Tag Archives: The Killing Joke

Super Depressed

That makes it sound like I’m suicidal, which I’m not… I’m tired and not very productive, but this is more a case of, um, too much of a good thing.

There is an absolute shit-ton (technical term) of superhero stuff flooding in at the moment. The Killing Joke and Suicide Squad movies are both out next week. You Tube is drowning under the stuff coming out of SDCC… Arrrghhhh!

I am just not ready to write more Ultrahumans and I’m being bombarded with superheroes. At least it’s an entertaining form of torture.

I think I need a holiday. Probably somewhere without internet. Like Mars.

The Less-Than-Lethal Joke

An admission: I am a comic fan who has not read a lot of ‘classic’ comics. My really big comic-buying period was in the eighties and I tended to stay away from many of the big names, though I did read the Ten Titans (back when they weren’t a joke) and the X-Men. Batman appears in my lists in Batman and the Outsiders and few other places, largely due to the old TV series. (In my Ultrahumans books, Night Shift is based on the Batman I saw in those earlier comics – a jerk in a suit – while Mink is representative of the slightly more modern Batman… Though the New 52 Batman is still a bit of a jerk.)

Anyway, I’ve never really felt the need to read a lot of the old classics because I knew the plots anyway. I have read Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, but I’ve never read Death in the Family (aka, Jason Todd is voted off Gotham Island) or The Killing Joke… until last night. With the animated film of The Killing Joke coming out soon there has been a plethora of review videos on YouTube dealing with the original comic, which everyone says I should read, so I picked up a copy on Comixology and I read it.

If you don’t want the story spoiled – it’s been 30 years people! – then stop reading here.

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