Batman The Killing Joke

Question One:  I'm a little creeped out and a little intrigued by the text.  This isn't a normal Batman comic where the villain does something wrong and Batman goes to "save the day".  It's almost as if Batman has been tired of his "routine" (fighting crime with Joker) and wants to call a truce so to speak.  Joker seems to have gone off the deep end mentally and starts doing things that are not characteristic of his behavior (ie. Robbing banks, taking over a industry, etc...), he instead tortures a man by trying to make him go mad and shoots his daughter in the spine to cripple her.  

The ending was by far the weirdest part showing that Batman is only human, being taken down by a single bullet and ending the legacy, all from a nobody, just an ordinary guy.  He then talks about how he'd get married, settle down with a wife and go to heaven.  It's like the birthing of a villain, showing how easy it would be to take down a man in a suit.  Batman isn't invincible, he's a human man in a suit with no powers, and uses gadgets and inventions to help him fight crime.

Question Two:  I can connect to both Batman and Joker in this comic.  For Batman, he's stuck in a routine; Save the day by defeating the villain, locking the villain up, villain escapes, repeat.  Batman is looking for a way out of the endless cycle by coming to his senses and trying to break the loop by doing something different.  Batman isn't some off world superhuman being, his parents were killed by muggers, he inherited a fortune, but instead of seeking revenge, he used his own personal experience to help others. 

As for the Joker, there was a lot of backstory told in this comic that shows how and why the Joker became the way he is.  Sometimes it's a series of decisions or just life events that change who we are and test the character of ourselves.  For the Joker, it took a turn for the worse and because of that, he became a villain.  Some people can find rhyme and reason with doing bad things, others do not, and I think it's a test of who people are, the severity of the situations and how we react to these situations that show who we really are. I wasn't the same person I was years ago, no one is, and that's because situations and happenings change who we are as people, it's how we evolve. 

In the end, I have sympathy for both of them.  Both Batman and Joker were hit with hard times in their younger years, but the test of each of their character is what sets them apart.  Batman chose to help others while Joker's mental state vanished and he became mad.  

Question Three:   If I had to take this story into another medium, I would make it into a live action movie.  No animation, no cartoons, just purely cinematic.  

If I had to change anything about this to fit the live action movie, I would dive deeper into the psychotic of the Joker and how it came to be.  Reading the comic, I wanted to get more into the Joker's head.  I feel like if I did the movie, I would based it more around the Joker and his insanity than with Batman and his guilt of possibly killing the Joker.  Really get into the backstory of both characters to draw in the emotions from the characters to the audience to show that decisions made throughout your life shapes who we are today.

I also feel the live action movie would be the best format for this story because (although possible), it's hard to really get into emotions and a persons thoughts through animation, I feel as if using human beings to portray the level of craziness (I found that Heath Ledger played an excellent Joker), and sympathy is something that a lot more people can connect to on a personal level.   

I would also tie in the epilogue directly into the movie (the birth of a villain killing Batman), only for the sole purpose of just showing how fragile humans are.  When I think of a super hero, I think of unnatural powers, and almost a state of invincibility, and showing Batman die at the end just goes to show that at a blink of an eye, the once great legacy of Batman could all be ended with a small bullet.