Over the holidays, I took a little bit of time to watch the animated rendition of Batman: The Killing Joke, widely regarded as one of the most memorable Batman comics ever made. Despite curmudgeon Alan Moore’s best attempts to discount its merit, there’s no denying that it’s a genuine classic that puts an exclamation point on the dark undertones of the series, and shows a very serious and vicious rendition of The Joker and a storyline that distances it miles away from the safeness of The Animated Series and the campiness of the 60’s Adam West show.
When the film debuted over the summer during Comic-Con, there was a lot of buzz in the negative sense about its execution; something about an artificially added storyline, damaging of female empowerment, and a very non-canonical relationship. In other words, typical nerd outrage over something that a lot of people didn’t agree with. Although the details of these particular elements did sound a little suspect, I didn’t really want to come to any conclusions without seeing it myself; after all, with the return of Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy to reprise their TAS roles, maybe this could be an epic retelling of an epic comic story.
Well, after watching The Killing Joke, put me in the camp of comic nerds who believes it was overall crap.