The Joker Sets the Black Hand Straight, And Other Moments

[espanolbot]

Smug real-world villain group, the Black Hand, are celebrating their defeat of Batman, having drugged him, invaded his home, and buried him alive amongst other things.

Unfortunately for them, they made two mistakes: 1. assuming that Batman is just someone involved in the supervillain/superhero community for kicks like they are, and 2. they decide to treat the Joker as if he's a henchman...









From Last Laugh, the JLA are making a quick stop on Easter Island while trying to regroup...





The relationship between Lex and the Joker is an odd one, considering they really are the Big Two in regards to the Supervillain Community (name one Wonder Woman villain who has their same level of recognition outside of comics, I can wait.) I think that I read it that while everyone is scared of the Joker/want to emulate his style, Lex is the one who you actually want to impress as a favour from him is effectively a license to print money.



And from Lovers and Madmen, which I personally feel is kind of underrated, we have a not-yet publically well known Joker indulging in a little nightmare fuel,

Comments

[silverhammerman]

Lovers and Madman had some cool ideas, but I don't think it's good enough to qualify as underrated. The ugly art and rather bland writing keep it from being as good as the individual elements would suggest.
I've never read RIP though, I might have to by the looks of it there.

[darkknightjrk]

With the art in Lovers and Madmen, I think it more has to do with the fact that it's Denys Cowan, and people mostly like him for what he did with O'Neil on The Question back in the day.

As for RIP, it is very good, but it's something where it definitely helps to have read the previous two trades, Batman & Son and The Black Glove to further understand what's going on.

[icon_uk]

The Joker's best moments in a long time

From Underworld Unleashed (as Neron introduced his "Council of Evil" to the assembled villains, narration from the Trickster)



And here, from Infinite Crisis, the Joker's reputation comes back to bite him on the ass...



(And I won't even comment on the fact that the whole point of King's power is that he is immortal)

[damar148]

That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.

[darkknightjrk]

And then you get the coda at the end of Infinite Crisis with what happens to Alex. "You didn't let the Joker play..."

[lieut_kettch]

Plus Alex only stole thirty-nine cakes. That's as many as three tens plus nine.

[bewareofgeek]

In the Neron panel, take a close look at the skull mug.

And then take a second look at the "swizzle stick"

[icon_uk]

Indeed!

[beyondthefringe]

Oh god, I always thought it was one of the fallen Rogues from earlier in the series. But that makes much more sense. :(

[damar148]

I always found it weird that the Black Hand are so suprised by the Joker suddenly killing one of them, I mean it's the Joker, pretending to use him is one thing, thinking themselves safe when in the same room?

[icon_uk]

As I've said before the Black Glove were such stunningly inept losers I found them being core to the RIP plot to be it's weakest point (aside from the even MORE loser villains that Hurt accumulates). The Joker as an employee? Even HURT views him like that, which makes any claim he has to being a decent villain almost automatically moot.

Sadly, they are sort of reflected in the Court of Owls (Privileged, rich, entitled and not nearly as scary as they like to think they are)

[darkknightjrk]

I think that was partly the intent on Morrison's part, but I do agree about the Court--I thought it was a great idea, it just wasn't perfectly executed the first time. It's possible that Talon might fix that a little bit more.

[darkknightjrk]

My guess is that their thoughts were, "we control countries and massive corporations, surely we can handle this one man." I mean, they thought they could break BATMAN, ffs.

[icon_uk]

And yet even a cursory examination would show the number of countries and massive corporations that felt the brunt of Batman's wrath.

[fungo_squiggly]

So what did the Joker get from Neron in exchange for his soul?

[leoboiko]

A toy duck! And then Neron finds out he has no soul

[silverhammerman]

I think it was a box of Cuban cigars.

[thezmage]

As I recall, Cuban cigars

[fungo_squiggly]

Yeah, that sounds about right. As did the toy duck idea floated above.

For some reason I, personally, was picturing the price of the Joker's soul as a squeak-toy shaped like a banana.

[leoboiko]

Aaah yes, Joker & Lex <3

[q99]

That Joker to-do list!

It's horrible, but stuff on it is actually funny, thus, it's right!

Note how only *maybe* 1/4th of the list involve killing people.

[an_idol_mind]

Again, most of these remind me that the Joker used to be about more than killing.

Since The Dark Knight, he's become more and more about the body count - not that it wasn't getting bad before then, but I think the movie accelerated it. It's like DC editorial all watched that film and, instead of getting any of the subtleties of Ledger's performance, they just figured that audiences wanted a guy with magic murder powers.

[lonewolf23k]

Heck, even Dark Knight Joker was more about the body count. He was about the pure Chaos, and he still managed to be entertaining, compelling and darkly amusing.

[an_idol_mind]

Exactly my point. Ledger's Joker was reasonably complex and quite interesting. But it's like DC thinks the only reason people like the character is because he blew up hospitals.

[jlbarnett]

For all his talk the things he says only matter if people die

[intertobamf]

He wasn't really about the "chaos"--that was just a pretense to push Dent further into the abyss, and his plots are more organized and complex than a "dog chasing cars". He's more concerned about bringing villainy and crime to a higher level to match Batman while at the same time making a point about humanity's evil.

[icon_uk]

Goes back a LOT longer than that movie, I'd cite since "A Death in the Family"

[kingofmadcows]

I found it really contrived how the Black Glove's plan was so intricate and worked so perfectly but then everything just fell apart for no good reason. Dr. Hurt's competence and understanding of Batman seemed to fluctuate based on the needs of the plot.

[venatosapiens]

I always read it as Hurt and the Black Glove deluding themselves into thinking that once they broke Batman, he'd stay broken. It's a foolish mistake to make, but given the omnipotence Hurt and the Black Glove ascribe to themselves, it's not really a surprising one. And since their very complicated plan was set up under the assumption that A.) Joker would play ball with whatever if he got a crack at Batman and B.) that Batman would stay down, it sort of makes sense that it all crumbled spectacularly as soon as neither of those things happened.

YMMV, of course. :)

[kingofmadcows]

But given how much Dr. Hurt knew about Batman and how well he understood Batman, it really doesn't make much sense that he would make those mistakes. Dr. Hurt was able to anticipate Batman's actions almost perfectly up until the last issue. Sure he was arrogant and did the Bond villain thing of not killing Batman when he had the chance, the mistakes he made seemed really out of place given how incredibly detailed the rest of his plan was. The way he engineered little random incidents to be part of his plan and had them achieve the expected impact on Batman's psyche, like the whole thing with Honor Jackson, was incredible but then he decides not to put Batman in a metal coffin? Come one.

And another WTF moment was when Batman says that he knew that Jezebel was part of the Black Glove pretty early on, which just made no sense at all.

[sadoeuphemist]

Hurt didn't engineer anything with Honor Jackson, Jackson was implied to be some sort of psychological psychopomp who was the manifestation of Batman's sense of responsibility/failure. You're overestimating the degree to which Hurt planned out everything that happened to Batman. He planned to drive him crazy by setting off a trigger word, drugging him up, releasing him on the streets, and then waiting for Batman to become coherent enough to find them at Arkham for the finale. He didn't plan literally every little thing that happened to Batman along the way. And his plan ended with him driving Batman insane, he expected that by the time Batman was buried alive he would have completely lost control of his mental faculties. When Batman turned out to be completely coherent and capable after that, Hurt's plan fell apart.

Also, Jezebel showed up and became a major part of his life while he was being psychologically attacked, her concerns for him ("maybe it's you") playing in to the attacks on Batman. I'm not sure how much actual evidence he accumulated, but from the point of view of a paranoiac it was perfectly reasonable to suspect her.

[kingofmadcows]

But you actually see other people interacting with Honor Jackson so it's not a Sixth Sense type of thing. Honor also gave Bruce the Bat-radia, which later Jezebel confirms that it was something Bruce found in a derelict's shopping cart.

And even if Dr. Hurt only expected Bruce to eventually get to Arkham, it's still a plan that requires a huge number of coincidences. He had to understand Batman well enough to know that Batman would experience the specific set of events and triggers that would allow him to regain enough sense to go directly to Arkham but not enough sense to get help from other people or steal some anti-toxins/drugs or go to one of his back up Batcaves to make better preparations.

As for Jezebel, regardless of how much actual evidence Batman had on her, he was able to make a move against her. Plus the fact that Jezebel was beaten and treated like a hostage is another example of Dr. Hurt's attention to detail and understanding of Batman. He knew enough about Batman's deductive skills to keep up the charade even when Batman wasn't around just to be sure.

[sadoeuphemist]

I didn't say Honor Jackson wasn't real, I said he wasn't part of Hurt's plan. It's a comic book, manifestations of ideas can be real people.

After Batman has been released on the streets, Hurt's plan does not rely on knowledge of coincidences, events, or triggers. It relies on an overall understanding of Batman's state of competency. That Batman will eventually be lucid enough to track down the Black Glove, but not lucid enough to prepare for it adequately. Also, the way things played out in RIP is not the only way they could have gone done. If Batman was say, too out of it to find the Black Glove on his own, they could have simply tracked him down via the tracking device in his tooth and dragged him there personally.

Also I don't think Hurt's treatment of Jezebel was out of any respect of Batman's deductive skills, I think they're just all sort of real kinky. That and they were also acting to deceive us, the readers.

[kingofmadcows]

But it was Honor Jackson's death that triggered Bruce's transformation into Batman of Zur-En-Arrh, which must have been part of Dr. Hurt's plan since he created that personality in the first place and it was pretty much the basis for his plan. That's a pretty specific event. It would be a pretty big coincidence for there to be a similar set of events to trigger that.

As for Dr. Hurt's plan, it would not have relied on knowledge of coincidences or triggers if those coincidences and triggers were engineered by Dr. Hurt in the first place. However, if none of that was planned, then it would have required a large number of very unlikely coincidences for everything to have happened the way they did.

Dr. Hurt's whole plan involved destroying Batman's competence. That's sort of the point of driving someone insane. If you're trying to push someone towards madness, you really shouldn't expect that person to retain their reasoning ability and act rationally. So Hurt would need a very good understanding of Batman to ensure that he didn't push Batman too far into madness and damage his reasoning ability too much.

And Dr. Hurt's plan could not have played out differently, or there would have been no point. The whole reason why Hurt engineered R.I.P. was so the Black Glove can make the bets on whether or not Hurt can destroy Batman's psyche. If Batman wasn't able to regain enough lucidity to find his way to Arkham and fall for Hurt's trap, then there would be no point in the bet since it would be obvious that Hurt had already permanently damaged Batman's mind.

As for Dr. Hurt's treatment of Jezebel, it wasn't just Hurt keeping up the charade, they both were. She was resisting Hurt's thugs and yelling at them to let her go.

Plus when and where could Batman have learned about Jezebel's mother and her letter? He must have acquired that information before R.I.P. began. At the very least, he had to have had that information before falling into Hurt's trap. So that would mean he intentionally fell for Hurt's trap and allowed the Joker to learn his secret identity, wreck havoc, and then get away.

[sadoeuphemist]

The Batman of Zur-en-Arrh is a backup personality created by Batman himself, and simply re-purposed by Hurt. It's a last-ditch response for when Bruce Wayne breaks down completely and can no longer function: he starts hallucinating himself as a super-Batman who can solve anything. You don't need Honor Jackson specifically to make ZEA appear, presumably he would have snapped eventually just wandering out on the streets. Also, the degree to which Honor Jackson was just part of his psyche is debatable, since, y'know, the guy was supposed to already be dead while he was talking to him.

Batman charging into Arkham completely unprepared would have been an irrational and incompetent thing to do, because it would've gotten him killed, so I'm not sure what your point is here. And if Hurt wins definitively, he wins. You can still bet on a game even if one side ends up totally dominating. The bet isn't simply focused on the short time Batman spends in Arkham. The bet is to see if Hurt can drive a good man (Batman) mad. Arkham is simply the end-game.

Yes, they're all sort of real kinky, that included Jezebel. Some people like to be tied up, she presumably liked playing the part.

And yeah, like I said earlier, it was perfectly reasonable for Batman to suspect Jezebel. He suspected her long before Hurt activated the trigger word. But the point is he had fallen into Hurt's trap years and years ago, when he first underwent the "space medicine" experiments and had the trigger word implanted in the first place. He knew Jezebel was going to betray him, but he had to go through with RIP anyway because Hurt already had a hold on his mind. And he couldn't break free without first letting Hurt set off the bomb, so to speak, and then surviving the aftermath

[lieut_kettch]

Hmm... I'd buy a Robin skull mug with a crowbar swizzle stick.

[moetushie]

name one Wonder Woman villain who has their same level of recognition outside of comics, I can wait.

UM, PATRIARCHY??

[silverhammerman]

*applause*
That's fantastic.