Batman #48 Pays Homage to Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's The Killing Joke

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Batman #48, by Tom King, Mikel Janin, June Chung and Clayton Cowles, on sale now.

The Bat and the Cat are poised to tie the knot in just one short month, and everyone in the DC Universe is eagerly awaiting the big day, but perhaps nobody more than the Clown Prince of Crime, The Joker.

This isn’t just any old Joker, though. This is a Joker who seems far more unhinged than we’ve seen in recent years. In fact, one might even say the last time we’ve seen The Joker in this particular state of mind (or lack thereof) was in Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s acclaimed 1988 one-shot graphic novel Batman: The Killing Joke.

Batman #48 begins with a man kneeling down in prayer inside of a church, which – in and of itself – is hardly out of the ordinary. However, as he recites his prayers and beads of sweat drip down his face, others scream in terror in the background while gunshots echo through the chapel. Finally, we see the barrel of a revolver, clutched in the pale white hand of The Joker, approach the back of the man’s head before one more emphatic “BANG” rings throughout Gotham.

Naturally, it doesn’t take long for Joker’s deadly antics to attract the attention of Batman, who bursts through a stained-glass window like the winged creature from which he took his namesake. Then, after playing a few mind games (and the claiming of yet another victim), the Clown Prince of Crime finally decides to elaborate on the method to his madness.

“Now, you’re wondering why I wanted to talk to you,” Joker says. “Well, it’s just I heard you were getting married. And I couldn’t help thinking of something my mother once said to me. I was telling her I loved her, and she looked at me with her beautiful eyes and said… ‘Don’t kill me! Please! Please! AAAAAA! It hurts so much!’”

Joker begins firing off shots at the Dark Knight’s Kevlar-lined suit, but then, he suddenly pauses, aiming the smoking barrel of his gun in the air as a puzzled look comes across his face.

“Wait. No,” he says. “That wasn’t my mother. I cut out Mommy’s tongue. Very early in the process. No… she couldn’t have – but then whose mother was it? I swear, after a while… you try to give everyone a unique experience. But they really start to blend.”

If this sounds somewhat familiar to you, it’s likely because the theme of The Joker being portrayed as an unreliable narrator was explored heavily in the aforementioned graphic novel The Killing Joke.

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In The Killing Joke, while searching for Batman in the Fun House of an abandoned amusement park, Joker asks the Caped Crusader what it is that made him the way he is, positing that perhaps his girlfriend was “killed by the mob,” or maybe his brother was “carved up by some mugger.”

“Something like that happened to me, you know,” Joker says, as he makes his way to the Hall of Mirrors. “I… I’m not exactly sure what it was. Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another… If I’m going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!”

Obviously, the parallels between Moore and King’s respective takes on The Joker in these two stories are uncanny in this regard. However, that isn’t the only way Batman #48 pays respect to The Killing Joke. Earlier in the issue, Joker mentions the terrible traffic on Bolland Ave. – a clear nod to artist Brian Bolland. In fact, even Janin’s depiction of The Joker bears a striking resemblance to Bolland’s classic design, particularly once the color palette was updated in 2008 for the 20^th-anniversary edition of the book.

Additionally, this is one of the very few instances in which a creative team makes reference to the enigmatic and ambiguous Clown Prince of Crime having a family. The Joker’s backstory is often left to the reader’s imagination, and for good reason, but bringing in a mother – or, in the case of The Killing Joke, a wife and unborn son – as an element of a possible origin for the character is certainly intriguing when handled with precision and care.

At this point, the only question remaining is whether the nod to The Killing Joke was simply King and Janin paying homage to Moore and Bolland, or if perhaps there are deeper in-story implications for this decision. After all, back in the DC Universe Rebirth Special, we learned there were three Jokers in the DCU, with the accompanying artwork alluding to Dick Sprang’s Golden Age Joker, the Killing Joke version by Bolland and the New 52 iteration by Greg Capullo.

Whatever the case may be, this version of The Joker is absolutely hell-bent on turning the happiest day of Batman’s life into the deadliest, and that could spell trouble for Catwoman, who sets off for the chapel as the issue comes to a close.

KEEP READING: Catwoman Doesn’t Want To Be Robin’s Mom (And That’s A Good Thing)