The Joker is proven wrong in more ways then one, the big one is that Gordon was not broken, and it's kind of funny how confidently The Joker assumed he was. However The Joker's "one bad day" speech is also not really supported by the flashback sequences.
When it comes to The Killing Joke as a Joker origin story people like to focus on the "multiple choice" quote giving us permission to not take the flashbacks as definitively canon. But even if we take them at face value, they do NOT vindicate The Joker's "one bad day" thesis. That person's life was already miserable before that day came along and he was already demonstrated to be unstable. That day was a tipping point but he was in need of help even if that day had never happened.
When someone says that Batman is a psychopath in The Killing Joke I go "what were you reading?" The Joker expresses the opinion Batman is just like him, but the story is all about The Joker being wrong.
I partly blame this on that animated movie from 2016. There is a meme going around that only the tacked on Batgirl story is bad but once it becomes a direct adaptation it is great. That is false, Hbomberguy did a video on the subtle ways that the movie is a pale imitation of what the comic drew. But I want to focus on one specific scene they didn't cover.
[Update: Unshavedmouse also recently wrote something on how bad that movie was.]
When Batman almsot falls into the pit with the big sharp spikes at the bottom, the Animated movie has him intentionally throw a random goon down into it, making him a killer. Now I knew even from having not read the comic recently that that must be wrong, but I kind of assumed that the comic at least had a goon fall into the spikes and that's where it came from. But no, I just reread the comic before writing this post after watching the Video Essay I'm responding to, and there is no goon in that scene at all, the spikes just look like they might have blood on them already.
I'm not as dead set against letting Batman kill in adaptations as some people are, I'm fine with how both Tim Burton and Zack Snyder handled it. However this was a direct adaptation of a specific story where Batman not killing was specifically part of that story's framework.
The interpretation that Batman kills The Joker at the end was something proposed in only the last few years, but this video essay went and stated it as fact claiming you have to ignore the final page to make it "canon" to an ongoing continuity. The notion that the story was not originally meant to be in continuity is also false, the reason why we have the "cripple the b!tch" quote is because Moore had to ask permission to cripple Barbara Gordon, and then before the novel was published in the same month DC released a Batgirl Special that gave Batgirl a proper send off (the movie should have just adapted that for the Batgirl story instead of letting Tim indulge in his weird shipping).
Guess what, I'm not agaisnt interpreting Batman to have killed The Joker is a beloved late 80s classic that allows us any excuse to say he didn't. Batman killed The Joker in The Dark Knight Returns, that is proven by following how the dialogue balloons' colors changed. That interpretation is also controversial, but it's based on the text in a way that's pretty irrefutable once you've noticed it. Saying he killed The Joker in The Killing Joke undermines what that story was entirely about.
I say this as someone who considers the story overrated. And no it's not because I'm upset with it's treatment of Barbara on Feminsit grounds. Overrated doesn't mean bad, it's overrated compared to other Alan Moore Batman stories (more people need to read Mortal Clay, that story is beautiful), and it's overrated compared to some more modern usually not Comics works that repeat similar themes and ideas. The Dark Knight is a better take on a story where The Joker has the same goal, and 2019's Joker is a better elaboration on what the flashbacks were trying to do.
Basically people go "the guy who wrote Watchmen, must be another deconstruction". The truth is every good Deconstruction is written by people who also know how to play that genre straight. Watchmen is Moore's only Deconstruction, every other hero he wrote is sometimes maybe flawed but still a genuine hero.
When Batman almsot falls into the pit with the big sharp spikes at the bottom, the Animated movie has him intentionally throw a random goon down into it, making him a killer. Now I knew even from having not read the comic recently that that must be wrong, but I kind of assumed that the comic at least had a goon fall into the spikes and that's where it came from. But no, I just reread the comic before writing this post after watching the Video Essay I'm responding to, and there is no goon in that scene at all, the spikes just look like they might have blood on them already.
I'm not as dead set against letting Batman kill in adaptations as some people are, I'm fine with how both Tim Burton and Zack Snyder handled it. However this was a direct adaptation of a specific story where Batman not killing was specifically part of that story's framework.
The interpretation that Batman kills The Joker at the end was something proposed in only the last few years, but this video essay went and stated it as fact claiming you have to ignore the final page to make it "canon" to an ongoing continuity. The notion that the story was not originally meant to be in continuity is also false, the reason why we have the "cripple the b!tch" quote is because Moore had to ask permission to cripple Barbara Gordon, and then before the novel was published in the same month DC released a Batgirl Special that gave Batgirl a proper send off (the movie should have just adapted that for the Batgirl story instead of letting Tim indulge in his weird shipping).
Guess what, I'm not agaisnt interpreting Batman to have killed The Joker is a beloved late 80s classic that allows us any excuse to say he didn't. Batman killed The Joker in The Dark Knight Returns, that is proven by following how the dialogue balloons' colors changed. That interpretation is also controversial, but it's based on the text in a way that's pretty irrefutable once you've noticed it. Saying he killed The Joker in The Killing Joke undermines what that story was entirely about.
I say this as someone who considers the story overrated. And no it's not because I'm upset with it's treatment of Barbara on Feminsit grounds. Overrated doesn't mean bad, it's overrated compared to other Alan Moore Batman stories (more people need to read Mortal Clay, that story is beautiful), and it's overrated compared to some more modern usually not Comics works that repeat similar themes and ideas. The Dark Knight is a better take on a story where The Joker has the same goal, and 2019's Joker is a better elaboration on what the flashbacks were trying to do.
Basically people go "the guy who wrote Watchmen, must be another deconstruction". The truth is every good Deconstruction is written by people who also know how to play that genre straight. Watchmen is Moore's only Deconstruction, every other hero he wrote is sometimes maybe flawed but still a genuine hero.
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