Batman: The Killing Joke is one of Alan Moore’s most renowned works, famous for its interpretation and illustration of the infamous Joker’s origin, and the true nature of his character in relation to that of the Batman’s. The story revolves around the Joker, and his purpose to “prove a point” (21, Moore) to Batman, his point being that “There is no difference between [him] and everyone else! All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy.” (45 Moore). His attempts to achieve this purpose divulge to become two of the three climatic turns in the story, the first being the shooting and paralysis of Barbara Gordon, and the second consisting of her father, Jim Gordon, forcefully being taken onto a carnival ride where he is…show more content… Despite only being in two panels, the Joker’s presence remains throughout and till the end of the page. This is due to the artist’s manner of illustrating the character. In the scene, the Joker is seen wearing and out-of-place and out0of0character attire, which would best be described as tourist clothing. And with a gun in his hand, he also carries a camera. Besides its confusing presence, what is striking is the angle the camera is facing, which is directly towards the reader, almost as if it is taking a picture. This foreshadows the coming of a climactic scene that would supposedly leave the reader in shock, which explains the camera’s readiness to take a picture. The camera directly correlates with the Joker’s attire in that tourists are known to take plenty of pictures with cameras. However, any relation to tourists is quickly lost when looking at the Joker’s minimalistic eyes, consisting of nothing more than two white dots, which serve to be more than a menacing gaze, since they too, just like the camera, look straight at the reader. The Joker’s clear dominance and merciless actions in this scene show no regard for Barbara not only as a person, but a woman more specifically. The scene implies Joker’s dominance over her, which could also be looked at as though his…show more content… Termed as the German word Schadenfreude, Joker is the epitome of this philosophy, due to his psychotic behavior, added to his insane ways of dealing with situations and creating them. The Joker’s schadenfreude can be directly seen in the first panel, but carries on unseen at first glance. After close reading the page, we can see objects or visual perceptions within the sequence that may represent the presence of his sadistic ways, such as color. The colors used in the page represent some form of emotion or correlation. Barbara’s top in the scene is yellow, which is often affiliated with a sense of warmth and comfort. However, this is quickly contrasted by the red blood that spurts out when she is shot, red signifying danger and anger, and of course, the Joker’s smile. Barbara’s cheerful and comfortable life was infused with the danger brought by the joker, and the anger she gained for him. The blood that bursts out of Barbara’s body squirts out in an arc, faintly begins to resemble the Joker’s grinning red lips, and the red consistently appears in every panel, except the second one, in which the Joker’s holding the gun. It is because the focus in the panel is the gun that there is no red visible, due to the fact that the gun itself suffices as the means to