Batman: The Killing Joke by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland.
Title: Batman: The Killing Joke.
Author: Alan Moore.
Artist: Brian Bolland.
Genre: Fiction, graphic novel, super heroes, philosophical fiction.
Country: U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: March, 1988.
Summary: A meditation on the razor-thin line between sanity and insanity, heroism and villainy, comedy and tragedy. According to the grinning engine of madness and mayhem known as The Joker, that's all that separates the sane from the psychotic. Freed once again from the confines of Arkham Asylum, he's out to prove his deranged point. And he¿s going to use Gotham City's top cop, Commissioner Jim Gordon, and his brilliant and beautiful daughter Barbara to do it. Now Batman must race to stop his arch-nemesis before his reign of terror claims two of the Dark Knight's closest friends. Can he finally put an end to the cycle of bloodlust and lunacy? And as the horrifying origin of the Clown Prince of Crime is finally revealed, will the thin line that separates Batman's nobility and The Joker's insanity snap once and for all?
My rating: 9/10.
♥ Oh, I know... You’re confused, you’re frightened. Who wouldn’t be? You’re in a hell of a situation! But, y’know, though life’s a bowl of cherries and this is the pits, always remember this...
When the world is full of care
And every headline screams despair,
When all is rape, starvation, war and life is vile...
Then there’s a certain thing I do
Which I shall pass along to you,
That’s always guaranteed to make me smile...
I go loo-oo-oony as a light-bulb battered bug,
Simply loo-oo-oony, sometimes foam and chew the rug...
Mister, life is swell in a padded cell,
It’ll chase those blues away...
You can trade your gloom for a rubber room, and injections twice a day!
Just go loo-oo-oony, like acid casualty,
Or a moo-oo-nie, or a preacher on T.V.
When the human race wears an anxious face,
When the bomb hangs overhead,
When your kid turns blue,
It won’t worry you, you can smile and nod instead!
When you’re loo-oo-oony, then you just don’t give a fig...
Man’s so pu-uu-uny, and the universe so big...!
If you hurt inside, get certified,
And if life should treat you bad...
Don’t get ee-ee-even, get mad!
♥ “Doing? You’re doing what any sane man in your appalling circumstances do. You’re going mad. Remember? Ohh, I wouldn’t do that! Remembering’s dangerous. I find the past such a worrying, anxious place. “The past tense,” I suppose you’d call it. Memory’s so treacherous. One moment you’re lost in a carnival of delights with poignant childhood aromas, the flashing neon of puberty, all that sentimental candyfloss... The next, it leads you somewhere you don’t want to go... Somewhere dark and cold, filled with the damp, ambiguous shapes of things you’d hoped were forgotten.
Memories can be vile, repulsive little brutes. Like children, I suppose. But can we live without them? Memories are what our reason is based upon. If we can’t face them, we deny reason itself! Although, why not? We aren’t contractually tied down to rationality. There is no sanity clause!
So when you find yourself locked onto an unpleasant train of thought, heading for the places in your past where the screaming is unbearable, remember there’s always madness. Madness is the emergency exit... You can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away... forever.