The biggest problem with Batman: The Deadly Joke is that it is unforgettable. The same cannot be said for Alan Moore’s 1988 graphic novel of the same name, which shocked me so much as a teenager that I started reading Nietzsche.
Its plot, reenacted in the second half of the 2016 animated film, provides a popular origin story for the Joker: a failed comedian falls into a pit of acid that transforms him into the white-faced Joker. In the present, Joker paralyzes Barbara Gordon by shooting her through the stomach, then kidnaps her father, Commissioner Gordon, tortures him and drives him insane.
But the first half of the 2016 film is devoted to what ultimately seems like an auxiliary story to Barbara as Batgirl, horny and violent and exposed to her overwhelming emotions as a woman. Even with Mark Hamill’s legendary voice acting, the film’s more faithful second half fails to capture the insidiousness that artist Brian Bolland is able to convey with the stationary comic page.
