood on him apparently to disguise him (though it seems more like a trope used to reference the real introduction of the Joker in Batman comic books--in 1951 in the issue "The Man Behind the Red Hood.").  Batman comes in to save the day, and the Mob is dispersed, but "Red Hood" is left standing there.  Having just lost his wife and unborn child, having lost out on the money he was going to get from the job, being a failure as a comedian, being trapped in a corner by Batman, he decides to commit suicide into a vat of acid.


Second, yes, the Joker was disfigured in a vat of acid.  While this does not explain his scars in The Dark Knight, this is a story that I like much better, because of how the rest unfolds.  The Joker, now in present day, decides to play a "big joke" on Gotham City.  The set-up for that Joke is to break into Commissioner Gordon's home.


He breaks in, and he kidnaps his daughter (who is perhaps in her late-teens to mid-twenties--it's unclear).  He takes her into a room, strips her naked, cuts her, and takes pictures of her being tortured.  Commissioner Gordon is also kidnapped and brought to a funhouse.  He is also stripped naked and put into a "freakshow" cage and forced to watch a slide-show of the torture of his daughter.  After only a short while, he goes insane.  This is the Joke: if a person is just pushed and pushed and pushed--just hard enough--they can cross the line from sanity to insanity.  


It is here--when Batman arrives--that the real theme of the story emerges: all it takes is "one bad day" to drive someone insane for the rest of their life.  Some people can be redeemed--like Batman.  And some people cannot.  But Batman believes that the Joker has to have a chance.  After Batman arrives and frees Commissioner Gordon and reunites him with his daughter, the Commissioner tells him not to kill the Joker but to bring him in to "show him the way we do things."


At this point the stage is set for the final scene, with the Joker taunting Batman that perhaps his madness is also attributable to "one bad day."  He then claims that there is nothing worth living for and gives a short speech about the virtues of nihilism and tells Batman "the Joke."


"See, there were these two guys in a lunatic asylum... and one night, one night they decide they don't like living in an asylum any more. They decide they're going to escape! So, like, they get up onto the roof, and there, just across this narrow gap, they see the rooftops of the town, stretching away in the moon light... stretching away to freedom. Now, the first guy, he jumps right across with no problem. But his friend, his friend didn't dare make the leap. Y'see... Y'see, he's afraid of falling. So then, the first guy has an idea... He says 'Hey! I have my flashlight with me! I'll shine it across the gap between the buildings. You can walk along the beam and join me!' B-but the second guy just shakes his head. He suh-says... He says 'Wh-what do you think I am? Crazy? You'd turn it off when I was half way across!"


The ending has been open to speculation, but I think I am reasonably sure of the way it ends.  Note that I would recommend both The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns very highly--but that The Killing Joke should be read first.  Philosophically, I think it is the most interesting story in the bunch, and since the Joker has always been my favorite character (indeed I will play him in Batman in Brooklyn) I am naturally drawn to this book.  As the present-day Joker and the "pre-suicide" Joker are presented alongside one another, one feels sympathy for the character in one instant, where all he cares about is taking care of his wife and making people laugh, and one feels derision (or maybe, catharsis?) as he mutilates and takes pictures and does who-knows-what else to the Commissioner's daughter.  This duality then, compared with Batman, who is psychologically "one" with the Joker, but morally opposed to his view of life--who takes his bitterness out on the world, making it a more miserable place, rather than trying to make it a better place by ridding it of such evils--makes the story something of a meditation on  human existence.


I was not going to pay $18 for the deluxe edition, but I would consider getting Alan Moore's DC Universe compilation, as this is apparently included in it, and it is a story that I would like to revisit some day in the future.  This has also been a very pleasurable "research" experience, as I hope to utilize some elements from both The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke in Batman in Brooklyn.  I may go back to Barnes & Noble today and read some more Batman comic books, actually.  That sounds like a pretty good idea, yeah....

Discourse on Method - Rene Descartes

Rene Descartes (1596-1650) is inarguably one of the greatest philosophers of all time.  His short book "Discourse on Method" explains how he derived most of his philosophy out of his own experience, and he would later go on to develop his theories in longer works.  He is also one of the most important mathematicians of all time.  Who knows if the computer would even exist if Descartes had not combined the methods of algebra and geometry in the new field called analytic geometry?

"The importance of this achievement is difficult to overestimate, for it not only served as an example of the possibilities of the new scientific method and as a spur to men's enthusiasm, but also laid the foundation for the growth of mathematics in modern times.  From analytic geometry came the simultaneous discovery of the calculus by Leibniz and Newton, and on the calculus is based the whole superstructure of modern developments in mathematics and of its application to the understanding of nature."  (ix)

Descartes believed in God and the Church, but the author of this above quote, Laurence J. LaFleur, thinks he may have been being a little sarcastic about it.  Nevertheless, it does not particularly stand out--the devotion to the Church anyways.  His belief in God is, I think, quite justified by his reasoning.

What I love about Descartes (though this is the only book of his I've read) is how deep he can go.  He goes into my very soul, literally.  He hits at the deepest feelings you can imagine: why where you born?  Why are we here?  How can you tell that you exist?

His writing style is quite humorous.  I have underlined almost the entire book because I feel as if almost every sentence is essential.  Each naturally builds upon the other, and in so slim a volume by such a master, you can expect to find pearls of brilliance in every word.

The first thing I love about it is his first sentence: "If this discourse seems too long to be read in one sitting, it may be divided into six parts."  He's already looking out for you!  And it's just like a law review article!
Except--no footnotes.  And the entire opening paragraph from the first part, "Some Thoughts on the Sciences" is worth quoting in full, as it is a good representation of the work as a whole:

"Good sense is mankind's most equitably divided endowment, for everyone thinks he is so abundantly provided with it that even those most difficult to please in other ways do not usually want more than they have of this.  As it is not likely that everyone is mistaken, this evidence shows that the ability to judge correctly, and to distinguish the true from the false--which is really meant by good sense or reason--is the same by nature in all men; and that differences of opinion are not due to differences in intelligence, but merely to the fact that we use different approaches and consider different things.  For it is not enough to have a good mind: one must use it well.  The greatest souls are capable of the greatest vices as well as the greatest virtues; and those who walk slowly can, if they follow the right path, go much farther than those who run rapidly in the wrong direction." (1-2)
I wrote "Great Summation Intro" in the margin for that.

The cause of his inspiration is quite provocative:

"I was then in Germany...There was no conversation to occupy me, and being untroubled by any cares or passions, I remained all day alone in a warm room.  There I had plenty of leisure to examine my ideas.  One of the first that occurred to me was that frequently there is less perfection in a work produced by several hands than in one produced by a single hand.  Thus we notice that buildings conceived and completed by a single architect are usually more beautiful and better planned than those remodeled by several persons using ancient walls that had originally been built for other purposes.  Similarly, those ancient towns which were originally nothing but hamlets, and in the course of time have become great cities, are ordinarily very badly arranged compared to one symmetrical metropolitan districts which a city planner has laid out on an open plain according to his own designs."  (7-8)

He describes his four step process as follows: (1) Only accept things as true that you are absolutely certain are true (i.e. that you are alive); (2) For everything that you cannot accept as true, in order to get closest to the truth, break it down into as many different parts you can think of; (3) Then, think about each of the different parts, starting with the easiest one to understand, and going onto the most difficult by the end; (4) Make enumerations so complete as to omit nothing.

Descartes talks about how he was 23 when he decided to form his philosophy, but he did not feel he had experienced enough of life to fully form it, so he devised certain rules to live by: (1) Obey laws and religion and follow more moderate and least excessive opinions of those in the community; (2) Be firm and resolute in one's decisions--and here he draws a nice metaphor--"I patterned my behavior on that of travelers, who, finding themselves lost in a forest, must not wander about, now turning this way, now that, and still less should remain in one place, but should go as straight as they can in the direction they first select and not change the direction except for the strongest of reasons.  By this method, even if the direction was chosen at random, they will presumably arrive at some destination, not perhaps where they would like to be, but at least where they will be better off than in the middle of the forest." (16)--(3) Conquer one's self rather than fortune, change one's desires rather than the established order and believe that nothing but one's thought are under one's control; (4) Make a review of the occupations in life and choose the best one--and here Descartes writes beautifully:

"Without intending to disparage other occupations, I thought I could do no better than to continue in the one I was engaged in, employing my life in improving my mind and increasing as far as I could my knowledge of the truth by by following the method I had outlined for myself.  I had experienced such periods of happiness after I had begun to use this method, that I could hope for no greater or more innocent joys in this life." (17)

About nine years later, he was ready.  And he says he wasn't ready until, quite funnily, that he would not have dared to write it down so soon, until "I had learned of a rumor that I had already completed my philosophy." (19)

He then goes on to discuss God and the Soul.

"I then examined closely what I was, and saw that I could imagine that I had no body and that there was no world nor any place that I occupied, but that I could not imagine for a moment that I did not exist." (21)

From this he derives that the body and soul are distinct.  He goes onto talk about things like how we may all be made of stars, but that the stars had to have been made by something even more perfect--which is God.  He sees that doubt, inconstancy, and sorrow--imperfect qualities--could not be part of God's nature.

He goes on to talk about the laws of nature, and comically says that what he was originally going to write was much more ambitious--putting everything into the discourse that he thought he knew--but decided that it was dangerous, so he decided to limit himself:

"Therefore, fearing that I would not be able to put into any discourse all that I intended, I undertook solely to describe at length what I thought on the subject of light, and took that occasion to add something concerning the sun and the fixed stars, since they are almost the only sources of light; of the sky, since it transmits it; of the planets, the comets, and the earth, since they reflect it; and in particular of all the objects on earth, since they are either colored or transparent or luminous; and finally of man, since he is the observer of it." (27)
I wrote "Not ambitious at all!" in the margin.

This is in Part Five, which is about Physics.  But it also goes into anatomy, and Descartes' description of the heart freaked me out while I was reading it, thinking about how of all of the processes he was describing were going on that very moment.  He sees man as a machine created by God, and therefore decides that no machine created by man can be as perfect as man.

He makes the rather incredible statement (which might be offensive to animal lovers) that a "monkey or a parrot which was one of the best of its species should not be equal in this matter of one of the most stupid children, or at least of a child of infirm find, if their soul were not of a wholly different nature than ours." (37)

But then he states that he knows the Soul is immortal--which is also somewhat incredible.

In Part Six he talks about how he doesn't want any of his writings published during his lifetime because he fears ridicule.  Comically, "for fear that the opposition and controversy which they might arouse, and the reputation which they might possibly bring me, would cause me to waste time which I plan to use in research." (42)

Then he says if his writings can be of any use to people that's great--but he knows they can't be as useful to anyone else but himself, for it is his mind alone that he can perfect.  He ends the discourse by stating that he has no interest in worldly advantages because "I shall always consider myself more obligated to those by whose favor I shall enjoy uninterrupted leisure than I would be to those who offered me the most honorable office on earth."  (50)

It is hard to review a book of philosophy, but this is a short one, and worth reading. It is very funny at times, and it is amazing to read intoxicated.