This one wasn't, though. Even if I didn't get the end.
The overall idea is an interesting one: how close are we each from giving up on our moral compass and devotion to the social ethic? If we undergo an experience traumatic enough (caveat: it's more interesting when the Joker doesn't have a backstory. But within this book, it's not clear if the backstory is true, anyway) how will we react in an attempt to process what has happened?
Batman himself is right on that knife's edge. His traumatic loss of his parents has driven him to near lunacy. The only difference is he holds himself to a self-imposed moral code, but it's not at all clear that he does this out of any kind of rationality, or if his own irrational response just happened to take the form that it did. The Joker fell on one side of the line, Batman fell on the other, but the Joker is essentially right about the irrationality and amorality of the universe.
Commissioner Gordon, though, emerges as the moral rock at the center of Batman's world. Exposed to the same kind of trauma (worse, probably), he holds to the same moral principles he has always held-- and is not being irrational when he does so. He has always understood why Batman does what he does; he will not allow himself to fall into a similar gray zone of justice.
The Joker's adoption of the carnival freaks as his minions make an interesting symbolic point. There really is an unexplainable unfairness in the universe, that allows innocent individuals to be born into such handicaps. It is a condition that cries out for a justification. And, if none is forthcoming, it is easy to conclude that there is no justice to be bound to in the first place.
The Dark Knight did a good job of exploring these influences on and implications of the Joker's actions, but this story nails down the themes in a very succinct and concrete way.
But the end of the book was lousy.
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