Not all classics are perfect. While Batman: The Killing Joke has long been considered the quintessential introduced realistic violence into mainstream comics in the 1980s.
Having retired from comics, Moore has often been credited with introducing a maturity and physical realism to comics with his landmark maxiseries break with mainstream comics, and eventually the medium he’d helped revolutionize entirely as well with the final installment of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen IV: Tempest in 2019.
Moore’s seminal Batman story The Killing Joke was often credited as serving as the inspiration for many Batman writers, including depictions of the Joker in multiple feature film franchises including the famous 2008 film Joker.
Moore has been famously reticent in discussing his comic book creations in recent years as they’ve seemingly become more and more dominant across the cultural landscape, however he did explain himself once again in an interview with Deadline recently, in which he once again lambasted his injection of physical realism into the comics genre as a whole.
"I have no interest in superheroes, they were a thing that was invented in the late 1930s for children, and they are perfectly good as children’s entertainment. But if you try to make them for the adult world then I think it becomes kind of grotesque.
I’ve been told the Joker film wouldn’t exist without my Joker story, but three months after I’d written that I was disowning it, it was far too violent – it was Batman for Christ’s sake, it’s a guy dressed as a bat. Increasingly I think the best version of Batman was Adam West, which didn’t take it at all seriously."
Moore’s reasoning here is clear: there’s only so far one can go with a character like Batman in a world like Gotham in of applied realism, and at some point, a point he believes he may have crossed in The Killing Joke, the application of this realistic violence becomes a detriment to the story. Batman, after all, was invented as a detective-hero fantasy for children in the 1930s, and perhaps adding realistic themes such as psychological trauma and graphic depictions of physical harm might have been a tad too far in of good taste for such a fantastical setting. Even with the presence of diabolical costumed men who test their wits and fists against Batman with garish and gaudy gimmicks and deadly traps and weapons.
While Batman: The Killing Joke may continue to inspire creators across the comics industry, Alan Moore, having abandoned the ed page, has turned to screenwriting. He is releasing a new film, directed by Mitch Jenkins, a neo-noir fantasy ironically entitled The Show.
Source: Deadline
