As one of the most enduringly popular characters in any medium, Batman is inevitably one of the most heavily adapted, and the Caped Crusader finds himself comfortably ranking alongside Dracula and Sherlock Holmes as an almost ubiquitous presence on our screens.
When The Batman debuts in March 2022, Robert Pattinson will be the seventh actor to play a live-action Bruce Wayne in the space of a decade following Christian Bale and Ben Affleck in the movies, along with Kevin Conroy, Iain Glen, David Mazouz and Warren Christie in the various TV shows.
Outside of live-action, though, Batman has also been a regular fixture of DC’s animated output, starring in dozens upon dozens of movie and TV projects. One of the most underrated ones has recently landed on Netflix, too, and Batman: The Killing Joke managed to crack the streaming service’s Top 10 most-watched list just a few days ago, coming in at number 8. It’s fallen off the chart as of yesterday, but clearly, a lot of users have been flocking to it since its arrival.
One of the most iconic comic book stories ever told, The Killing Joke follows Batman as he once again tries to thwart his archenemy the Joker as he attempts to drive Commissioner Gordon insane. The 2016 effort was always destined to be a worthy adaptation given that The Animated Series veterans Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill returned to voice the two legendary adversaries, while creator Bruce Timm was also on board as one of the producers, and on the whole, it turned out pretty well.
Of course, the adaptation came in for some criticism after making several major changes to the source material, and even the writer of The Killing Joke thinks that the story is far too violent, but Netflix subscribers clearly don’t seem to mind based on such a strong early showing and despite its flaws, it still offers up an enjoyable tale for Dark Knight fans to sink their teeth into.
