“Do You Think I’m Crazy?!” is one of the oldest jokes out there, regarding the two inmates escaping an asylum. I won’t spoil the rest for you, it’s coming up. In the bigger scheme of things, it appears in the end of what is, in my opinion, the best Comic Book ever, Alan Moore’s one-shot grahpic novel Batman: The Killing Joke.
The violent act of shooting Barbara Gordon, making her the Oracle. DC changed thins this summer back to where it all started, but TKJ changed the Batman Universe for a while. The insane atmosphere set in the abandoned carnival, Jim Gordon being abducted and more importantly, the re-telling, or re-imagining, of the Joker background, giving him a much more three-dimensional feel, something every good villain needs.
Heath Ledger based his performance in The Dark Knight on this one, as he talked about a few times during interviews before his death, saying Christopher Nolan handed him the comic to do research for the role.
The Joke scene with Batman actually laughing from the joke, before grabbing the joker, The whole origins of insanity theme and also the suggestion that Batman is just as insane as his foes, manifesting it in a different way, with both of them eventually shaped through one tragic bad day and the Joker’s own unreliable narration make this one a classic, the best one ever.
