10 Most Messed Up Batman Moments
2. One Bad Day
In Alan Moore’s Batman: The Killing Joke, the Joker is shown as a tragic figure, who snapped and descended into the madness we are all so familiar with after ‘one bad day’. Over the course of the book, The Joker subjects Commissioner Gordon to a series of tragedies and humiliations through which he attempts to prove that anyone can become like the Joker and go over the edge, due to one bad day.
Ultimately, the Joker fails. Not, however, before shooting and paralysing Barbara Gordon, the Commissioners daughter and future Oracle, forcing him to look at pictures of her nude body after the shooting, then forcing him to participate in a freak show in a run-down amusement park.
Ultimately, the psychological torture to which the Joker subjects Gordon and, to a lesser extent, Batman, is futile. The story ends with a rare moment of pathos shared between Batman and the Joker, before the clown-prince of crime is returned to Arkham Asylum, with the pair knowing that the cycle will only end when one, or both of them, meet their end, likely at the others hands.