What's the public have against Batman?

Oh, of course not. Have you seen the kind of criminal freaks the GCPD deals with?

Some of the comics I've read have implied that Batman really isnt the most mentally stable person around. Still he's alot more stable compared to say The Joker

Okay, I don't read Batman, but aren't you either vastly overstating the Gothan's police capacities or vastly understating Joker's? Joker is one of the most important villains in comics. I believe he would not only bomb the mayor office, but also the prison and kill each policemen who tried to capture him along the way.

Yes and no. The Joker is only as big a threat as his comfort zone. There is only so far in a serial escalation of threat that he could go before he eventually turns up dead. No city exists in a vacuum. If the Gotham PD can't handle the Joker, he becomes a state problem. If the state can't handle him, he becomes a federal problem. If the feds can't handle him, he becomes a military problem.

Could the Joker singlehandedly defeat the entire United States Armed Forces? Could he even survive escalation long enough to get to that point in the first place? Also, it doesn't matter that he would bomb the prison, because without Batman, he would probably never go to prison; he wouldn't be captured at all, he would be killed in an inevitable firefight with city, state, or federal agents.

The only reason the Joker lives long enough to see the inside of a police cell is because Batman nonlethally apprehends him by Power of Awesome every time he does anything. By being less Awesome than Batman, but more willing to use lethal force, having to deal with law enforcement agents would eventually kill the Joker. Superheroes will allow a villain to escape or lose a fight if the only alternative is to kill him; police will put a bullet in your head the moment you start shooting at them.

Of course, this wouldn't be a particularly exciting or sustainable storyline for a comic book, but that's kind of the point: if Batman never existed, and Batman comics never existed, the Joker would never have survived as long as he has. The Joker lives and thrives because of Batman.

edited 6th Dec '13 8:27:20 AM by TobiasDrake

But Joker's a character in said comicbook, so without Batman, Joker wouldn't exist as a fictional character to begin with. Are we forgetting that the Batman and Joker are fictional characters who exist only for our entertainment???

...Wouldn't the Joker just start surrendering peacefully to the authorities when they showed up? I mean, he'd do horrific things, then surrender peacefully, meaning that any cop who shoots him after that point not only proves the Joker's twisted point about humanity, but also ends up having their own life ruined (since, y'know, cops are pretty strictly governed on when and how they use lethal force).

And then Joker would just get a lethal injection anyways.

Eh, maybe. Or, alternatively, he'd get a really good lawyer. Or he'd escape.

And get shot in the head by SWAT.

edited 6th Dec '13 11:00:45 AM by kkhohoho

Or he might not. That's the problem with trying to make the real world mesh with superhero comics.

A combination of the absence of superpowers and his own impulsive nature pretty thoroughly guarantee he's screwed in a world without Batman. As it stands, he gets away with his antics because he lives in Gotham City, where even with corruption within the police department dying down because of Batman's actions, the police's incompetence never gets noticed by state or federal government due to Batman keeping crime rates down. His Joker Immunity is a byproduct of a combination of three elements:

• Batman won't kill him because he has a code against killing.
• The city won't kill him because their police are too incompetent to handle him despite a complete absence of any kind of supernatural assistance on his end, because Batman's activities have ensured that police competence is no longer required.
• The state/feds won't kill him because they don't even realize there's a problem in Gotham, as Batman's activities in Gotham have kept the city's crime rates from becoming a national problem.

Take away Batman and that whole house of cards falls apart, and then he's just another maniac with a gun that police deal with all the time. The Joker is only special because of Batman.

edited 6th Dec '13 11:18:49 AM by TobiasDrake

A question arises, though - why won't the other Arkhamites kill him? What would someone like Clayface, Grundy or Croc, not to mention Bane have to fear from him? Even if his trademark "unpredictability" wasn't only so much shilling, there are plenty of Gotham's less than scrupulous citizens who'd have no qualms whatsoever to make his grin go ear to ear.

Much like my favorite chrome-dome, the thing that makes Joker stories so underwhelming is that when blows come to blows - the bread and butter of the genre itself - he simply can't deliver. Consequently, whatever philosophical or symbolic challenge he might offer would be rendered null and void by any straight-shooting flatfoot willing to call his bluff:

"Ha ha ha, I told you Humans Are Bastards!"

"Yeah, I guess we are."

BLAM!

"One less, though."

edited 7th Dec '13 11:56:53 AM by indiana404

To the best of my knowledge, none of the Clayfaces has any reason to pay the slightest attention to the Joker; aside from the fact that both they and him come into conflict with Batman, their interests don't coincide in any meaningful way. Both Grundy and Croc could be manipulated by Mr. J relatively easily, and even if he blew it like he usually does, the clown is agile enough to evade them and escape. And for that matter, as long as he was even moderately prepared for a fight, I'd actually lay money on the Clown Prince of Crime rather than Killer Croc, since even if Why Don't You Just Shoot Him? failed to come into play, the lethal joy buzzer, acid-squirting flower, and Joker Gas are all fully capable of doing significant damage to Croc. As for Bane, I don't know why he'd go after the Joker unless someone hired him to do so. I always got the impression that he kind of held the Joker in contempt, and didn't really want to sully his hands on the clown, especially since doing so would mean that he was tacitly admitting that the Joker was a greater threat to Batman than himself. And even there, Bane is strong, not bullet-, acid-, gas- or electric-proof.

For that matter, I'd kind of take issue with your statement that trading fists is the 'bread and butter of the genre'. None of Batman's greatest villains are capable of taking him in a straight throwdown. Notice that all the ones you listed are C-listers at best? Batman stories have always worked best when they're playing the psychological angle- Batman vs. Clayface works as a story because it's a brilliant detective trying to unravel the workings of a desperately disturbed mind in a powerful body before the lunatic can fully act out his insanity, not because it's a techno-ninja beating up a goo-monster. Techno-ninja vs. goo-monster works as a climax, sure, but it can't really carry a story on its own.

Speaking of Joker Immunity, I was thinking about it the other day. Assuming one basic fact is true- that in the DC Universe, non-capes are pretty much background noise- then there seems to be a handful of reasons why the Joker is still alive.

1) For the other crooks, the Joker is amazingly useful as a Bat-distraction. No matter what crime you're committing, the Joker's will always be bigger, louder, and need dealing with more urgently, because the Joker is an attention whore. How many drug or prostitution deals went unopposed because the Joker was trying to blow up the dam so that he could make a smiley-face that could be seen from space? How many robberies went off without a hitch because the Joker decided to turn all of Gotham Heights into delayed-reaction laughter-zombies to gas out the White House? Part of me kind of suspects that the mundane criminal element in Gotham views the Joker in much the same way that they view drugged steaks for guard dogs or wire cutters for alarms- just one more measure to downgrade security.

2) For the other Arkhamites... for whatever reason, the Joker has always kind of been top dog in Arkham. There's a grudging respect for one another, in the way that predators tend to recognize other predators, or at least those that want to survive do. And frankly, unless you're the self-destructive variety of crazy, it pays to be at least modestly cautious around a guy who has been known to slash peoples' throats just because. And even if you don't buy the 'bigger predator' theory, most of Batman's rogues gallery usually doesn't have any major reason to kill the Joker. Their interests just don't coincide all that often, since the Joker is basically a nihilistic terrorist with a Batman fetish, as opposed to the Penguin's gun-running, Poison Ivy's ecoterrorism, or Two-Face's more traditional, if rather OCD, gangsterism.

3) Batman. We all know that Batman doesn't kill, ever. But even if that wasn't true, the Joker might still retain his immunity. Because if anyone other than the Joker were to kill Batman, the Joker would go on a psychotic rampage, murdering everyone in his path to try and get the one who killed his favourite playmate/plaything. It's a kind of demented deadman's switch, really.

And that right there is the reason that your average Gothamite doesn't like Batman. Alternate Character Interpretation. All they really know is that he's one of the collection of lunatics that do a mad dance over their rooftops and through their streets during the night, and he's the most dangerous one of them all, the one that all the others are afraid of. It doesn't matter if the biggest, meanest junkyard dog hasn't bitten you; if you're watching a pack of feral dogs rip someone apart, and then another dog comes in and all the other dogs back off, whining, you're not gonna be too keen to get close to this newest dog.

edited 9th Dec '13 2:33:02 PM by TeChameleon

Your point about grudging respect in Arkham reminds me of a scene from one of the cartoons, where the Joker has decided to become Batman and is running around town in a Batman cape beating up other villains, despite blatantly being the Joker. There's a bit where the Penguin goes off on him for it.

• PENGUIN: Do I mess up your "I want to gas the entire city" plans?! It is called PROFESSIONAL COURTESY!!!

wasn't that from The Batman?

I think so.

Found it!

edited 9th Dec '13 9:35:33 PM by Noaqiyeum

Fair points all around, with a kink or two. It makes sense for most of Gotham's honest crooks to treat the Joker as a lightning rod, much like how Batman considers himself to be one for the psychos. I'd say, however, that the reason the other Arkhamites leave him alone is not so much him being top dog, but actually the inverse - he's too far below their radar to warrant attention. Him being an unrepentant murderer means little to the likes of Ivy or Freeze, who've no love for human life to begin with. To them, his theatrics and shenanigans are just garnish. And while his conflict with Batman offers a lot of psychological depth, in practice, he is still a non-powered psychopath In a World… regularly thrashed by gods, with Batman being his most reliable enabler. To the general public, both of them should be headed for the loony bin, if not Old Sparky himself. And maybe... not without good reason, too.

I have never really bought the "Batman is just as crazy as the joker but in a different way" interpretation in that ultimately Batman is completely in control of himself. He seems crazy on the surface and below that he may very well be a bit broken but ultimately he is not at the mercy of anything but himself and could very well "stop" if he so chose. Its just that every time he stops... bad things happen.

"I can quit any time I want! I just don't want to!"

edited 10th Dec '13 11:16:41 AM by TobiasDrake

Except that unlike your average Alcoholic or Drug addict; when Batman says it its true.

Riiiiiiiight. Because he's Batman.

Exactly.

Yeah, I think @Tobias Drake has a point there - in terms of portrayal, The Cowl's attitude to extra-curricular justice has slowly become less a show of concern for innocent lives, and more about him getting his violent fix for the night, whether or not he saves someone in the process. All that matters is he gets beat up while nominally trying to help, and that not a hair falls off whomever he aims his batarangs at. Anyone else is collateral damage - the more people die, the more he can wallow in self pity later on. Rinse and repeat ad nauseum.

From a more Doylist perspective, this is what happens when the blokes Running the Asylum start getting high on their own prescriptions, To invoke Judas - crushed under all sorts of symbolic and psychological malarkey, what Batman is has begun to matter more than what Batman does; to the detriment of his stories and, back on the Watsonian side, his reputation with the people of Gotham.

Contrast this with the Lighter and Softer interpretations, where the character's emotional issues took a back seat to his actual superheroic duties, and where, not coincidentally, his relationship with the general public is much friendlier. Ironically, I think these versions of The Cowl are the stronger ones mentally, as they actually show him overcoming trauma, rather than continually suffering from it. The power of Camp is not to be underestimated indeed.

There is a difference between "Camp" and "Lack of Wangst" its just that the former is impossible without the latter.