It is a Batman comic, but where batman is just there incidentally and not as the hero of the issue. Its the Joker all the way. That is really intriguing to me because that opens up the possibility of creating a hero of a story yet having his appearance in it purely incidental at best and yet not losing anything from it. Not that I'm presuming to be the genius Alan Moore is. But the possibilities open up.
The Killing Joke is about the possible origins of the Joker. He could have been an ordinary chemical engineer with a pregnant wife who gave up his job at a factory to pursue being a stand up comic and failing miserably- and then trying to salvage the situation he gets a job helping some criminals, has a Bad Day, where his wife and child are killed, he is almost caught and he falls into a pool of chemicals which permanently changes his appearance. And also mentally pushed over the edge, he admits later that that might have been the reason for why he is the way he is. What is clear is that Alan Moore brings in a more rigid philosophical thought into a mainstream superhero series- and his mouth pieces are both the hero and the villain. He also decimates blind hate and detest and forces consideration for both sides of any story into a world where right and wrong are in absolute colours of black and white.
The imagery in the book is insidiously chilling as one realizes what exactly is one seeing- be it the joker sitting on his throne lined on the sides with mountains of parts from baby dolls and torches made out of dolls heads- or the images of the commissioner Gordon's daughter in states of mutilation and undress being flashed across screens to enforce the Joker's philosophy of complete anarchy.
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