What THE KILLING JOKE Is Really About

"...Watchmen was something to do with power, V for Vendetta was about fascism and anarchy, The Killing Joke was just about Batman and the Joker - and Batman and the Joker are not really symbols of anything that are real, in the real world, they're just two comic book characters."
-Alan Moore, quoted in Gary Spencer Millidge, Alan Moore Storyteller (Lewes, East Sussex, 2011), p. 139.

I rarely disagree with the Awesome Mage but this is one occasion. The Killing Joke is about whether one bad day is enough to drive anyone mad. It happened to the Batman. It happened to the Joker. The Joker tries to make it happen to Jim Gordon - and fails.

Would one very bad day be enough to drive you or me mad? A very important question.

Addendum, 29 Nov 2015: I have addressed this issue before. See here.

Swamp Thing And The Universe

Alan Moore's Swamp Thing explores the Terrestrial hereafters:

The Region of the Just Dead;
Heaven;
Hell;
the infinite Chaos beyond Hell;
the Original Darkness that was before the Creation rising from Chaos and advancing through Hell towards Heaven.

Next, he visits Gotham City.

Then, he travels through the universe:

exiled from Earth, he spends time on an uninhabited blue planet;

launching himself into space, he collides with the Zeta Beam routinely teleporting Adam Strange from Earth to the Centaurian planet, Rann, and lands on Rann, which is dying because of an earlier nuclear war;

Thanagarians plan to trade environmental technology stolen from the vegetable civilization on the planet J586 for the Rannian Zeta beam so that they can use the beam to conquer Earth;

a liquid animal from Minraud near J586 drowns one of the Thanagarians;

en route to J586, Swampy is trapped and raped by a planet-sized AI of a kind that wander through interstellar space, either meeting to procreate or eating spaceships that land on them;

J586 has a member of the Green Lantern Corps but has heard rumors of the decline of the Guardians of the Universe who appoint the Green Lanterns to defend specific space sectors;

after traveling from J586 to the Promethian Galaxy, Swampy meets Metron of the New Gods who tries, using Swampy as his vehicle, to enter the Source but succeeds only in discovering an Aleph, a point from which it is possible to observe all other points in space-time;

Swampy returns to Earth.

Gotham City In Alan Moore's Swamp Thing

Captain Jon Logerquist founded Gotham City in 1635.

The suburbs include Evanston with lawns and shrubs and Gotham Village with vacant lots.

The techno-belt includes Allied Metalurgical in Little Stockton.

Uptown is Gotham Park.

The business district with Gotham Stock Exchange is to the south.

West is Glendale, originally a separate town.

East are the slums of Bryanttown.

North are Charon, comprising a hospital and two cemeteries, and Sommerset with woodlands and Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane.

Transformations

When Alan Moore started to write Marvelman, later Miracleman, MM learned that all of his previous adventures had occurred inside a virtual reality.

When Moore started to write The Saga of the Swamp Thing, Swampy learned that he was not a man who had become a plant but a plant that thought that it had been a man.

In both cases, the entire basis of the series was completely transformed. And the transformations continued. MM's powers made him a benevolent global dictator, regarded as God. Swampy learned, thanks to John Constantine's intervention, that the passage of a man through fire and his transformation into a swamp plant is the first stage in the genesis of the next plant elemental, the guardian of the Terrestrial ecology. The elemental has powers that make him a nature god although Swampy had not suspected that he had such powers before he was written by Alan Moore.

MM changes the world. Swampy can change the world by transforming deserts into plains and forests but decides that it would be wrong to interfere in evolution in this way. The difference is that MM has his own continuity whereas Swampy must conform to DC Comics continuity where the pretense is that the world remains essentially unchanged despite the presence in it of powerful beings like Superman, other superheroes and the Swamp Thing.

In Watchmen, Doctor Manhattan and Ozymandias change the world because, although this group of characters began as the Charlton Comics superheroes who were incorporated into DC continuity, Moore was able to transform them into the Watchmen with their own continuity.

Watchmen

(Far out. One image gives us the cover of my edition of Watchmen and the Awesome Mage himself.)

I am rereading Alan Moore's Watchmen so I need an angle to discuss it on the Poul Anderson Appreciation blog. Easy. It is all in the alternative histories.

Poul Anderson gives us alternative histories in which:

the Carolingian myths were true;
William Shakespeare was not the Great Dramatist but the Great Historian;
technology was based not on science but on magic.

And Alan Moore gives us alternative histories in which:

when superhero comics inspired real life superheroes, comic books turned instead to pirates and, after the New York incident, to horror;

Superman and Captain Marvel were comic book characters but Mick Anglo's Marvelman was a parareality program and Moore's revived Marvelman was the real thing.

Absolutely Mind-blowing.

Worlds And Words

I copied this post from Poul Anderson Appreciation because it mentions Miracleman and Smallville:

SM Stirling, "Shikari in Galveston" IN Worlds That Weren't (New York, 2003), pp. 63-148.

Science fiction writers show words changing their meanings in the future. In Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time, Jack Havig, time traveling to his future, meets a young woman who, when asked what she does with her time, replies that she jokes a lot. An amateur comedienne? However, when she and he share a picnic with no one else present, she announces that she had figured they could joke after eating but why not before and after?

(15 Mar: Also relevant is Anderson's "A Tragedy of Errors.")

In Neil Gaiman's sequel to Alan Moore's Miracleman, "London" means an event as "Hiroshima" does to us and "Kidding" has become a swear word because of what the Kid did in London. (Alan Moore had asked, "What would someone with Superman's strength and speed but not his scruples do?" He then answered this question with extremely detailed instructions to a comic strip artist.)

In SM Stirling's "Shikari in Galveston," a Bengali trader surprises us by telling Eric King that the local savages "'...are a clean people...'" (p. 80) Clean? King has just complained of sweat, squalor, smoke, sewage and stink. However, the trader's use of the word "clean" does not refer to hygiene. He spells it out:

"'From the time of the Fall.'" (ibid.)

King understands:

"King nodded...that was one of the fundamental distinctions in the modern world, between those whose ancestors had eaten men in the terrible years after the hammer from the skies struck, and those who hadn't. The only more fundamental one was between those who still did, and the rest of humanity." (ibid.)

And I am certain that the use of the word "clean" would be extended in precisely this way in those circumstances.

Tomorrow there will be a family outing for Mothers' Day (we have two mothers in the household) so maybe not much time for posting. Before turning in this evening, I have had to stop reading Stieg Larsson in order to post and must now stop posting in order to watch Smallville. Retirement, as expected, is an endless choice between enjoyable activities.

Alice In Sunderland And Voice Of The Fire: A Fourth Parallel

In Bryan Talbot's Alice In Sunderland, the author, dreaming, sits in the otherwise empty Sunderland Empire Theatre while the author not only speaks from the stage but also interacts with the author writing the script, drawing the strip and walking through the city's history, speaking the words in speech balloons and captions.

In the concluding chapter of Alan Moore's Voice Of The Fire, when the author comes on stage:

"...the Help menu [is] lettered up on the proscenium arch. The cursor winks, a visible slow handclap in the black, deserted auditorium."
-Alan Moore, Voice Of The Fire (London, 1996), p. 292.

Depiction, narration and action/acting are the three story-telling media. Talbot compares his sequential art with drama and Moore likewise compares his prose with it.

Alice In Sunderland And Voice Of The Fire

Three Parallels

(i) Alice In Sunderland, a graphic documentary by Bryan Talbot, surveys the history of the North East of England. Voice Of The Fire, a prose novel by Alan Moore, spans the history of the site of Northampton with chapters set in successive periods from 4000 BC to 1995 AD.

(ii) Both works incorporate the author writing the work.

In Alice... (London, 2007), p. 55, panel 5:

caption: ...right now I'm writing the script, typing these words.
picture: Talbot typing; the words on the screen.

In Voice... (London, 1996), p. 293:

"The author types the words 'the author types the words.'"

(iii) Both authors are best known for their works of graphic fiction.

One Autograph

My copy of Voice... is signed:

"To Paul,
"From the septic navel of the nation,
"With very best wishes -
"Alan Moore."

I will miss the Kendal Comics Art Festival (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here) this year but should try to get Mr Talbot's autograph on Alice... next year.

God Is Dead Alpha

Mark, our comic book guy, kept this for me because the Awesome Mage is in it. As a matter of fact, Glycon and Alan make their point quite well.

I do not understand the series' premise. Instead of, or as well as, the One God being dead, all the gods are hanging around? Simon Spurrier points out that Biblical cherubim are multi-membered and cosmic whereas Italian artists changed them into little cupids. Naturally, one of them is furious and swearing about the image-change.

Mike Costa gives us good old Ganesh doing something that I don't quite understand but it's Continued!

"...Inside You There Is A God"

Mr Cream tells Michael Moran:

"Mr. Moran...Listen very carefully...You are a fool. You are a weakling and a coward...But inside you there is a GOD. Inside you there is SOMEONE BETTER THAN US... ...And whatever the cost, you must PROTECT him."
-Miracleman No 7 (New York, 2014), p. 16.

Comic book dialogue has its own ways of emphasizing words and phrases.

I quote this dialogue because it is true of Moran while he is not Miracleman but also because it is true of every human being.

Nemo: The Roses Of Berlin (Spoilers)

A lot of German that I haven't had translated yet.

A Germany that combines Charlie Chaplin's parody of Hitler with the film Metropolis.

Ayesha beheaded! - and by Nemo's daughter. This is like the earlier Nautilus versus Martians in the Thames.

A reference to Ingsoc and to the corresponding Mike Thingmaker regime in the US. The latter is not in 1984 but in a Russian sf trilogy.

I have recently read some Jules Verne but not got into him. However, Alan Moore puts Verne characters and their descendents to good use in LEG history.

Life And Art

Some people point out that there are many instances of sexual violence against women in Alan Moore's works. Moore replies that there are many instances of sexual violence against women in real life and also that popular fiction distorts life by presenting an excessive number of instances of violent killing. This discussion needs to progress, i.e., we do not need more people pointing out that there are many instances of sexual violence against women in Alan Moore's works.

Are current superhero films merely a rehash of fiction created for twelve year olds fifty years ago and do they prevent our unprecedented era from developing a relevant culture of its own, as Moore suggests (see link to interview a few posts back here)? Well, fictions originally addressed to twelve year olds can be upgraded age-wise, as Moore has preeminently demonstrated.

A superhero film can be:

escapist light entertainment;

like any art, a mirror to reality, i. e., while enjoying an imaginary world precisely because it is different from ours, we can simultaneously see ourselves and our society reflected in it.

In Moore's Watchmen, the US is unquestioningly served by a virtually omnipotent superhero and therefore wins in Vietnam. The VC want to surrender to him personally. Another character comments that, if the US had lost that war, then it might have gone a bit mad as a nation...

In Watchmen, the UN is also unquestioningly served by a violent vigilante - and two journalists called Woodward and Bernstein are found dead....

In Moore's Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?... (to be continued here)

Meaningful Narratives

Are the DC and Marvel universes "...meaningless..." as Alan Moore described them in his recent interview with Padraig O'Mealoid (see earlier link)? Maybe they are neutral territory but it is possible to create meaningful narratives within them, as Alan Moore himself proved. I used to reflect on the superficiality of superhero fiction which never, for example, deduced any social consequences from its fantastic premises. A friend replied, "They are only comics," but the telling of a story in both pictures and words need not entail that the story has to be simplistic. On the contrary: films do not have to be either insubstantial or uni-dimensional.

I never suspected that someone, namely Alan Moore, would address what I saw as this specific lack in comics. I could not have filled the vacuum that I was all too aware of but was well primed to appreciate the work of someone who could do so and who thereby opened the door to many successors now consistently writing comics at a qualitatively higher level than before. We do not know how much of this would have happened eventually even without Alan Moore but we do know that he did a lot of it and gave a lead. Neil Gaiman came back into reading, then writing, comics because of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing.

I am not taking sides between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. I have had time to read just some of Moore on Morrison and vice versa but not all of it, thank the gods, because I am not setting out to judge this case. They present factually different accounts of their first meeting. This alone warns us not simply to read and accept one of the accounts. In Alan's account, Grant was, at that time, an aspiring writer. In Grant's account, he was already a published writer. He claims that publication dates bear this out. So maybe Alan was not aware of it at the time? Thus, neither of them needs to be lying.

My impression of Grant, only an impression subject to revision in the light of any further information, is that he is at least not as bad as Alan perceives him. But, if he were, then the way to address the issue would be by private talks between them, not in a public forum.

The question implicit at the beginning of this post, what sort of fiction do we need to address current reality, is a weighty matter and I feel privileged to be able to address it in however small a way in a public discussion.

Two Further Points

(i) In his recent interview with Padraig O'Mealoid (See three posts back here), Alan Moore says several times that various people have a right to their opinions. This need not be said. We have no authority to deny anyone a right to their opinions so it is unnecessary to affirm that right. Saying this usually signals dislike of or disagreement with the said opinions so it is better just to proceed directly to the point of disagreement.

(ii) Alan Moore asks admirers of Grant Morrison's works to stop reading his. It doesn't work like that. We read what we want to. I read right wing writers although my views are left wing and I hope that right wing readers do not deny themselves the pleasure of reading the works of leftists. Literature divided into mutually hostile camps who do not even read each others' outputs is unthinkable.

Out of respect for Alan's views as the creator of Watchmen, I have not bought any Before Watchmen and have read only one issue that someone had at a comics group gathering. Alan Moore has moral rights as the creator of these characters but cannot legitimately ask me not to check out anything written by Morrison. I am pleased to see that Marvel Comics are re-issuing Miracleman.

Is One Bad Day Enough To Drive You Or Me Mad?

The previous post is a link to an interview in which Alan Moore again puts down the story, not the art, in his and Brian Bolland's The Killing Joke. Alan has said elsewhere that TKJ is not about anything substantial; it is only about a guy dressed as a bat fighting a guy who looks like a clown. I disagree.

TKJ is about whether one bad day would be enough to drive you or me mad. The Joker had a bad day but doesn't always remember it the same way. (Metafiction: the character has different origin stories.) He knows that Bats must have had a bad day to make him do what he does. (In fact, does the Joker ask whether it was mob killing spouse, which would be the Punisher's origin?)

The Joker does a song and dance routine (of course he does; why did no one else write this?) about why we are not obliged to be sane and even about why any response to life other than insanity would be crazy. He tries to prove his point by giving Jim Gordon a bad time but fails. Gordon tells Bats to bring the Joker in by the book. Would you or I stay sane and legal like Jim or become criminally insane and homicidal like the Joker?

A fellow comics reader said that the ending made no sense: why should Bats share a joke with the Joker? I took it to be just release of tension. (I once burst out laughing twenty four hours after a difficult situation as a teacher.)

Alan Moore has also said, I think, that his graphic fictions are unfilmable. I think that a good attempt could be made at scrupulous transference to screen but each work would have to be serialized.

LEG 2009

In Alan Moore's and Kevin O'Neill's The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Century: 2009 (Marietta and London, 2012), Orlando, who started her fighting career in Troy, meets another "...combat veteran..." (p. 3) or immortal soldier, Colonel Cuckoo, who started later, in the Napoleonic Wars. I did not recognize Cuckoo but he can be identified by googling.

Emma Peel, now Head of the Secret Service, is addressed both as "Mother" and as "Em," which is neat. I think that the James Bond replacements resemble post-Connery actors?

I also think that Norton refers to the film travesty of From Hell. Thus, Alan Moore can incorporate even some really bad stuff into the LEG Universe.

When the Anti-Christ says that he is in a book of the Bible, the unnamed but recognizable Mary Poppins replies that she is on every page. Who is on every page of the Bible? Even God is not. Unless she is Imagination, as in Promethea? (She does mention imagination.)

There is a lot more than this in any volume of LEG but these are the points that have caught my attention on this rereading.

A Finite Series

Standard practice with a comic that sells well is to continue selling it indefinitely through multiple changes both of creative team and of plot direction, thus generating, over time, thousands of pages of ephemeral quantity at the expense of enduring quality. When Swamp Thing  was scheduled for cancellation, Alan Moore took over the writing, reinterpreted the title character from mud monster to plant elemental and transformed the series into a top-selling title.

When Moore had finished the story that he had to tell, he gave the characters a happy ending and it is easy to stop reading at that point. His entire run has been collected and thus saved from transience. Rick Veitch continued the series well but differently. However, it had its ups and downs after that, ending on a high point with Mark Millar but revived a few times since then.

Neil Gaiman initiated a new Sandman series and insisted on it ending when he had finished the story that he had to tell. However, it has had several off-shoots, notably Mike Carey's Lucifer, also collected in its entirety, and, in any case, continues to sell better as collected editions. Because The Sandman is a lengthy but finite series, it has a comprehensible structure that can be mentally mapped:

Preludes And Nocturnes (8 issues) + The Doll's House (8) + Dream Country (4) = 20 issues;
Season Of Mists (8) + (Distant Mirrors - "Ramadan" (3)) + A Game Of You (6) + Convergence (3) = 20;
Brief Lives (9) + "Ramadan" = 10;
Worlds' End (6) + The Kindly Ones (13) + The Wake (6) = 25;
Total = 75.

Waves Of Madness

In Swamp Thing, Volume 2, Love And Death (New York, 1990) by Alan Moore, the Swamp Thing's former adversary, Anton Arcane, escapes from Hell:

"The returned man chuckles...
"...and a shockwave of nightmare ripples out across the sleeping continent...
"..and in Lafayette, Jody Herbert comes across the wino passed out in an alleyway and Jody has a box of matches in his pocket and there's nobody else around...
"...and in Alexandria, Tina-Louise Pierce says 'The hell with it' and lifts the ancient iron frying pan that her husband is too cheap to replace..." (p. 57)

In The Sandman, Volume 1, Preludes & Nocturnes (New York, 1995) by Neil Gaiman, the Justice League of America's former adversary, Doctor Destiny, escapes from Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane:

"News at Six. Is everybody going crazy? Reports are coming in from across the state about a wave of madness, suicide and bad dreams..." (p. 169)

"Listen: you can hear the screaming.
"Three children are trapped in an elevator with Bobby-Joe McCann.
"Harold Smith prowls the dog's home, a tire iron clutched in his bloodied fist.
"Maude Carillon screams with laughter as the flame devours the geriatric ward.
"Listen." (p. 185)

In both cases:

a villain returns;
there is "...a shockwave of nightmare..." or "...a wave of...bad dreams...";

named individuals, not continuing characters but created for this single incident, commit acts of horrific violence.

Reading The Sandman reminded me of Swamp Thing so I checked back and made the comparison. Arcane brings supernatural power from Hell whereas Doctor Destiny wields a stolen dream-stone.

In Swamp Thing, in Arkham, Woodrue bangs his head on the door and Two Face has to be sedated but the scariest thing is when the Joker stops laughing (p. 68). In The Sandman, the Scarecrow asks the escaping Doctor Destiny to tell the Joker to hurry back because "It isn't April Fool's day without his little jokes..." (p. 135) and, during the confusion, "Mister Dent [Two Face] tried to strangle himself." (p. 208)

Thus, both Moore and Gaiman make creative use of established Batman villains.

Current Alan Moore-Related Comics

Fashion Beast is not a comic written by Alan Moore. It is a comic written by Alan Johnston based on a film script written by Alan Moore. It does not read like an Alan Moore comic although, when the character Celestine identifies glamour with magic, we hear the voice of the Magician.

I think that there are too many silent panels. I am sure that, if Alan Moore had written the original script for a comic or had even just adapted his own film script as a comic, then it would have been different. Also, the range of things that Alan Moore can write or write about is immense - in different works, superheroes, science fiction, fantasy, advertising, political propaganda, comedy, horror, contemporary fiction, pornography; in this case, fashion. Thus, while loyal readers support whatever he does, they are not always equally interested in the subject matter.

On a first reading, Nemo: Heart Of Ice, a spin-off from The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, has not done a lot for me yet. The main obvious sources are Verne, Haggard and Lovecraft and there is a reference to Charlie Chaplin's parody of Hitler, Hynkel, who, we already know, exists instead of Hitler in the Extraordinary Gentlemen version of history. Why is Ayesha not veiled? We can learn about other characters, Reade, the Steam Man etc by googling. A glance at google informs me that Frank Reade's Steam Man was based on an earlier fictitious steam-powered robot which explains why Reade Jr here acknowledges that his father had adapted the original design.

The main Extraordinary Gentlemen series seems to be building towards a climax involving obscure superheroes and 2001 monoliths so I will continue to read it with interest.

Superman Writers and An Editor

Passing Julius Schwartz in a hotel corridor at a World Science Fiction Convention, I shouted, "Hi. I'm a Superman fan!", to which he replied, "Good for you!", after which we continued on our separate ways. Despite being a long time Superfan, I had not got back into reading comics yet so I had nothing else to say.

I have met Alan Moore a couple of times. Although never a regular Superman writer, he did write three good Superman stories, including the "last Superman story," "Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?," edited by Julius Schwartz. By that time, I had got back into reading comics and I took the opportunity to thank Alan Moore for what he had done with both Superman and the derivative Marvelman.

Earlier today, a remark on facebook implied that local writer Andy Diggle was going to be writing Superman. A text to local Comic Book Guy Mark, then a quick google search, confirmed that Andy will follow Grant Morrison on Action Comics. I really do mean, "Far freaking out!" Superman is a myth but his story continues through the creative imaginations housed in the brains of regular guys who walk the streets of Northampton, Glasgow and Lancaster. (Well, I haven't met Grant but I assume he is a regular guy?)

As you know, Andy has been Tharg and has written a number of characters including the Moore-created John Constantine and also Green Arrow (Green Arrow: Year One - GAY1). In general, I have been turned off by what has been done to Superman in mainstream continuity, although I expect I will read Grant's run in collected editions, but, in any case, I am going to have to see what Andy Diggle does with the original superhero. The myth continues on screen and in print.