THE KILLING JOKE SPECIAL EDITION

[Satanist]

Anyone else pick this up? Its got The Killing Joke (natch) newly coloured by Bolland , sketches and an extra 8 page story written & drawn by Bolland.

The pages seem to be in a larger format and are all wrapped up as a lovely hardback edition.

I think I like it rather more than is healthy and I aint even read it yet.

[Goaty]

I remember read it about 15 years ago, I always remember that image at end with close-up of Joker's face laughs with batman in background, can anyone put it up here??? want it for my mobile wallpaper!

[TordelBack]

Wasn't it Higgins that did the original colouring?  What was wrong with it, I always thought it was great!  

IMHO, Higgins is hugely underrated as a colourist, the man's a genius with his oddly appropriate choices- check out Monkey on My Back or Message from Marta for his vast Cursed Earth canvasses.  Oh, and that Watchmen thing that some people seem to like.

[Satanist]

Oh I love the original version and will eventually dig it out and geekily compare both versions. As far as I can tell just from flicking through it the Jokers flashbacks are a bit browner. There's a text piece by Bolland in it and he says Higgins did a fine job but he would have rather had the time to do it himself.

[Buddy]

Gettin this.

Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1845767721/ref=s9sims_c4_img1?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=092HXQ0J6A2W7W9G6112&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=139045791&pf_rd_i=468294" target="_blank">£5.99 on Amazon

[Robin Low]

"There's a text piece by Bolland in it and he says Higgins did a fine job but he would have rather had the time to do it himself."

In The Art of Brian Bolland, Bolland says:

"Who better, I thought, than the Watchmen colorist John Higgins...when I finally saw the hideous glowing purples and pinks, the florescent bilious greens and my precious Eraserhead-esque flashback scenes swamped in orange, it felt like a blow to the stomach. I took to my bed for three days. To this day I've tried to avoid looking at those pages in colour. Since then I haven't wanted to draw comics that anyone else has had a hand in."

In an interview in the Meg 241, he says:

"It's not a nice thing to say but I hated the colouring in The Killing Joke. It was coloured by John Higgins and, if I'd looked at Watchmen properly, I would have realised that I never liked the way he colours."


A fine job?

Regards

Robin

[JOE SOAP]

Lovely artwork but a terribly thin and unsatisfying story, especially at a time when Moore was a godsend and can do no wrong. It's his weakest work of the 80's and was also one of the most high profile, it's more of an essay type thing than a good Batman/Joker tale. Even his Clayface story he did for Batman works better. Pity cos the art really is lovely. It just needs a few more story elements to live up to the art.

[Richmond Clements]

A fine job?


Err, yes!
Just because it's Bolland's opinion it does not make it so! And let's be honest- if he was going to colour it himself we'd probably still be waiting on the fucking thing!

[Robin Low]

"Err, yes! Just because it's Bolland's opinion it does not make it so! And let's be honest- if he was going to colour it himself we'd probably still be waiting on the fucking thing!"

I wasn't disputing that it was a fine job, just making the point that Bolland has either greatly changed his mind or is being dishonest.

Personally, I've always loved Higgins' colouring on The Killing Joke and thought Bolland was talking cock.

Regards

Robin

[Richmond Clements]

Personally, I've always loved Higgins' colouring on The Killing Joke and thought Bolland was talking cock.


Good man!
I always knew there was something I liked about you!

[Huey2]

Gotta say I actually prefer Higgins' colouring. Both versions are great, but the new stuff seems a little flatter.

[I, Cosh]

I've never read The Killing Joke. I'm just about to drunkenly order myself a copy from Amazon.

[Jim_Campbell]

"Lovely artwork but a terribly thin and unsatisfying story, especially at a time when Moore was a godsend and can do no wrong. It's his weakest work of the 80's and was also one of the most high profile, it's more of an essay type thing than a good Batman/Joker tale."

Just as a bit of context, can I offer this assessment of Killing Joke's position in comics' history (lifted from a post I made in response to some particularly ill-informed Moore bashing on the JBF, unsurprisingly):

Killing Joke was most certainly not that well received when it came out, for three reasons:

1) Everybody had been waiting for it forever. Moore. Bolland. Batman. How could this not be the greatest comic book ever? Frankly, no book could live up to the frenzy of anticipation. Had the book come out with less fanfare and a less well-known artist, it would be a mid-level addition to Moore's body of work.

2) It was the whipping boy for the Moore backlash amongst comic book reviewers who, by now, were running out of superlatives to adorn their reviews of Moore's books and they were damn well going to prove that they didn't fawn over everything Moore wrote. KJ provided the perfect opportunity for them to roast something by the Hairy One, and they did.

3) It came out after Dark Knight. There is an anecdote that I can't locate at the moment where Moore specifically refers to having dinner with Miller and mentioning that he had been asked by DC to do a Batman book. Miller responded that he, too, was doing a Batman book and would Moore mind, perhaps, focussing on a different aspect of the Batman mythology, other than the Dark Knight himself. This, Moore explained, was the genesis of focussing on the Joker.

Of course, what Moore couldn't have anticipated was a) how insanely good The Dark Knight Returns would actually be, and b) that Bolland would be two full years late delivering 48 pages of b/w artwork.

Thus, by the time Killing Joke came out, Miller had already grittied up Batman about as far it was possible to go, and presented the Joker murdering children, and a project conceived roughly simultaneously with Dark Knight, ends up looking like a pale imitation of it ...

Please note that I am most certainly not arguing that Killing Joke is the most amazing comic ever, I'm merely pointing out that it is not (to the best of my knowledge) considered a top-level classic of the medium to start with; even Moore and Bolland themselves don't speak particularly fondly of it.

Can I also say:

" I took to my bed for three days."

Fuck off, you big poof!

Cheers

Jim

[JOE SOAP]

I am only speaking of my own opinion, formed at that time in the 80's.

When I first read the Killing Joke I had no conception of the long wait or the context of how the media were treating comics (I ony read comics at that age, not lifestyle magazines) , I first knew of it when I saw it released on the shelves, new. The only Moore stuff I'd read at that time was 2000AD stories, Swamp Thing and Watchmen, I hadn't read any Miller stuff or much Batman at all.

I never even knew there was a Moore backlash in the 80's, I thought that was in the mid 90's?

So my only context for it was other Moore stories which it seriously falls short of, I knew it then when I read it first and I know it now. I never read it all the way through anymore because it just bores me.

[Robin Low]

'Can I also say:

" I took to my bed for three days."

Fuck off, you big poof!'

It's interesting that's almost confirmed in the Meg interview where he says something about going into a funk for three or four days.

Mind you, if he didn't like it he has as much right as anyone, if not more, to say so. Even if he is talking cock.

Regards

Robin