It’s this ability to move with the times, while staying instantly recognisable, that makes him one of the most enduring and beloved villains in the history of popular culture. Almost 80 years later, that image is much the same, but the character’s real name, his back story, his methods and his motivation have kept evolving: the anti-hero played by Joaquin Phoenix in Todd Phillips’s already award-winning new film, Joker, doesn’t have much in common with his namesake from eight decades ago. The baddie’s creators, Bob Kane, Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson, stole the character’s permanent grin from Conrad Veidt in silent Victor Hugo adaptation The Man Who Laughs (1928), adding paper-white skin, green hair and a purple suit to complete his iconic image. Now Batman must race to stop his archnemesis before his reign of terror claims two of the Dark Knight's closest friends.Doctor Death, The Monk, Professor Hugo Strange – Batman had some colourful foes in his first few adventures as a comic book superhero, but it wasn’t until his second year of crime fighting, in 1940, that he met an adversary just as clever, tough and intimidating as he was: the Joker. And he's going to use Gotham City's top cop, Commissioner Jim Gordon, and his brilliant and beautiful daughter Barbara to do it. Freed once again from the confines of Arkham Asylum, he's out to prove his deranged point. According to the grinning engine of madness and mayhem known as The Joker, that's all that separates the sane from the psychotic. ALAN MOORE (WATCHMEN, V FOR VENDETTA) and BRIAN BOLLAND (CAMELOT 3000) take on the origin of comics' greatest super-villain, The Joker-and changes Batman's world forever.
Presented in stark black and white, BATMAN NOIR: THE KILLING JOKE collects BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE, "An Innocent Man" story, and a collection of Bolland's Batman covers.
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