I find that a villain who visibly is shaken when they experience setbacks, can be surprised by people acting unpredictably, and truly finds joy in facets of life unrelated to evildoing, is my favorite kind of villain, and the kind I find most effective in a narrative sense and which scares me the most when they do do evil shit.
While those are great, you also can't deny to effectiveness of villains like The Joker who are simply pure, insane evil and want to watch the world burn for no reason simply than because they can.
Let the joy of love give you an answer! Check out my book!He's back, bitches! With all the references this time!
Far as I'm aware, the current story is that there's actually three Jokers: the anarchy and chaos Joker who was just described, who's obsessed with corrupting Batman and convincing him that they're Not So Different, a gangster Joker who just wants to kill and make money with a smile, who only cares about Batman when he gets in his way, and the relatively harmless prankster Joker, who robs banks and fights Batman with wacky gadgets.
edited 3rd Oct '16 4:44:20 PM by PushoverMediaCritic
No, that's not even remotely close to the dumbest thing comics have done.
Let the joy of love give you an answer! Check out my book!I mean, I could tell you ten even dumber things, and number one would be Spider-Man making a deal with Mephisto (aka the stand-in for Satan himself) to make it where he never married Mary Jane so that Aunt May wouldn't die from a bullet wound, because literally nobody could solve a damn bullet wound in the Marvel universe (and just for added stupidity, Doctor Strange even made it where he split into different bodies in order to literally go to everyone in the Marvel universe to see if they could save Aunt May, including the X-Men, who had a member that could regenerate an entire damn heart).
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edited 3rd Oct '16 6:22:08 PM by AdricDePsycho
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?That's...not really the full story.
Batman learned Joker's true identity back in Darkseid Wars when he gained access to Metron's Mobius Chair, and it's not until Rebirth that we find out what it is; simply put, there's been multiple Jokers in existence, with the Killing Joke Joker and the Joker from both Death of the Family and Batman: Endgame being two separate people entirely, and neither one is actually the original Joker, who was actually the Golden Age Joker. The Joker is ultimately a sort of legacy character just like Robin has been ironically enough, and this is why Joker never knew his own backstory, because there's been multiple Jokers, so they're possibly all true.
Let's see if you can get past my Beelzemon. Mephiles, WARP SHINKA!It does mean that if Joker ever does die, it just mean another one will take his place. At the end of the day, Joker has managed to achieve a sort of immortality because he's become a concept now, that some other insane lunatic can just fill in. The problem really comes in in how all of this is actually happening, who is organizing this, and who is making it so that there can be multiple Jokers in the first place.
Let's see if you can get past my Beelzemon. Mephiles, WARP SHINKA!Avengers #200 would like a word with you.
This song needs more love.

Villains can enjoy things too, like recreational hobbies or other people.