Getting the Punchline

I'm sorry.

I just realized that the title to yesterday's post was a little unfair to the uninitiated. My titles (besides the obvious movie titles) always have a meaning - sometimes double - referencing some aspect of what I'm writing about and are, for the most part, relatively easy to spot if you're familiar with the material.

Yesterday's title should have been more general concerning Alan Moore but, instead, I was referencing an event from The Killing Joke. So, a quick and simple explanation is in order.

At the very beginning, The Joker says the first line of a joke which is easily forgotten about by the time the story gets rolling along. At the end, after a number of significant events have occurred, it's just The Joker and Batman and the finale is still kind of up in the air. That's when The Joker tells Batman the joke. Here it is in it's entirety:

"See, there were these two guys in a lunatic asylum…and one night…one night they decide they don’t like living in an asylum any more. They decide they’re going to escape! So like they get up on to the roof, and there, just across the narrow gap, they see the rooftops of the town, stretching away in moon light…stretching away to freedom.

Now the first guy he jumps right across with no problem. But his friend, his friend daren’t make the leap. Y’see he’s afraid of falling… So then the first guy has an idea. He says “Hey! I have my flash light with me. I will shine it across the gap between the buildings. You can walk across the beam and join me.” B-But the second guy just shakes his head. He suh-says …he says “What you think I am crazy? You would turn it off when I was half way across”.

Now it makes sense.