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As Indiana noted in a previous post, though, the problem with The Joker not having a "win" condition is fairly recent. He specifically noted that "The Killing Joke" ends with The Joker not only physically, but philosophically defeated. It's only in the last few years or so that he's been derailed into a slasher villain who "wins" through Batman's refusal to kill him. And it's that characterization and portrayal that just needs to go away. If they stopped talking, all the goddamn time, about how they're going to do this forever and Batman won't kill him, people would probably stop complaining about it.
And no, when Luthor wins he tends to win big. Witness "New Krypton" where he commits genocide against the Kryptonian race and is rewarded for it.
On the first point: the entire reason that people remember The Killing Joke is because the "big loss" the Joker suffered doesn't even feel like one. At the time, most people reading the story thought the Joker was exactly right—that the right Despair Event Horizon, at the right time, can make anyone completely lose it. Further, the fact that he shot (and G-rated raped) Barbara Gordon and "permanently" (lol, New 52) ended her career as Batgirl pretty much tipped the "win" column in his favor—again, as far as the readership was concerned. From that point on, they used this exact same formula for nearly every horrible thing The Joker has done. It's almost never his actual plan to get the victories he does—they're just collateral damage.
As for New Krypton . . . so? If we're talking about sheer notoriety and infamy, Kryptonian genocide is lamesauce. The Joker's "victories" change status quos. That one just reinforces one. Show me a single comic reader that felt for those Kryptonians the same way they did for Barbara or Jason.
When he wins maybe, but is he so protected from his loses? (Superman finally got me, but wait, I killed your species in the process and I don't care that you caught me because I'm having so much fun?)
I may be reading like a broken record now, seeing how I've suggested it for Doom and Luthor but seriously, just letting Joker pass on and someone else harassing Batman for awhile might be the thing to do. Maybe let him stay in Arkam or otherwise out of the picture for a year. I mean, if Poison Ivy, Clayface, Mr. Freeze ect cannot kill him they can still take over for awhile.
Take Mephisto to Ghost Rider. Other guys such as Blackheart, Deathwatch, Lilith, Lucifer and Zadkiel make their mark through drawn out story lines that altered Ghost Rider in some way. (Deathwatch made Dan/Kale break Thou Shalt Not Kill with little remorse, Blackheart brought out demons from the past and successfully played them for fools along with the Rider, Lilith forced over a half dozen people tied with the occult together for the better part of a decade before finally losing, Lucifer had John Blaze/Zarathos torn apart multiple times and then had them desperately hunting him to the ends of the Earth, Zadkiel has put Nobel Kale on a bus which lead to deaths of all but two spirits of vengeance and the(temporary) fall of heaven which was felt everywhere from the splinter realms, to New York to Asgard.
It all becomes about Mephisto again, sooner or later, but even Deathwatch took a more important roll in the "fear itself" crossover event than Mephisto, even if he did end under Alejandra's scythe. Lilith got to turn the moon into a haven for vampires and isolated the UK from the rest of the world, just after Blackheart turned LA into hell and began expanding further. Then Mephisto took a central role again though the story was still more about stopping Adam, killing Mephisto was secondary. He survived just barely. Then we went onto something new.
You completely missed my point about Luthor. I was agreeing with you that I can't think of an instance where Lex lost the battle but claimed a victory of sorts. He either wins (blowing up New Krypton and getting away with it) or loses (driven from the presidency and publicly humiliated, to give an example). He doesn't go in for these "I lost but really I won" situations that The Joker is being constantly given. In fact I can't think of another archnemesis who does.
And that's the problem. Every writer has gotten so hung up on doing the next Killing Joke (you've pinpointed the issue as starting there, and I don't think you're wrong), that we've gotten Joker story after Joker story that tries to give him the same kind if "win" over Batman. Including, most recently, a chain of them wherein he points out, in-universe, that he's going back to prison but that's still a win because Batman won't kill him.
Again, you, like King Zeal, have missed my point about Luthor. Was simply noting that when he wins, he wins. When he loses, he loses. None of this "You win but not really" crock that The Joker keeps bringing to the table.
And I'd say The Joker is worse than Luthor, or Doom, or perhaps any other archenemy in this regard, because of that "you win but not really" thing. As long as writers keep fixating on the notion that Batman's refusal to kill The Joker is a moral victory for The Joker, and keep driving it home in comic after comic, with Joker, Batman, and everybody else commenting on it, it's going to continue to undermine the entire concept of Batman.
edited 24th Apr '14 9:52:19 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
If you agreed with me, why did you start that part of your response with "And no?"
Anyway, the whole "Luthor wins big or loses big" thing isn't what I was driving at. Rarely does Luthor "win" in any way that changes Superman or his universe to a permanent extent. When I first started collecting Superman stories, it was during this event called "The Fall of Metropolis" where Luthor went total "If I Can't Have You…" on the entire city of Metropolis and a series of bombs blew up the whole city while Superman tried and failed to minimize damage. At the time it was hyped as a huge major status quo change for Superman... but nope, it barely affected a thing. No major characters killed, no darkening of the tone of the story, and Metropolis was back to normal I think before even the next year.
The thing is that Superman is supposed to be a "winning" hero. Batman isn't. Batman, as a concept, isn't designed around him winning or saving the day. Remember, this is a guy who spends a fortune to fight crime by punching one criminal at a time when he could do any number of things to fix crime on a broad scale. By design, Batman is a character that is about the act of fighting crime and not actually making a difference. As such, you have a constant zig-zagging of whether or not Batman is making things worse.
You can't do that with Superman. They've tried, multiple times, but it can't and won't ever stick, because Superman is unambiguously about making the world a better place. That's the entire point to his character. Writers have tried all the time to introduce that ambiguity to Superman's actions, but they fail far more often than succeed because the concept of his character is about the world being an ultimately bright place. Even stories like "Grounded", where Superman gets all mopey because he wonders if he's really helping anyone, tend to get really stupid, really fast.
TL;DR: Luthor hasn't (and probably won't ever) have a big "win" against Superman that sticks like Jason Todd or Barbara because unlike Batman, the benevolence of his actions and motives can't be questioned. Even if, say, Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen get brutally murdered at some point through some fault of Luthor's, I can't see it having the same impact on Supe's world that Joker has on Batman's.
The Joker can't lose in the same way other villains can, because he's not really playing to win. Oh, he'll definitely try his darndest to pull off his latest scheme, but for him committing crimes, causing havoc, and fighting Batman are their own rewards. It's like if a friend of yours keeps challenging you to games of Monopoly: even if you beat them every time, so long as they enjoyed the game, they haven't really lost.
Because you had said that Luthor's win/loss record was not much like the Joker's and I was saying that "no it was not"? I write the way I talk. Sue me.
The problem with everything you've just said is that if you spin Batman that way, you undermine the point of having the character. If Batman is not making the world a better place, if his crusade is inevitably going to end in failure, then what in the Hell is the point of my reading his comic? Writers like to hype Batman as "the greatest crime fighter ever" only to then have their Joker stories sabotage the message. They need to pick a message. Either Batman is a very effective crime fighter, or he is a walking gesture of futility who can't stand up to a clown. He can't be both at once.
Moreover, it's only with the Joker that we tend to get this problem. When Batman takes down Freeze, Ivy, even R'as al-Ghul or Two-Face, he tends to do so without suffering major losses. Worse yet, his defeats of them are treated as being meaningful. Each time that "Two-Face goes back to Arkham" we in the audience know that he won't be cured, but Batman hopes that he will be. When he defeats The Joker, it's different. The story itself makes a point of noting that it won't stick, and The Joker will break out.
In short, the apparent need that writers have to remind us, in-story that The Joker will break out again, undermines both the concept of Batman and the victories they do give him over other criminals. Villains breaking out of prison is a part of the genre. We can accept it. But by having the trope discussed in-universe in The Joker stories, the writers end up causing fans to wonder why Batman doesn't just kill him. Then they compound the problem by making it seem as though "Batman won't kill me" is The Joker's superpower. If they want fans to stop demanding that somebody off the clown, they need to stop talking about the fact that somebody should.
That for me is the core problem of the character. There's no sense of catharsis, no sense of Batman having defeated any enemy, and therefore no reason for me to bother reading the story. It's all pointless and futile.
edited 25th Apr '14 5:29:06 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar
The point to reading Batman depends. Unlike Superman, Batman is a very, very flexible character—which is why he has become far more popular. Unlike Superman, Batman's fundamental themes can be conveniently altered to fit whatever the era, writers, directors, marketers, and editors want. Whether his crusade against crime is "winnable" or not depends entirely on the story they want to tell. That isn't the case for Superman; the unchangeable core to his character is "superior alien that makes the world a better place", and that won't change. Even Man of Steel, which is the most cynical take on the character in the modern era, still kept that basic premise.
Reading Batman isn't about seeing whether or not he makes the world better. It's about seeing just how much one man, with enough guts and resources, can do...win or lose. His stories can also have a very Just Before the End bent to them, as a lone man fighting to win small, but meaningful, battles in a world that's pretty much doomed. He can still find "victory" in that, because the reader can experience the catharsis of punching out the criminal cancer that's slowly killing that world. At the very least, you have that. But, again, you can try that with Superman, but it really won't work. Some writers (for example, Frank Miller) have tried to write Superman in the same context, as a big showy hero that does big heroic stuff like stop a train from crashing, but it is absolutely useless to stop Lex Corp from slaughtering everyone in a Native Reservation, or who fails to stop a corrupt government from committing ethnic genocide. This almost never works out, because an impotent Superman (however amusing to some) isn't fun to read. A frustrated and pissed-off Batman is fun to read.
I would also like to note that lampshading Batman's refusal to kill the Joker in-universe isn't the problem. Audiences had already been figuring out that problem waaaaaay before authors did, to the point that ignoring the elephant in the room was more disturbing than just lampshading it and movingon. That premise has been past its expiration date for a while.
No, you know what? On second thought, the gimmick was dead from the very first appearance. To quote Wikipedia:
After a half-century of this, and the Joker going from buffoonish prankster back to homicidal maniac, there was no way audiences weren't going to call bullshit. Not talking about it isn't going to make Batman seem less inept. But talking about gives you a whole bunch of stories to play with to argue "why" or "why not".
Not saying their logic is correct. Just that it's not as simple as you've made it out to be.
edited 25th Apr '14 8:37:35 PM by KingZeal
Batman does have a basic theme. He goes after criminals the law cannot or will not. That's the entire point of the Bat signal.
Of course, he was first read by a generation who remembered when the criminal syndicate was something no one seemed to even try to do anything about and was free to racketeer in the open without police response. Whole the stealth, intimidation, wealthy business, being a detective, these are not given to Batman for the purpose of fighting lone men.
It was basically a more modern take on Zoro and the would be royals of California who thought they could treat the general public like trash because the law would not come down on them. So Batman got away from this for a stretch, became a self parody. Maybe that's when the quirky super villains really became his thing? But even then. Mr. Freeze and Scarecrow have technology hardly anyone else does, Clayface and Poison Ivy have super powers, Catwoman and Two Face are kind of his friends. If Joker's going to be treated seriously by the work, maybe emphasis should be put on Joker's criminal empire rather than Joker's personal crimes or obsessions?
Maybe a criminal empire so extensive it takes all of Batman's available resources to combat and that even a personal victory against it may not always result in direct confrontation with the Joker? Thus when the whole thing is weakened enough to catch Joker and put him in prison, his breakouts can be justified by still having connections but by then he can be a more minor nuisance. A speed bump on Batman's way to a bigger problem or a side story distraction when the current arc needs a little more variety.
To contrast, the Owl Court arc was exactly what is talking about, maybe sans the whole long-lost-brother deal. Having the Joker readopt the quirky mob boss image, with goals targeting Gotham itself, rather than its Dark Knight, would go a long way toward clearing up his borderline X-Pac Heat nowadays.
The whole "let's talkabout it" thing, though, is disproportionate to Batman. This doesn't get discussed as much with other heroes and some of their villains, even if said villains are more dangerous than the Joker.
Frankly, it's always annoyed me how the Joker is some heavy hitter in the super villain community when 80 percent of any with super powers, at least, should be able to kill him in a heartbeat Being 'unpredictable' won't stop Heat Wave from barbequing him from a safe distance.
One thing I do wish Batman writers would do...Batman does have an air of futility to him. Batman, ultimately, cannot stop crime and Scott Snyder has Bruce wonder that if the Joker died, Gotham just won't 'send someone worse.' It makes Bruce Wayne himself so much more important in the fight against crime because he can address the root causes: poverty, education, corruption, etc, far more than Batman can.
If I blame anyone for the Joker, though, it's Gotham's idiot judges. And Jim Gordon who has gradually slipped into a Lawful Stupid incompetent
I wouldn't call that Batman's theme. It a Superhero theme, universal to the whole genre. Regardless of who the superhero is, what their motivations are, whether or not they work with the law or against it, and what methods they employ, the one thing that 99% of them have in common is that they deal with threats ordinary humans cannot, for any number of reasons. It's certainly not unique to Batman and can't really be called his "theme" any more than The Punisher or Iron Man.
Batman's overall theme (in my opinion) is a cathartic desire to terrorize criminals, focused at the street level. While Batman often does deal with white collar and political crime, the act of doing so almost always results indirectly from Batman's actions at the street (or individual) level. Batman's focus is to beat up the drug dealers and hoodlums that pose a direct threat to the public or find evidence of corruption; Batman doesn't appear at a congressional hearing to discuss laws that affect these issues. Bruce Wayne might do so, but the book isn't called "Bruce Wayne" for a reason.
Not quite. All superheroes do something Joe, Jane and their establishment can't (or won't) do but not all of them are focused on crime necessarily. Though they served the same narrative purpose, Zoro did not so much fight criminals as a corrupt law itself, Joe Chill could have been convicted on theory. Capitán Enrique Sanchez Monastario would not until their was a popular uprising that changed the law so he could be.
Overthrowing the government so the law could be changed to convict people did happen in The Scarlet Pimpernel. The problem there was the new law being worse than the old one. The general populace was scapegoating a convenient minority.
That's not even getting into things like Card Captor Sakura, who essentially is trying to contain an automated weapon system only she and a few select others have the tools to shut off. Stuff like Dr. Strange, who deals with herds of mindless creatures that kill everything on sight, dream monsters and swarms of giant carnivorous bugs from the astral plane. The basic theme I suggested for Batman is not one everyone has.
I admitted, Batman's focus may have shifted a little during his comical eras but a return to form might do some good regarding his associating with The Joker if they are intent to stick with the gritty Gothic Batman.
Keep in mind that even with the listed counter examples, there are significant differences. Tony Stark is in the arms manufacturing business. He's building weapons because his country is at war. Ironman is a means to fight USA's enemies more directly (Titanium man, Crimson Dynamo, Mandarin) as well as saboteurs who come from rival companies (Ironmonger) have a personal vendetta against him (Backlash, Living Laser, Blizzard) or just hate corporations in general (Spymaster, The Ghost).
Tony's rogues may suffer some of the same problems as Batman's (some are treated like jokes, none benefit from the Power Creep, Power Seep the from crossovers that give Tony Extremis Bleeding Edge Hulk Buster Uru armor) but as a counterpoint, none of them have the same problem as the Joker. Titanium man's inferiority lead to his death and it stuck. Spymaster died too, luckily he and Crimson Dynamo are legacy characters. Ironmonger got finished off too, Blizzard as acknowledged he's out of his league and thus looked for easier targets, leaving Backlash as the only one whose continued existence is really questionable but he's still not treated as seriously as the Joker.
Punisher might be a better comparison at first glance but he kills people. Even his recurring rogues Baracuda and Jigsaw eventually died. The latter died twice. Remember this thread's title, why we are having this conversation? The criminal enterprise suggestion was made to both make Joker a harder target to get to (making him less likely to off Joker on a whim) and allows Batman to have personal victories over the Joker without directly confronting him (thus allowing Batman to get unambiguous wins over the Joker without removing his active role in the story).
So, the first six paragraphs there . . . we really aren't disagreeing anything, so I don't see what you're trying to argue against, nor any reason to reply to them directly.
However, what I will say is that I didn't specifically mean "fight criminals" when I said that superheroes do things ordinary people cannot. As I said a while back in this thread, superheroes fight for a specific virtue (or multiple virtues) that they represent. They fight battles (or take other action) to defend or implement these virtues in situations where ordinary people cannot. Iron Man fights for the use of technology to improve everyday life. The Punisher fights to redirect murder and maiming back onto the people who "deserve" it. Superman fights for truth, justice and blah blah. In most cases, they will fight for these virtues even if it means going against the law.
Speaking of Watchmen, I wonder if the Joker's continued survival would be less contentious if he were more often given qualities that made him seem worth sparing. Edward Blake, for example, is a slightly more nuanced take on the idea of a Straw Nihilist who's The Sociopath.
Can't say much about redeeming traits per se, but yeah - his current slasher-wannabe characterization simply doesn't mesh well with a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel. When he was a quirky mob-boss with larger-than-life goals, he could and did suffer losses whenever Batman foiled him, even if he survived the ordeal. Now, however, his entire purpose, both in and out of universe, seems to be killing people for killing people's sake, and making Batman brood in self-pity - which is pure barrel-fishing in its own right.
I was considering a different angle on Batman's code, one plainly visible in-universe. I once mentioned how the Bat-signal demonstrates that Batman still considers himself subjected to legal authority, as represented by the few honest cops in the GCPD. But there's another, more troubling detail. Ever notice the giant penny leaning on the wall in the Bat-cave; or the animatronic T-Rex towering smack down the middle? Now, these aren't crime fighting tools; nor posess any function beyond decoration. No - put simply, they are trophies - a testament that Batman fights not so much for justice, or the well-being of Gotham's people, but for his own masochistic enjoyment of the hunt.
The third such trophy - a Joker card, of course. The case can be made that Batman won't kill the clown not because he could never go back, but because he could never move on. He doesn't want to win, but for the game to go on forever, regardless of whether his effort are fruitful at all, or how many bystanders get hurt, even among his own family.
To be fair, a simpler explanation would be that the Bat-cave trophies are just Silver Age leftovers that nobody thought to clear out, but that drives the same point - you can't put heroes still bearing the trappings of the Silver Age, against villains that make the Dark Age look soft, without some very grim realizations cropping up.
edited 8th May '14 4:33:45 AM by indiana404
Speaking of his current incarnation not meshing well with the 'verse as a whole, one thing I really wish they'd figure out? Can Joker fight? Because at times I've seen portrayed as being a near physical match for Batman. And at other times he's a pushover who goes down in one punch. And I've got to say that I think that last characterization ends up contributing to some of the problems we've discussed here, namely that writers decide "the fight is over when Batman arrives, therefore Joker has to have already murdered all the victims he can before Batman arrives". Conversely under those writers where The Joker can actually put up a fight, there's less "need" to do that in order to make him seem threatening.
Will kill you
Joker ever did go to prison or death penalty it should go down like this:
edited 23rd May '14 5:32:26 PM by Couchpotato20
"I don't give a rat's ass about going to hell. I guess it's because I feel like I'm already there." -Mugen
By that logic, though, the Joker can also suffer a defeat. In The Killing Joke, his goal was to break Jim Gordon. He failed, but no one talks about that, because Barbara was paralyzed. In A Death in the Family, his goal was to nuke the United Nations building in New York. He failed, but no one talks about that, because Jason was killed.
And so on, and so forth. The problem isn't necessarily that Joker doesn't have a win condition, but that he's allowed "victories" that other villains aren't. As I've mentioned before, most of the Joker's most heinous offenses weren't his actual "end goal"; they were just sideshows to the actual threat the story was covering. To my knowledge, Lex has never, say, been publicly humiliated, but at the same time made Jimmy Olsen's plane crash.
edited 24th Apr '14 12:52:03 PM by KingZeal