Joker's Alignment

[Baalzebub]

Ok, many of us know the Joker from the Batman storyline. Yeah, that demented clown Psychopath. Also, many of you know the standard alignments within the D&D game. While chatting with some friends, we were discussing the alignment of the Joker. This were our options:

Chaotic Evil: Joker is CE because he only wants to kill, destroy and kill again. He forces all his subbordinates to do as he wants under pain of death. He is completely amoral and sometimes wildly unpredictable.

Neutral Evil: Joker can be NE because he kills mainly for the pleasure of killing. He cheats at you, lie to you, just because he likes to do that. He knows he is doing evil and he enjoy it. And he does not care what method he uses.

Chaotic Neutral: Joker is CN simply because he is mad. His soul knows the evil of his act, but his mind simply does not understand that motion because of the high grade of insanity the Joker has. To him it's just a funny thing to do.

I voted for NE. What do you think?

[Larrin]

honestly, to me it sounds like you're description of why joker might be NE is just another description of CE. NE is "i'm evil if its advantageous, but if it doesn't come to it, i see no reason to be evil" OR "I've no problem killing people, but it needs to be advantageous for me to do so". Not really describing the mad clown to me. Joker is "I kill people for fun" which is still very much in the CE camp. CN is also out because his goal is HARM, CN would imply no goal, or a goal that changed from day to day.

[SteveMB]

honestly, to me it sounds like you're description of why joker might be NE is just another description of CE.
Agreed so far....

NE is "i'm evil if its advantageous, but if it doesn't come to it, i see no reason to be evil" OR "I've no problem killing people, but it needs to be advantageous for me to do so".
Actually, that sounds more like a description of CN (i.e. following your own preferences with little regard to external rules, and indifferent between good and evil).

[Telonius]

I'd say Chaotic Evil. He has no regard for life (making him Evil), and an active disregard for both law and custom (making him Chaotic).

[pestilenceawaits]

I voted Chaotic evil also I think he is the poster boy for CE kills without remorse breaks laws just to break them insanity may have lead him there but he decided to stay.

[Baalzebub]

honestly, to me it sounds like you're description of why joker might be NE is just another description of CE. NE is "i'm evil if its advantageous, but if it doesn't come to it, i see no reason to be evil" OR "I've no problem killing people, but it needs to be advantageous for me to do so". Not really describing the mad clown to me. Joker is "I kill people for fun" which is still very much in the CE camp. CN is also out because his goal is HARM, CN would imply no goal, or a goal that changed from day to day.

maybe I didn't detail the description...

NE: Joker, beyond law or chaos, kills, tortures and commits evil acts just for the sake of the inherent evil inside of him.

[Porthos]

If there's a more iconic Chaotic character in the Batman mythos, I'm not sure who it is. I mean, his rapid mood swings from moment to moment combined with his willingness to completely disregard his own "plans" at a whim make him a textbook CE character. He is ruled by his passions, and whatever his passions tell him to do right now, he does.

Now that's not saying that he can't stay focused on a "plan" for a (realtively) long time. If he's getting happy and satisfied from the outcome of his plan, he'll stick to it (it's making him happy, after all, so why change). But if the slightest thing upsets his balance, he is much more likely to veer off on some sort of tangent (*oohhh butterflies spreading Joker Acid! That'll solve all of my problems!*) than stick with whatever he was currently doing.

He's Chaotic. He's Evil. Do the math. :p

[Viscount Einstrauss]

Certainly. Where's the question? He's a high-stakes criminal (chaotic by definition) that enjoys wanton slaughter (evil by definition). He's broken nearly every law there is, committed nearly every sin there is, and finds it all highly amusing. The Joker is liquid CE.

[Beleriphon]

Certainly. Where's the question? He's a high-stakes criminal (chaotic by definition) that enjoys wanton slaughter (evil by definition). He's broken nearly every law there is, committed nearly every sin there is, and finds it all highly amusing. The Joker is liquid CE.

More then liquid, he's distilled CE.

[Emperor Demonking]

Definately distilled.

[UglyPanda]

He is adamantly against any sort of law and/or order and enjoys killing people randomly. C+E=CE. Anyway, his alignment is the whole reason he is Batman's worst villain. He has no remorse, no good motives other than his own entertainment, and never stays in jail long enough to be punished.

[PsyBlade]

For the brief time he believed Batman was dead, he was a decent and normal human being. Batman returns, and Joker returns to being insane. I'd say he's CN. Without Batman, he'd be a good guy. Though not a Good Guy.

[Zeta Kai]

I was forced to vote NE, & I'll tell you why. Think of it was a logic problem:

Assumption #1: Batman is NG. The man that wears the mask of Bruce Wayne may be a stalwart defender of all that is decent, upholding order & making Gotham a safe place for a few minutes in between crises, but Lawful he ain't. He's a leg-breaking vigilante that violates the letter of the law everytime he steps outside in a bat-suit & scares hobos for information. He has no regard for the law as it applies to him, & only respects the entity of Law inasmuch as it serves the Greater Good.

Assumption #2: Batman's complete opposite is the Joker. The Joker & Batman are two sides of the same coin. One side is a grim protector of the innocent, the other is a cackling predator of the helpless. One is a logical deliberate investigator, the other a trans-sane whimsical demon with no overarching plan. They are complete opposites in nearly every way, & yet they have striking similarities.

Assumption #3: NE is the exact opposite of NG. The Alignment Grid bears this out quite simply. If alignments can be said to have diametric opposites in any form, then Good opposes Evil. Also neutrality along an axis has no "opposite," so any alignment that contains neutrality must have an opposite along that same axis. Therefore, on the opposite side of the grid from NG is NE. QED.

Conclusion: The Joker is NE.
Batman = NG.
Batman is opposite of Joker.
NG is opposite of NE.
Joker = NE.

He will act lawfully, use regulation to hamper his foes, & constrict himself to specific codes of conduct if they serve his twisted "plans." He is beyond the mere boundaries of Law & Chaos. He is far too dedicated to his semi-random evils to be anything other than Neutral Evil.

[Drider]

I was forced to vote NE, & I'll tell you why. Think of it was a logic problem:

Assumption #1: Batman is NG. The man that wears te mask of Bruce Wayne may be a stalwart defender of all that is decent, upholding order & making Gotham a safe place for a few minutes in between crises, but Lawful he ain't. He's a leg-breaking vigilante that violates the letter of the law everytime he steps outside in a bat-suit & scares hobos for information. He has no regard for the law as it applies to him, & only respects the entity of Law inasmuch as it serves the Greater Good.

Batman always kinda reminded me of a CG, a vigilante who breaks all the rules he needs to in order to catch the bad guy. The original batman that would kill muggers and other inconsequential crime doers would've probably just been CN, but that brings up the question of which generation joker we're talking about

[TheEmerged]

RE: Joker's Alignment: Chaotic Evil, to the third power. Practically the definition of the term, I think.

Batman's Alignment. One of the most... animated and volume-instensive board discussions I've ever seen was on this topic. Ranks up there with Batman vs Captain America on the HERO System boards and the local reperations argument that flares up at my place of employment...

I actually favor a choice that might surprise people: Lawful Neutral.

Stop laughing.

No really, take a moment to your breathe & composure back, I can wait.

Batman, as Metamorpho once put it, "is all about Order, all about Control." I won't repeat the whole argument because a> my memory sucks and b> most of you wouldn't buy it anyway.

The bottom line comes down to this: it's not that Batman ignores the law, but that in his mind the actual authorities aren't lawful enough. He's setting himself up as an authority above them.

Which leave us to the good/neutral/evil axis. I think we can rule out evil, hm'kay? Good vs neutral depends a lot on the writer. Being a child of the 70's & 80's I favor the neutral position. A child of the 60's or 90's would likely favor the good position.

[NecroPaladin]

Yeah, the entire point of the joker is that he's chaotic to the extreme, and he's the most evil being on the face of the earth. He's a clown, for crying out loud.

That said, I'm unsure of Batman's alignment. Vigilantes are tough.

[Reptilus]

The Arkham Asylum script pretty much defines him as CN. His entire life, according to its psychoanalysis, is some sort of surrealist performance art, with goals and morals changing day-by-day. One day, he will shamelessly, heartlessly murder innocents as the punchline to his jokes, while on another, he'll rescue a kidnapping victim from other criminals because he thinks that'll be funny. He can go from a good samaritan to a crazed serial killer from one moment to the next.
Psycho-analysis of joker based on evidence from various Batman works, containing more spoilers than I can even count:
At the end of the Graphic novel, he chooses to let Batman live when he could have killed him, and even acts friendly around him after they leave the Asylum. Not only that, but he forms the Psychological catalyst for Batman's redemption and self-confidence. He actually, mentally, saves batman. It's impossible to say why he does it; he wants an adversary, maybe; perhaps he simply found the insecurities he brought out in Batman amusing; perhaps he sought to destroy his mind and backfired (although, Grant Morrison states in his analysis of the script that this is not the case, the Joker is intenionally helping him for some reason). He is choosing to help the one person who has the ability to stop him and the will to kill him in cold blood. That's hardly Evil, self-centered behavior. Additionally, in one of Frank Miller's Batman works, the Joker forces Batman to kill him as the punchline to the joke of their relationship, since Joker ends up the one who doesn't kill anyone at the end of it, while Batman kills the joker. Afterwards, keeping in plan with the Joker's joke, the single greatest crime fighter in America becomes wanted for murder because he killed the Joker. Joker's acts are far too selfless to be really considered evil; he makes his "evil" into a twisted sort of performance art that he or those around him suffer for. There isn't any meaning. He's essentially the principles of the Dada artistic movement applied to crime. He's randomness personified. He destroys the mind of Harvey Dent, an ally, for his amusement, while rebuilding and strengthening the psyche of Batman, and enemy, for the same reasons. His actions defy any logic, self-preservative or otherwise. He's simply too random to be evil any longer. As someone else pointed out, he also became Good, essentially, with Batman's death. He's thus often seen as the Yin/Yang counterbalance of Batman and the reminder to the dark night that he can't give up. In this way, he actually commits his acts of brutal murder for the good of society by ensuring it has a protector. After his death in Frank Miller's afformentioned work, Batman largely gives up on himself and the world. The personification of his cause and everything against which he is fighting is gone, and his purpose is lost and confused. He actually dies of a heart attack, commonly associated with old age, later on, showing how the extremely healthy Batman, who's always kept in good shape, is prematurely aged by his loss of purpose. The Joker is hard to present as evil, when all these facets of his psyche are considered, though that may seem his alignment, at first, when one only considers the "Evil" acts he's taken without the motivation and extensiveness of them.

[EvilElitest]

How is the joker not CE?
from,
EE

[NecroPaladin]

The joker pretty much owns the asylum, though. They say what he wants them to say.

I mean, the guy has killed people on TV before, just to see the reactions from the viewers.

[Shadow of the Sun]

Kefka is still the coolest clown around!

[BlueWizard]

Joker is CE

[Friv]

Being insane-evil doesn't exempt you from being evil.

Joker's Chaotic aspect is stronger than his Evil aspect, but he does much of what he does because he likes hurting people. I mean, this is the guy who tried to kill his girlfriend because he started to care about her and those kinds of feelings are too much for him to handle.

Totally nuts, of course. He does need Batman around to appreciate and oppose him, but that's a part of the crazy. It doesn't make him not-evil, it just means that a magical cure for the evil would probably cause an alignment shift.

A Neutral Evil villain for Batman would be someone more like... uh... you know, no one springs to mind. Riddler, perhaps? Penguin, Two-Face, and Poison Ivy would be Lawful Good. Catwoman's pretty much true Neutral. Scarecrow?

(As far as Batman goes, I would go with Lawful Good, occasionally dipping into Lawful Neutral and back up again.

He does vigilante justice, but he does so because the local police authorities are frequently corrupt and always overworked. He co-operates with the Police Commissioner, doesn't kill if he can avoid it, and always sends the criminals to a fair trial despite the immense temptation of just dropping them in a river. He's a control freak who worries constantly about the breakdown of law and order.

Remember, again, that Lawful doesn't mean "follows all human laws". It means "has a very strict code of ethics and believes that everyone should follow an equally strict code of ethics". Compare him to Superman, who would be Neutral Good, and to the Green Arrow, who IS Chaotic Good.)

[Viscount Einstrauss]

Consider this-

I appear at your home with a chainsaw ductaped to the side of my face and holding two hammers. I proceed to murder everyone in a four block radius while spouting one-liners and laughing. When psychologists finally pin me down and enter my psyche, they learn I snapped because I'm obsessed with the local police chief.

Now, am I lawful? Hell no. I just broke several laws, did something without any logical consideration or deep reasoning, and am literally insane, a trademark of the chaotic.

Am I good? Well, I just murdered everybody in four blocks, mostly innocents, on a total whim and feel no remorse for it. Heck, I loved every second of it. Pretty evil, right?

This is exactly how the Joker works. His psyche is a shattered mess of chaos, and his morales are sickeningly depraved. For those trying to pin him according to their views on Batman's alignment- you do realize that they aren't completely opposite on everything, right? It's been mentioned countless times in the past that they're actually very similar in many ways. Sharing one alignment axis hardly seems out of the question.

[Bearofbadnews]

Whether or not the Joker is chaotically evil, within the framework of the D&D codified alignment system, he is most accurately represented as C/E.

[Zeta Kai]

Psychological Profile: The Joker
The deranged criminal known only as the Joker is rare in that, unlike most male serial killers, his crimes are not sexually motivated, & in fact, he seems to be completely asexual. Although mass murderers by definition are incapable of love or empathy for other beings, the Joker’s mania seems not to stem from a perverse lust-murder complex, as is proven by his unusual M.O.

He does not rape his victims, nor does he violate or dismember their corpses. His preferred method of slaughter is decidedly non-violent, using poison to cause his prey's muscles to permanently contract, stopping their hearts & constricting their facial tissues into a smile-like rictus, resembling the Joker’s own nearly ever-present grin. What is interesting about the Joker’s methods is that they are unlike anything a male serial killer does. However, they seem to emulate the pattern of female serial killers, with one notable exception. Women who commit multiple homicides, especially the common poisoners & black widows, choose those people closest to them to slay, whereas the Joker’s targets are rarely acquainted with him personally & are sometimes completely random passersby.

His identity prior to becoming the Joker is still under investigation, although it appears likely that we will never know who he was before he became the madman he is now. The Joker’s teeth don’t match any known dental records. His fingertips are smooth, devoid of the ridged prints every human being has. Although some claim this is evidence of his possible (but unlikely) inhuman origins, most agree that his fingerprints must have either been removed by chemical or thermal burning. These may have been accidental, or self-inflicted to remove another trace of his former self. His alabaster skin has no birthmarks, no tattoos, & surprisingly enough, no scars (other that a small umbilical mark). His physique is thin, but non-descript. Everything about his physical nature seems to defy identification. If it weren’t for his bizarre skin & hair colorations, he would be virtually invisible in a crowd.

He is assumed to have been a white lower class male, with no metahuman abilities prior to his transformation into his current state. What little information we have been able to extract from him concerning his origins is confusing & contradictory, but we believe that he was bathed or doused with disfiguring chemicals a number of years ago, a story that is reminiscent of Harvey Dent’s conversion into the schizophrenic Two-Face persona. However, unlike Dent’s case, the Joker’s psyche did not fracture into multiple personalities, but passed, twisted & warped but intact, into a mental realm that we psychologists are just starting to be able to identify: the uncharted frontier beyond madness.

It probably won't end the debate, but I figure this quote might be illuminating. I still say NE, but trans-sanity is hard to nail down.

[TheEmerged]

There's a pretty big factual error in that second paragraph. I'll have to dredge up the story in question but while sex may not be his motivation it HAS figured into his attacks on victims before.

[Knight_Of_Twilight]

For the brief time he believed Batman was dead, he was a decent and normal human being. Batman returns, and Joker returns to being insane. I'd say he's CN. Without Batman, he'd be a good guy. Though not a Good Guy.

What? When did that happen?

Thats such a goofy thing for DC to do. First the killing joke makes Joker some jobber who can't support his wife and kid, and now he's only bad because of Batman? Way to defang one of the greatest villians ever.

[the_tick_rules]

CE all ther way for joker.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

It was DKR, and he didn't turn into a "good guy". He went catatonic and pretty much lost the will to live, since terrorizing Batman was his greatest joy in life. He didn't smile or say anything for years until he saw the news report that said Batman was back.

[Beleriphon]

What? When did that happen?

Thats such a goofy thing for DC to do. First the killing joke makes Joker some jobber who can't support his wife and kid, and now he's only bad because of Batman? Way to defang one of the greatest villians ever.

What's wrong with Joker being some 9-to-5er that goes over the edge? I think its makes him that much more tragic, and also terrifying. The thing you have to keep in mind with Batman villains is that they are typically archetypal in nature. Joker is a clear archetype for the madman, but he becomes much more impressive when you realize that he is the madman in all of us.

At any rate, as Viscount points out in DKR Joker is a state of catatonic shock. Without Batman to torment, or gain acceptance from really, he stops functioning. All it takes for him to come out of his shell is to hear about Batman's reemergence and its off for a killing spree, starting with the audience of a David Letterman knock off on live TV.

[TheEmerged]

Okay, dug it out of storage: Batman The Killing Joke, by Alan Moore.

Let me make sure I'm doing the spoiler text right first...
While most people know he shot Barbara, most people forget his treatment of Barbara and the comissioner in this issue. He basically humilates them both and it's strongly implied he goes a step further.

So again, while I don't believe it to be his motivation it has figured into his crimes.

[Reptilus]

Am I good? Well, I just murdered everybody in four blocks, mostly innocents, on a total whim and feel no remorse for it. Heck, I loved every second of it. Pretty evil, right?

First, I don't believe that insanity is the same as evil. Second, debating the Joker's individual morality is extremely difficult because it gets into the definitions of good and evil; action or intent. Killing is evil, but is hitting someone with your car when you are unable to stop and killing them evil because you killed them, or is it not evil because you didn't intend to do it? The Joker's intent is often called in to question; he may be seen to serve as the motivation for batman and Batman. He helps the Dark Knight as much as hurts him.
The third point to consider is that heis simply a personfication of Chaos; he's done a large number of good deeds. He saves lives, protects the innocent, stands up for the week, and all that good stuff. He also kills large numbers of people because it's "funny." I call him Chaotic neutral simply because his alignment would shift too often to be considered "good" or "evil." He's too chaotic for morals to hold him down.
It has actually been explicitly stated that Joker does not rape his victims, including Barbara, though he does dismember their corpses on some occasions (most notably when he goes off on a trip believing that he is Ghede, the Voodoo spirit of the Dead and murders anyone who threatens a child in any way and leaves their mutilated bodies as warnings, using their hearts as sacrifices to himself. It's referred to frequently in Grant Morrison's writing of Batman), he usually avoids it.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

It takes a very special kind of psychopath to actually admit that they're evil and that their actions are evil. It's exceedingly rare, and usually either a sign of someone in pennance or someone that's extremely insane. This is because people generally do what they think is right, regardless of if it's actually right. The only general loophole I know of for this is when a person thinks they can get away with an evil act, and thus does it because they don't feel they're ever going to really get punished for it. That seems to fit the Joker's MO quite well.

[Beleriphon]

The third point to consider is that heis simply a personfication of Chaos; he's done a large number of good deeds. He saves lives, protects the innocent, stands up for the week, and all that good stuff. He also kills large numbers of people because it's "funny." I call him Chaotic neutral simply because his alignment would shift too often to be considered "good" or "evil." He's too chaotic for morals to hold him down.


I should probably point out that Joker represents the Madman the same way that Two-Face is representative of the duality of man, or Scarecrow is an archetypal fear figure.

As much as Joker is insane, or possibly hypersane, he still thoroughly unrepenenent about his actions. There may be certain things he wont do, but I would posit that anybody that intentional makes an effort to kill others with any kind of forethought is some brand of evil.

Its the same way I would label Harvey lawful evil. He has absolutely no compuctions about murder, theft, all manner of terrible actions. But he has his code and he'll live by it come hell or high water.

[sun_tzu]

If alignments had alignments, CE would be "Joker".

[Reptilus]

As much as Joker is insane, or possibly hypersane, he still thoroughly unrepenenent about his actions. There may be certain things he wont do, but I would posit that anybody that intentional makes an effort to kill others with any kind of forethought is some brand of evil.
Then pretty much every D&D character withotu Vow of Peace is evil. It depends, according to most, on who they kill and for what reasons. These things change too often with the joker to tie them to alignment but Chaos.

Harvey's too psychologically crippled to even have an alignment, if you ask me. He does whatever his coin (or Tarot Deck or RNG, during various experiments performed on him at Arkham) says with boundless loyalty, but will not make any decision without it. When given the Tarot cards, it takes him so long to make a choice on anything, with the 72 given options, that he usually ends up soiling himself before he can decide whether or not to go the bathroom. He's essentially a mindless slave creature, only instead of being dominated by an illithid, he's dominated by his coin and the force of chance.

[Viscount Einstrauss]

No, there's a huge, HUGE difference between slaughtering someone/thing because it would do the same to you/other people if given the chance and murdering someone/thing that poses no conceivable threat to anyone. The former is, within reason, justifiable. The latter isn't. Ever. A D&D party killing armed goblins in a cave that have been said to prey on travellers isn't the same thing as a madman poisoning a bunch of unarmed people off the streets for kicks, even if the party is doing it mostly for rewards or loot (which I'd rule as more neutral then good in that case, but still).

[EvilElitest]

Insanity does not make you not evil, it is you actions that judge you. I can be CN if i commit an equal number of good and evil acts, but not the Joker does not do that.
How is the Joker not CE?
from,
EE

[Mummy king]

Lawful Good ¬_¬

Wait, what now?

[Zeta Kai]

Yeah, the Killing Joke (in my opinion, the definitive Joker book) makes it clear that the Joker has always been motivated by the need to be accepted by Batman, in his own demented way. He'll do literally anything to prove his point. He permanently crippled a woman & took pictures of her afterward so that he could drive her father over the edge, all just so he could prove to Batman that anyone/everyone can become as insane as he is.

As for sexual motivations, the Joker's done a lot of crazy stuff, but I know of no story where he was personally driven by his libido. I know in one story, he trained a serial rapist to be his disciple, but that was really just done for shock value, in order to "give" Batman a present in the form of a large body-count, on the eve of the 10th anniversary of their first meeting. Also, in DKR, Joker has an unhealthy fixation on Batman, but I'd chalk that up to Frank Miller's take on their relationship coupled with a David Bowie inspiration. So far, I'm unconvinced.

At any rate, staying on topic, I'd say that whatever alignment Batman is, the Joker is diametric opposite, no matter what.

[Larrin]

Is joker evil? The effect of Joker is that Evil things happen to people because of his actions, always. He's insane, sure, maybe not in control of how he thinks, but the way in which he thinks/acts is evil. He is a source of remorseless destruction. Its possible that due to his mental illness he can't help being evil, but you can't do what he's done for his reasons and not radiate it evil from all pours of your body. Neutral does not look like a pile of dead bodies with smiles frozen on their faces.

And he is so devoted to madness that if he's only neutral evil, then there is not such thing as chaos, and we might as well all just go home.

I guess that makes batman lawful good....
@zeta kai: the biggest problem i have with your statement that batman and joker have opposite allignments is that none of the creators of batman and joker did so with D&D alignment in mind (one hopes). Thus while joker IS batmans opposite in sooooo many ways, they might not have fully taken the allignment system of a game made several decades later into account when developing that aspect of the relationship....

[Wyvern_55]

Personally, when I think of Chaotic Evil, the best examples are The Joker and Kefka from FFVI they live only to destroy, they kill without mercy and take pleasure in it. The joker has a slightly narrower objective in that he will go to any lengths to destroy The Batman, not just physically, but mentally, The Joker's overall goal would be to drive The Batman as hopelessly insane as he himself is.

I also believe that Batman is Lawful good, because he saves people, never kills, and removes dangerous villains from the streets, thus fulfilling the good portion, and he is organized, logical(he's 'the Detective') and makes large complex plans, thus he is lawful. (Remember, lawful != law abiding, vigilante acts are OK) I believe that Bruce wishes to project the image of an unstoppable chaotic beast to ‘bad guys’ while in the Batman guise, thus he acts in a slightly chaotic way, giving his legends the demonic feel in the criminal society.

[EvilElitest]

Batman's aligment is irrelvant, as even if he is CG the Joker is just by nature CE
from,
EE

[Nathander]

Chaotic Evil, pure and simple. His main drive and motivation for killing is simply the fact that he enjoys it, and that he honestly has no concern whatsoever as to who he may harm in the process, and if more people get dragged in then he anticipated, all the better.

Really, I don't honestly believe he could be classified as anything other than Chaotic Evil.

[Knight_Of_Twilight]

What's wrong with Joker being some 9-to-5er that goes over the edge? I think its makes him that much more tragic, and also terrifying. The thing you have to keep in mind with Batman villains is that they are typically archetypal in nature. Joker is a clear archetype for the madman, but he becomes much more impressive when you realize that he is the madman in all of us.

At any rate, as Viscount points out in DKR Joker is a state of catatonic shock. Without Batman to torment, or gain acceptance from really, he stops functioning. All it takes for him to come out of his shell is to hear about Batman's reemergence and its off for a killing spree, starting with the audience of a David Letterman knock off on live TV.


I have to disagree with the first one. To me, the Joker is frightening because he's as smart and dedicated as Batman, just totally evil. Making him a loser cheapens him as Batman's enemy.

DKR was awesome, but I still believed it mis-used many characters. Just look at how Superman was portrayed.

[Grod_The_Giant]

The Joker's the POSTER CHILD for chaotic evil, just as Superman is for LG. Come on, people.