Batman: The Killing Joke — The Deluxe Edition

May 5, 2008 | Trades

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Batman: The Killing Joke — The Deluxe Edition
Alan Moore, Brian Bolland
DC Comics
$21.99/$17.99 US (Hardcover)
***** (out of five)

The Killing Joke is one of the most perfect Batman comics ever published.
Really. Ask anybody. Except for its artist.
This stand-alone story, originally published in 1988, beautifully interwove a flashback tale that revealed the origin of the Joker with his current villainous plan to drive one of the noblest men in Gotham City — police commissioner Jim Gordon — insane.
Written by comic book icon Alan Moore (Watchmen, V For Vendetta) and breathtaking illustrated by gifted cover artist Brian Bolland (Camelot 3000), The Killing Joke is utterly chilling in its depiction of the Clown Price of Crime and how one horrible day turned him from a soon-to-be dad and husband into a psychotic killer.
Of course as good as all this sounds, nothing is ever perfect.
Bolland, due to time constraints back in ’88, couldn’t do the colouring himself on the book, resulting in a finished product he was never that happy with.
Now, with this book said to be one of the main inspirations for the pending summer blockbuster, The Dark Knight, starring Christian Bale as Batman and the late Heath Ledger as the Joker, Bolland’s original vision — one far more suited to the material — has finally been delivered in a deluxe hardcover edition befitting this all-time classic.

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