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Simply put, it's time he died.
I don't mean a temporary death of the sort that's common in comics. I mean the kind of death that sticks. Because the writers have put themselves in a corner with him. Each and every time he appears, he commits a greater obscenity.
He slaughters a family; he cripples a woman; he beats a kid to death; he murders the Commissioner's wife. We are given to believe, in other stories, that he's poisoned houses occupied with college students, leaving a few random survivors forever traumatized; he's shot a little girl dead, just to laugh at her father's grief; he's killed literally hundreds of people. Most
recently he shattered Nightwing by bringing that character to the brink of murder. And each time Batman, or one of the other heroes, catches him, we know that the writers are going to have him escape again within a month or so, and that the big creative decision is going to be coming up with
something worse for him to do.
In other words, it's no longer a story about good triumphing over evil, or good putting up a good fight in the face of evil, but about good's utter impotence in the face of evil.
There are many comic-book baddies whose crimes have escalated again and again, to the point where any momentary victory on the part of the heroes seems not only fruitless, but deluded. Bullseye is one. Luthor, in his current incarnation, is another. The Kingpin is a third.
But the Joker is the worst of them all. Much has been made of the necessity of establishing Batman as better than the Joker, and thus not allowing him to just snap the clown's neck once and
for all. I can see the logic of that. I can even see the moral imperative.
But...seriously...is having Batman turn killer himself the only alternative to
turning Batman comics into a regular celebration of the unstoppability of a
mass murderer?
Can't the writers come up with some way to have the Joker's madness lead to his own self-destruction? Or, better yet, use a Gotham suddenly without the constant threat of the Joker as a springboard for new stories?
Idea: the Joker breaks into a guy's house, intent on killing the entire family just to leave a message for Batman. Except the guy gets the drop on the Joker, brains him with a crowbar, and, while waiting for the police makes a conscious and moral decision to finish the clown off rather than spend the rest of his life waiting for everybody he loves to be slaughtered as revenge. The cops know the guy committed murder. No jury in Gotham will convict him. And Batman, whose
principles make him want to go after the guy, has no idea HOW to feel. That, right there, without even trying hard, is a story idea fifty times better than Batman having to prevent Joker from killing every kid in the nursery school, for the third time this month.
Seriously. It's time he went. (Dec 2002)
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