From: Batman The Killing Joke by Alan Moore (script) and Brian Bolland (art and colors) Not only is the final sequence of images in the iconic graphic novel, Batman the Killing Joke, one of the most powerful comic book pages of all time, it is also one of the mediums most provocative and ambiguous. Leading up to this moment, the Joker shot and paralyzed Barbara Gordon and physically and mentally tortured her father, police Commissioner Jim Gordon all to prove a point. When Batman finally arrives to apprehend the Joker, he pleads with the villain to give up this cyclical game the two keep playing before one of them ends up dead. The Joker shrugs off Batmans concerns by telling him a joke about two inmates in an insane asylum. The final nine-panel page depicts the Joker breaking out into maniacal laughter before Batman joins him. By the fifth panel in the sequence the reader lands on a visual that is the source of a lot of debate and controversy within the comic book industry. Batman appears to grab the Joker aggressively. Within two panels, the laughter stops and the reader is only left with raindrops hitting the pavement. Renowned writer Grant Morrison believes Batman snapped the Joker neck in the fifth panel, while Julian Darius, president and founder of the comic book think-tank Sequart thinks the Dark Knight injected the villain with her very own venom. Others just dismiss the page as an inconclusive ending indicative of the never-ending game these two characters always manage to play with each other. What makes this page so powerful is that there is no right answer. It can be any or none of these things. It is all in the eye of the reader. What other comic book page can say so much and absolutely nothing at all in one fell swoop?
1. The Death Of Gwen Stacy
From: Amazing Spider-Man #121 by Gerry Conway (script), Gil Kane (pencils) and John Romita Sr. (inks) The Night Gwen Stacy Died is one of the most famous and controversial stories in comic book history. Within it, Gwen Stacy, the longtime girlfriend of Spider-Mans alter ego, Peter Parker, is thrown off a bridge by the Green Goblin and murdered (or was it Spider-Mans webbing that snapped her neck and killed her?). The tragedy is considered a true watershed moment for the comic book industry. Many historians cite the story as the official transition point from the kinder, glossier Silver Age of comics to the darker, grittier Bronze Age. The panel that shows Spider-Man cradling Gwens prone body, a la Mary holding Jesus in the famed Pieta statue, is monumentally sad and haunting. Beyond marking the transition point from the Silver Age to the Bronze Age, the image captures the comic book mediums end of innocence. Gwen was not a superhero. She didnt have powers, and never intentionally put herself in harms way. And yet she was killed all the same. It is a moment that finds a way to emotionally resonate and deflate the reader, regardless of how many years have passed since it was first published.
Mark is a professional writer living in Brooklyn and is the founder of the Chasing Amazing Blog, which documents his quest to collect every issue of Amazing Spider-Man, and the Superior Spider-Talk podcast. He also pens the "Gimmick or Good?" column at Comics Should Be Good blog.
