"Did Batman Kill The Joker At The End Of ‘The Killing Joke’?"

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The Joker WANTS Batman to kill him. He wants to be proven right. If Batman really was choking him he wouldn't be restraining against it. He'd be laughing the entire time until he couldn't anymore. Almost like how the comic showed...
 
For me it's the vanishing laughing sound. It stops, but the sirens is still there. In the second to last panel the car stops, thus the siren going out and the light gets out.
 
Chariot said:
For me it's the vanishing laughing sound. It stops, but the sirens is still there. In the second to last panel the car stops, thus the siren going out and the light gets out.
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The laughing stops because they start making out. The light turns off because the officer in the police car doesn't want to see that shit.
 
Freedom = $1.05 said:
He's startled from the contact. Then he gets choked.

It's plain as day that he kills him. the fading into the darkness is the biggest giveaway. It's a metaphor for batman's descent into darkness himself
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No its clear Batman cracks, delves into madness, the scene fading into black clearly indicates he's sending him to prison again. Clearly. It's a metaphor.
 
In the middle panel he's clearly giving him some kind of atomic nipple twist.


killing-joke-ending-570x891.jpg
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Brian Bolland is such a tease:

Speaking of which, it’s time I revealed what really happened at the end of The Killing Joke: as our protagonists stood there in the rain laughing at the final joke, the police lights reflecting in the pools of filthy water underfoot, the Batman’s hand reached out and…..
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That was taken from his afterword from a recent-ish deluxe edition release.

I was hoping that if Moore wasn't going to let slip the ending, that maybe Bolland would, but still no dice.
 
The zoom in on the puddles at the end is a graphic match for the puddles at the beginning of the book. I always assumed the meaning here was that this same conflict between Batman and the Joker would occur over and over again like the Joker claims when he is hung upside down in The Dark Knight. Hence, Joker is not dead and the two will continue to fight in the future.
 
MrRudiMentary said:
The zoom in on the puddles at the end is a graphic match for the puddles at the beginning of the book. I always assumed the meaning here was that this same conflict between Batman and the Joker would occur over and over again like the Joker claims when he is hung upside down in The Dark Knight. Hence, Joker is not dead and the two will continue to fight in the future.
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Right. Batman accepts the insanity of thinking he can ever bring the Joker back from what he has become and loses it for a moment.
 
MrRudiMentary said:
The zoom in on the puddles at the end is a graphic match for the puddles at the beginning of the book. I always assumed the meaning here was that this same conflict between Batman and the Joker would occur over and over again like the Joker claims when he is hung upside down in The Dark Knight. Hence, Joker is not dead and the two will continue to fight in the future.
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Yeah. The beam of light in the middle doesn't represent the last light in Batman or whatever the fuck, it's a parallel to the joke. The two of them are lunatics in the asylum and neither of them can get out because the other one will always be there to turn off the beam.
 
Alienous said:
Nope



Joker's hand in the sixth panel, which would be when the Joker is beginning to get choked in the 'Batman kills Joker' fiction shows the Joker's hand relaxed. Not clenched, not reaching up to his own neck, just conversationally extended.

The seventh panel shows the Joker and Batman's feet planted on the ground. The Joker's feet aren't lifted, the aren't apart. They are relaxed, on the ground.

The idea that Batman strangles or snaps the Joker's neck has no basis in what you are actually shown in the panels. Batman places a hand on the Joker mid-laughter, but there's no evidence he does more than that.
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Unless the Joker doesn't mind being killed when it's through Batman's hands.
 
No versions of the end of that story make a lot of sense to me. It seems highly unlikely that Batman would kill the Joker. His character is just not built that way. On the other hand, I was always deeply put off by him laughing at the Joker's dumb joke. Maybe it's just how he's drawn, but Batman looks nuts once he starts laughing in earnest. The book's ending is just unsettling and confusing and I mostly just try not to think about it too hard.
 
No, he didn't.

Also it would be very strange for Moore to go out of his way to create an origin story for Joker, then kill him off in the same arc. Even Alan Moore isn't that weird.
 
I read this very recently, and never understood why people just mention the last page when they claim that Bats killed Joker (which he didn't). Not only is this against his nature but he also agreed with Gordon to do it the 'right' way, to prove a point to Joker (who ironically set up everything to prove a point as well). Everything shown and told until the last page wouldn't make any sense if the Joker dies at the end.

As for the last page itself: I don't see Bats choking Joker and the reason why you don't hear a sound anymore is that we get closer to the puddle and that it is supposed to look exactly like the very first panel, without FX texts or anything. And I don't see this as 'Batman's descend into Darkness', but more as them being at square one again. This is brilliant since it shows that these two are kept in an eternal circle, both trying to 'beat' the other one all the time. My interpretation is that despite them chuckle together and Joker seemingly giving up with his shit he will continue to do his shit, no matter what - that to me is what the last panel means.

So yeah, to me this is a comic about these two characters having to deal with the fact they both exist; oil and water. Batman will try to convince Joker and Joker will try to break Batman.

As I write this down.. I wonder if this is some kind of parody from Moore about both of them.
 
Ophelion said:
No versions of the end of that story make a lot of sense to me. It seems highly unlikely that Batman would kill the Joker. His character is just not built that way. On the other hand, I was always deeply put off by him laughing at the Joker's dumb joke. Maybe it's just how he's drawn, but Batman looks nuts once he starts laughing in earnest. The book's ending is just unsettling and confusing and I mostly just try not to think about it too hard.
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Yeah, I can't think of them laughing without thinking about these panels:

ww4nGrM.jpg
 
There's NOTHING that suggest Batman definitely kills the Joker.

If you look at the panels closely, you can see the laughing and then the "camera" starts to pan down. It pans down past the laughter, past the EEEEEEEEE of the sirens, past their shoes and the mud, then past the mud to only the rain in the puddle where we see the lights from the cop cars cut out as they arrive.

Batman's hands are clearly on the Joker's shoulders when last we see them.

Could you argue that maybe he kills the Joker? Sure. That would be anathema to Batman's character though. However, the story is showing two sides of a coin, the Joker with his "one bad day" theory and Commissioner Gordon with his "we must adhere to the law" theory. You could read it as ambiguous if you'd like, but as presented there's nothing to really support the theory that Batman kills Joker.
 
SomewhatGroovy said:
Those last panels are very deliberate and a lot can be told with very little. The story does not end on that panel with Bats leaning in on Joker. Subtle story telling is a thing.
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IT'S NOT IN THE SCRIPT!

That is literally the end of any argument there is to be had. You are seeing Moore's script, not meant for public consumption, and it ends with them leaning on each other laughing as we zoom in on a puddle as sound fades out.

Did Batman strangle the ambulance too, since it stops making noise?
 
I'm convinced Moore wrote it as a finale to the rivalry. You have to admit those panels heavily allude to Batman making a move for his neck. That fifth panel is a dead giveaway if you ask me.

He basically laid out how the rivalry would finally end (Bruce would need to kill him eventually, and Joker sincerely tells him why in the end). Moore smartly left just a tiny bit of ambiguity which left room for DC to pull their standard comic book BS.
 
immortal-joe said:
I'm convinced Moore wrote it as a finale to the rivalry. You have to admit those panels heavily allude to Batman making a move for his neck. That fifth panel is a dead giveaway if you ask me.

He basically laid out how the rivalry would finally end (Bruce would need to kill him eventually, and Joker sincerely tells him why in the end). Moore smartly left just a tiny bit of ambiguity which left room for DC to pull their standard comic book BS.
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Again, though, you see in the script that Moore intended for them to be leaning on each other laughing. There was no move towards Jokers neck. It was supposed to be both of them beaten and bloody leaning on each other laughing. Had the artist switched it so Joker was leaning on Batman, would people be debating whether Joker killed Batman at the end?

It's not on the pages, it's not in the script. So, the theory is that it only existed in Moore's head 'cause he was just operating on a whole other level that only some picked up on?
 
Knowing Alan Moore opinions on superheroes (it's shiiiiit), and in special all the tropes, like "canon", continuity, simplified good vs evil, main characters that can't kill anybody, etc etc, I would say Batman killed him.

At least, that was what he would wanted to do. But he didn't have the freedom to do it, so he settled for an end that could be accepted in the canon but secretly it could be seen as his original intention.
 
Although it'd be cool to have that sort of ambiguity in the ending, there is absolutely nothing suggesting he kills him besides baseless fan speculation.

He puts his hand on his shoulder, the script clearly ends with them leaning together and laughing, and Batman would lose horribly and undermine everything he was doing and saying that night if he did end up killing the Joker.
 
Hero_of_the_Day said:
IT'S NOT IN THE SCRIPT!

That is literally the end of any argument there is to be had. You are seeing Moore's script, not meant for public consumption, and it ends with them leaning on each other laughing as we zoom in on a puddle as sound fades out.

Did Batman strangle the ambulance too, since it stops making noise?
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He had to get rid of the witnesses.
 
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