Batman: The Killing Joke
Written By Alan Moore, Art by Brian Bolland
DC Comics

I've never really been a fan of DC Comics outside of the Vertigo line, but Batman has always had an edge to it. Even still, I haven't read much Batman. But I have read a lot of Alan Moore. The man's a genius. So, it was my duty as a fan of the writer to read this classic story.

It was pretty good.

I think that it feels similar to The Watchmen in tone, in that he's exploring the origins and the psyche of the superhero and supervillain. It's good in that respect, but I felt it fell a bit short. Like it needed just a little bit more to flesh it out. It concluded too fast, and didn't go deep enough. I thought the violence was much higher than I expected, and that the ending was a little too pat. But I guess there's only so much one can do with a mainstream comic.

I can see why it's a classic though. The artwork on that comic is impeccable. The premise is great. I think it could have just gone a bit further.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen:
Black Dossier
By Alan Moore & Kevin O'Neill

I think calling it a Graphic Novel is the first place to start. Unlike the other League books which are trade paperback collections of individual comic book issues Black Dossier is something entirely other. It is a combination of comic book exposition interspersed with "replica documents" that mimic the ones the characters are reading in the eponymous black dossier. It's the reproduction documents that give the book its flavor, but it's also where I got the most frustrated with the story. Just as the action is getting somewhere the reader is confronted with a wall of text. The first few times this happened I got through it just fine, but by the third section of this I just skipped it entirely.

I probably shouldn't have because by the time I got to the end I was hopelessly confused. Let me explain...

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