Batman: The Killing Joke

Batman: The Killing Joke is a 1988 comic book One-shot written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Brian Bollard, providing an origin story for the Joker and an in-depth review of his relationship with Batman as an archenemy.

Plot
Joker has once again escaped from Arkham, only now he's gone off the deep end, kidnapping commissioner James Gordon and taking him to an abandoned theme park to torture him to insanity. As Batman desperately searches throughout the city for him, he must come to terms with the end of his war against Joker, and Joker's backstory and the route of his insanity is finally revealed.

Why it Rocks

 * 1) Alan Moore sought to get to the root of Jokers sociopathy and show how he became that way, taking much darker turns than previous attempts at a backstory that many others would not dare to go.
 * 2) Incredible artwork by Brian Bollard, with an insane amount of detail in each panel. It looks more modern than an 80s comic, even if the colors still look reminiscent of that era. The new edition even changes the colors to help the atmosphere and make it more interesting to modern viewers.
 * 3) The comic gives an even darker characterization to Joker, showing a not-at-all-goofy side to him and instead making him quite terrifying as a result in both his looks and his actions.
 * 4) Batman is also given a knew characterization, as he's considering killing Joker, believing the war can only end with one of them dying and realizes that he's truly beyond help. This goes a long way to satirize superheroes in general, showing some hypocrisy in the "never killing" philosophy in a situation like this.
 * 5) The One-Shot is iconic, not only for detailing Joker's backstory, but also for it's setting and themes, where Joker takes over a decrepit amusement park and tortures Gordon on a psychological level to drive him insane and prove that everyone's just one bad day from becoming insane like him.
 * 6) An excellent, horrific atmosphere that permeates throughout the story and makes it nearly a horror comic as a result, with plenty of scary themes like torture, murder, insanity, and so on. Some of the panels also wouldn't feel out of place in a horror comic.
 * 7) Speaking of Joker's backstory, it's very well detailed and actually quite saddening, showing how his normal life slowly crumbled around him after he made a deal with some mobsters for money and how Batman is directly responsible for his becoming the Joker during the Red Hood incident. This backstory has been used as his basic origin and it's influence is very apparent.
 * 8) Excellent dialogue that makes every character feel very much like a real person and can still be pretty clever at times.
 * 9) Lots of iconic lines in comic books, like Joker's "The Terrible Average Man" monologue and his monologue about "the funny side" while Batman chases him.
 * This Iconic image.
 * 1) The story begins and ends with a panel of rain falling down on the ground, leaving many things up to interpretation before the conclusion, where Joker tells a joke that he and Batman both laugh at and Batman grabs him right as the police arrive.
 * 2) An interesting side-story after the story ends, illustrated by Brian Bollard once again, where one man talks about how he sympathizes with Joker's philosophy and wants to do something VERY bad, but only once to prove he's a good person. He also plans to kill Batman as a result.
 * 3) All in all, the series is quite disconnected from the rest of the Batman mythos in a very interesting way, taking a much more sympathetic and psychological turn than an action-based one. It's perhaps one of the most psychological comic books ever made.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The infamous scene of Joker shooting Barbara Gordon, crippling her, then taking naked pictures of her which he forces Gordon to see, even topping off the whole thing with a lot of mean cripple jokes. Even Alan Moore himself called this scene "too nasty" and asked for his name to be pulled from the product.
 * 2) The ending can be a little frustrating, even if it's point is to invite the reader to think.
 * 3) This story is rather short, consisting with only one issue when it could have easily gone for at least three instead.
 * 4) Don't ask about the animated film adaptation of it.

Reception
The Killing Joke is often voted one of the best Batman comics of all time as well as one of the best One-Shot comics of all time, with praise directed towards it's artwork, Alan Moore's writing, and Joker's backstory. It was not without criticism, however, as an infamous scene with Joker crippling then taking suggestive pictures of Barbara Gordon has been a highly controversial scene that has been heavily criticized by fans and critics alike.

Trivia:

 * In issue 5 and issue 21 of Booster Gold, the title character was involved with Rip Hunter, who seeks to send him back in time to save Barbara Gordon from being paralyzed by the Joker while he is interrupted by Blue Beetle's evil counterpart and fellow time stealer, Black Beetle.
 * In the story arc "Hush Returns" from the pages of Batman: Gotham Knights, it was retcon that the two gangsters the pre-disfigured Joker worked for are seeking to use him to wear the Red Hood helmet if they refused to want to see his wife again and then kill her with her unborn child by hiring a corrupt police officer to do that. Also, the Riddler himself did witness the Joker's wife's death after the Joker's transformation into the clown prince of clown we know.
 * In the 3-part series, Batman: Three Jokers, the 3rd and final issue revealed that the Joker's wife, Jeannie, didn't die and had been in hiding outside from Gotham to get away from her husband's mental instability, while being able to give birth to a child who is now a boy growing up as a teenager.