Why doesn't Batman kill Joker? Because this.

edited 12th Jan '14 1:46:00 PM by Noaqiyeum

Had a grim case of Fridge Brilliance today, regarding why nobody tries to kill the Joker, at least not nearly as often as they should. Batman's personal reasoning has been well explored, flawed as I think it may be. But for the Arkhamites and the state, the motives are far more chilling - much like The Cowl styles himself a lightning rod for colorful creeps to focus on, leaving innocents at relative peace, so is the Monster Clown appreciated as a distraction, so that other criminals, particularly Gotham's high-society corrupt officials, including judges, can conduct their unseemly business at leisure. While not lethal, encounters with the Joker are physically, mentally, and emotionally taxing enough to significantly impair the Bat-family's effectiveness, making it useful to keep him around, despite the bodycount.

Thus, if the continuing success of his insanity defense pleas seems utterly unconvincing, it's because it is - bought and paid for at taxpayers' double expense.

Like I've said, it'd be nice to see Batman go after a corrupt judge or city official more often. The Owl Court arc could be considered such an effort, but further occasional displays of harassing high-profile hoodlums wouldn't hurt either.

edited 17th Mar '14 2:07:14 PM by indiana404

Killing him just risks giving him demonic powers.

Hell isn't the only place to send him. This is the DC Universe: there are ways to contain a soul.

Borrow the phantom zone projector? Though it's not as if that had a perfect track record either...

Why don't they send every DCU villain to the Phantom Zone, anyway? It certainly cure Superman of his Metallo and Parasite headaches, or Flash of the Reverse Flash, or the Green Lanterns of the Sinestroes.

Then we'd have stories of the villains escaping the phantom zone instead of prison/Arkham. And they might see it as killing them in a way. What is the phantom zone's success rate as a prison anyway?

You do realize some of the most successful legacy characters in comics had nothing to do with the guy who came before them? The Human Torch comes to mind.

Huh???

Come on, it was only the page's top post.

The Human Torch is one of those exceptions because few people remembered the first one.

A Legacy character that continues the name of a popular and extremely well-known character will have to deal with the baggage of that character.

And honestly, I think the whole "Legacy" gimmick is getting out of hand these days. Every role is a "Legacy" nowadays.

They do not remember the original now? Did they at the time of his release though? Keep in mind Hal Jordan and Barry Allen were just In Name Only continuations of older heroes too and those two have done much better than any subsequent successor that actually had a connection to their predecessor (Wally West, John Stewart, Kyle Rayner) at least in the world of comics. You can't even say no one remembered Alan Scott or Jay Garret because they still appeared in stories.

On the villains side, Priscilla Rich has been outright deleted in favor of Barbara Ann Minerva.

Though I do think killing off the Joker with purpose of replacing him with another is missing the point. More character development and or less usage him, shuffling the Bat villain spotlight a little more, would probably go along way. Spider-man benefited very much from not letting one villain get too important, even if none later than Venom have really stuck. His villains have also changed a good deal overtime, not always for the better but even then, what was bad for Venom was good for Scorpion. One one managed to kill and take over his book. But I see little reason why a legacy character would be doomed to fail in of itself. It would just be prolonging the same problem. Too much Joker, too static Joker. Compare the amount of development other "insane" characters like Deadpool have gotten, not always for the better but still a lot more noticeable.

Barry Allen and Hal Jordan were created at a time when interest in the Superhero genre had pretty much disintegrated during The Interregnum. Aside from a few characters (Superman, Batman, etc.), superheroes were practically finished. Allen and Jordan worked at the time because the original Golden Age characters hadn't really been all that popular in the first place, and the era in which they'd been at their best (The Golden Age) had long passed.

Wally, Kyle and John were all more popular then Barry and Hal for a long time it's because DC has gone back to Barry and Hal and shafted the other three that they gained popularity again. (Hell lots of people did not want Barry to come back at all viewing as a stupid and disrespectful move.) They also went out of their Way to make Alan and Jay in name only and put them in a different universe.

edited 3rd Apr '14 3:55:15 PM by Saya1

Yeah they were more popular than their successors, that's an argument for making a successor to the Joker that is related to him.

They were also buried in favor of the so called originals in spite of whatever popularity they gain, which is an argument for...you know, not bothering with making Joker a legacy character and just moving on to someone else entirely. A point I eventually got to.

You are wrong about Kyle and Hal. There's a lot of backlash against Hal nowadays, but it was nothing compared to the amount of people who disliked Kyle and/or the status quo of Hal/the corps during that time. Rebirth was highly anticipated.

That's why I said bring back Barry was the move lots of people hated.

Why not use advanced tech or magic to cure him of his insanity?

Because Joker fans will hate that? And DC won't allow it to stick.

edited 7th Apr '14 10:24:25 PM by GAP

There's no real reason to expect that advanced phlebotinum could do that, anyway.

Still, Phantom Zone. It has a better track record than Arkham, at least, and the Phantom Zoners have to do some really complicated things just to leave.

But then he'd have to get Superman involved. I guess the question is why don't they PMZ all the villains? Besides the fact you couldn't have any more stories with them. Have they ever done an elseworld where the Joker was phantom zoned?

I think that several posters hit the issue on the head when they noted that the problem is not that The Joker always comes back or that Batman won't kill him, but that the stories always draw attention to it. If Batman just arrested The Joker and he broke out a few weeks later, and they didn't talk about it I doubt anyone would care. If they stopped setting Batman up to kill him, only to back off at the last second, even fewer would care.

I also agree that it would be better if The Joker suffered more tangible losses. Lex Luthor, for instance, is another villain who can never be disposed of. But a) they don't talk about it all the time, and b) he can suffer losses of other kinds. He can lose his company, he can lose the respect of the public, etc. Superman can't kill Luthor or even imprison him, but he can sure as hell embarrass him, and when we're dealing with a character as narcissistic as Luthor, that can feel like a win. There's no such win condition with The Joker.

Indeed. Simply put, Joker Immunity is a Necessary Weasel best left unacknowledged in-story. When Alan Moore did it, it was meant as a very grim deconstruction, much like Watchmen was for superheroes in general. That it was taken at face value, canonized, let alone made the Joker's main theme from then on, was about as misaimed as it could get.

I think a character it's worth comparing The Joker to is Bullseye. Both are totally unrepentant psychopaths with massive bodycounts who go out of their way to ruin the lives of their particular hero. The difference, however, is that Bullseye can still lose. When Matt saved Milla and then beat the tar out of him in Brian Michael Bendis' run, Bullseye was left humiliated, angry, and most importantly, defeated. Even when Bullseye manages to hurt Matt—usually by killing one of his girlfriends—Matt comes back from it and the story points this out, leaving Bullseye's main goal of "psychologically ruin Matt" unachieved.

I don't know how things went in the actual "No Man's Land" comic, but in the novelization of it that I have, after Batman defeats The Joker and stops him from blowing up a few hundred people, the latter has a hissyfit about Batman "ruining all the fun". That needs to be Joker's reaction to defeat, not just another speech about "you can't kill me."