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    Joker

    Character » Joker appears in 4241 issues.

    The Joker, Clown Prince of Crime, is Batman's arch-nemesis. An agent of chaos known for his malicious plots, wacky gadgets and insidious smile, he has caused Batman more suffering than any other villain he has ever faced. His origin, name, and true motivations remain a mystery.

    Pages from his return

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    johnny_spam

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    #1  Edited By johnny_spam

        
     
        
     
        
     
        
     
    In the words of the immortal Boomhauer: "Dang ol boo!" .  Generally I'm a guy who lets little continuity flukes go without problems I think that it doesn't matter what you read before and all that matters is what you are reading now but this kind of pisses me off a little wasn't this guys lips severed he was given a dead eye and slick backed hair I mean if you are not going to respect his mental transformation then at least show the fact that his face was damaged. Batman the Animated Series is what made me a Batman fan and Paul Dini writes great characters but his Joker seems so tame after reading what happened to him in the other Batman book written by Grant Morrison Joker was after a long time scary again it was read like a powerful mental transformation and here he is the same clown that showed up in the past couple of years I looked at future sollicitations of Batman from Tony Daniel and it looks like he will do show the recent Joker and that looks better compared to this one. 
     
            
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    MajinBlackheart

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    #2  Edited By MajinBlackheart  Moderator
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    johnny_spam

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    #3  Edited By johnny_spam

    Issue 4 comes out next week.
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    Pitch

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    #4  Edited By Pitch

    This is a repost from the First Look of these same pages. 
     
     To the people who keep thinking Dini's joker is "tame" compared to what Morrison shoved down our throats to pass off as Mr. J: 
    The joker isn't about just being scary. Morrison's redesign was horrible on so many levels. Aside from the obvious facial impossibilities, Joker wouldn't allow himself to be caught in public looking like that! He has style; he is very preening and very careful about his appearance, especially if he's going out on the town with Batsy. The last thing he would do is walk out of the house looking like a garden variety cliche pathetically unoriginal and uninteresting serial killer. There was no humor there, and at his core, thats what the Joker is. He is a horrible comedy routine of black humor that we should be able to laugh at. He is a consummate showman. He wants to leave the audience members left alive with a performance they'll never forget.   
    He is NOT about being simply "scary." He is NOT about being "EXTREME." All Morrison's Joker made me do was roll my eyes (as did the rest of his run on Batman). Dini's portrayal of the character (as well as writers like Chuck Dixon and Neil Gaiman) is frightening and skin crawling in his own right. He doesn't HAVE to resort to being "extreme" or flaunting his insanity in self-mutilation and stereotypically "scary" outfits. He's scary in his subtleness, his attention to detail and his own egomania in his "art." The Joker hasn't gone soft. He has regained his central tenet. Neil Gaiman said it beautifully in "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" In a dialogue with a boy on the street, Joker drops his smile and says that he "doesn't randomly kill people. {He} only kills people when it's funny. What could conceivably be funny about killing you?" 
     
    I would fully endorse a retcon of those atrocities done to Mr. J's face under Morrison. This is a return to a character that we actually recognize, one that any true fan of the character and his history loves. I, for one, cannot wait to see what the rest of this run will bring to the characters. The dynamics between all of them (especially Hush, Harley, Joker and Ivy) are going to be amazing if fleshed out and properly handled. Dini has proven in the past that he has the writing chops to do justice to these dynamics. Don't let us down!  
     
    And to jloneblackheart, I would suggest going over some backissues of Joker stories before allowing these pages be the first exposure to this character. The usual favorites are The Killing Joke, Joker: Devil's advocate, and Mad Love. You should be able to find pages online, if not entire issues. 

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    johnny_spam

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    #5  Edited By johnny_spam

    @Pitch:
    Joker over the years was actually written as not being funny it's a little to boring to see Dini's Joker now (in the comics the animated series is still great) the animated Joker had to much restraints on him since he couldn't kill the most dark he got was Batman Beyond Return of the Joker, Joker thinks he's funny but there is nothing funny about a smiling killer one of my favorite jokes he told:   

    "The guy goes into the hospital, okay? His wife's just had a baby and he can't wait to see them both. So he meets the doctor and he says, 'Oh, Doc, I've been so worried. How are they?' And the doctor smiles and says, 'They're fine. Just fine. Your wife's delivered a healthy baby boy and they're both in tip-top form. You're one lucky guy.' So the guy rushes into the maternity ward with his flowers. But it's empty. His wife's bed is empty. 'Doc?' He says and turns around and the doctor and all the nurses wave their arms and scream in his face. 'April fool! Your wife's dead and the baby's a spastic!!'"  

     one of my favorite Joker stories is "The Laughing Fish" (the comic not as much the animated episode) where he kills people at a patent office for not copyrighting mutated fish that look like him.  This also shows some other problems to wasn't his ass knocked over a bridge last time we saw him? Didn't he see Bruce's face without a mask? Anyone who kills babies and children shouldn't be written as having any class period. Look at the death of Jason Todd that is one of the most brutal things I saw him do : 
     
        
     
    Does it look like he's a consummate showman there? It wasn't so much Morrison's Joker as a redesign I liked and was a lot more that he was written as violent and ugly and not funny again.

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    #6  Edited By Pitch
    @johnny spam: The Laughing Fish is a great example though! The way he's so chummy (heh) with the patent clerk before he issues this threat, and even just the fact/way that he kills Mr. G. Carl Francis. He went to so much trouble to off one lousy pencil pusher who really was of no consequence to him, and then announced it on TV. Call me sadistic, but how is that not funny? The impossible lengths he goes to in order to make his schemes work shows how much pride he has in them. They're his masterpieces. Even with Jason Todd's death, the sheer overkill of it suggests something more than just wanton violence. The actual clubbing was shocking because of its brutality, but he still made sure he had an audience (not to mention the fact that it was shocking BECAUSE he wasn't written as being that blunt recently).  
    The Joker's 5-Way Revenge, the first Joker story that brought him out of the Silver Age goofball era, is another example of Joker's dedication to a show and to a laugh. He kills one of his henchmen with an exploding cigar, with the henchman even recognizing that it IS an exploding cigar. He even has Batman at his mercy, under his shoe, but he restrains himself. He wants Batman's death to be a production, a grand exit fitting one of the only people who is allowed on Joker's stage. And how does he decide to try to do this? By enlisting the help of a creature picked especially for its "resemblance" to the Joker himself!  
    Joker is a character filled with contradictions. A good Joker writer makes him both brutal and funny, with enough panache and performance to famously manipulate the system or individuals. His ego is HUGE, and he frankly craves attention. Stories like "It's Joker Time" and "Devil's Advocate" show Joker, if not at his best, damn close to it. He makes a normal person uncomfortable wanting to laugh at his antics. Violent psychotics are a dime a dozen, and usually don't last very long. Part of the reason Ultimatum has been so widely panned was the tasteless violence and graphic deaths of characters that made no sense. Would you have the Joker be like the Blob and resort to shock-panels of cannibalism and gore, or start beheading or disemboweling his victims? Not only would that be disgusting, it would be completely out of character. 
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    johnny_spam

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    #7  Edited By johnny_spam

    @Pitch:
    I think when any villain especially Joker gets to predictable or comfortable for the reader then something needs to change I liked his transformation because when a reader can't tell where a Batman story is going then things are good. And I think Joker would do anything wrong or violent after reading Arkham Asylum and Killing Joke he can do any sick deplorable thing. We shouldn't think "Joker has more restraint then that" because he already did things like kill everyone in a kindergarten classroom.

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