Batman: Gotham Adventures 1

[espanolbot]

In which people finally have had enough of DCAU!Joker.

11 pages out of a 38 page story.

Batman, Batgirl and Robin are pursuing the Joker on one of his recent crime sprees when there is a sudden news flash.




Yeeeaaaah, the DCAU's Joker in relation to murder is a tricky one. On the one hand, he wasn't allowed to be shown killing people in BTAS due to standards and practices, but he certainly did things that would result in his victims dying (such as the attempted train derailment in Christmas with the Joker) or driven crazy with Joker poison (the Laughing Fish and others), the latter of which was used as a compromise by the creators who have said that people being left paralysed with stretched grins is actually kind of worse.

However, come Mask of the Phantasm (which established the Joker's prior profession as a professional criminal of some sort who killed at least one person offscreen prior to getting dipped in acid, and another offscreen as the Joker), they seemed to begin having the Joker actually succeed in actually killing people. Such as in one of the flashbacks in the BTAS sequel series the New Batman Adventures' Mad Love episode.


Intentionally or not, there does seem to be a kind of meta-plot going on with the Joker from BTAS through to Justice League and eventually Batman Beyond. To begin with, the Joker had henchmen and more often or not had a financial motive even if he used violence to get what he wants (his using a chemical weapon on Gotham that causes permanent insanity just so he can rob the place in the Last Laugh, for example).


But over time violence starts becoming the sole end goal rather than a means to an end for the Joker, and at this point all his henchmen leave him except for Harley. Whether his "screw it, kill everyone" phase was a result of his finanical problems (a reoccuring thing in NBA) or vice versa, I can't say. But... Lex Luthor's attempted doublecross of the Clown Prince of Crime does result in a huge chunk of Metropolis getting flattened in the World's Finest crossover movie, and that's not even getting into his Justice league and Batman Beyond stuff.


So yeah, the DCAU version of the Joker killing people (which is a plot point in this story) isn't entirely out of left field... it just feels really jarring with those character designs though.

Anyways, on with the story. News of the Joker's bounty has left the entrance to Arkham filled with people waiting to finally just shoot the Joker to collect the money, so until this is resolved they handcuff the Joker to a railing in the Batcave. Unfortunately, when Batman and Robin are called away to deal with the Riddler, leaving Batgirl on guard duty, the Joker quickly slips ouf of his handcuffs with the aid of a fake hand, knocks out Batgirl, and tries to work out where they took him.



Batman tries to deal with the Riddler's... uh... riddle, only now with the Joker's chatter distracting him.




Batman gets an idea, defeats the Riddler and brings the man who filed the bounty to the Batcave to meet the Joker face to face.




Uh, pretty sure that publically putting a hit on someone is still a crime, even if they retracted it afterwards. It's one of those things like escaping from prison to prove your innocence, it's still illegal even if it doesn't wrap the story up nicely in the end.

Comments

[janegray]

You know, once, just once, I'd like to see a story where the character is put in front of the restrained enemy and actually goes through with it.

Hell, make it a scene where the hero is like "I gave them an unloaded gun" and the character is like "I beat the villain to death with a chair leg."

[reveen]

I'd have the guy go completely Lord of the Flies on the villain, rip his head off with his bare hands, start eating his face while Batman stares completely dumbstruck and awkwardly shuffles out of the room.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Spoilers!



You____________________________________________should____________________________________________check____________________________________________out____________________________________________this____________________________________________movie____________________________________________that____________________________________________came____________________________________________out____________________________________________a____________________________________________week____________________________________________ago...

[lieut_kettch]

You mean where one guy tells the other guy that there are maybe 4 or 5 opportunities that will define one as a hero?

[janegray]

If you mean Deadpool, it's not being shown in my country yet. But I'll go watch it next week :)

Now no more spoilers! :P

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Sorry, I'll try to think of a better way to hide it next time (not that I talk about them often...). =(

[skemono]

One way to hide spoilers is by altering the text & background color with HTML, so people would have to highlight the text to read it. So this:

Spoiler to follow: <span style="color: #000000; background-color: #000000;">Rosebud's his childhood sled.</span>

Becomes this:

Spoiler to follow: Rosebud's his childhood sled.

(Admittedly, I'm not sure how this works with the comment e-mails that Dreamwidth can send. I think those just show in plaintext.)

Spoilers!

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

It's awesome and you're a terrible person for not seeing it!

[sagrada]

That's totally unbelievable.

Unloaded guns are perfectly fine blunt weapons, nobody would pass up a sturdy piece of metal for flimsy ass-wood!

It would appear there's more to this case than meets the eye...

[zylly]

There were some other issues of the first Batman Adventures comics that, while they didn't show it directly, certainly implied that the Joker was killing people.

But honestly, it's really hard to justify not letting someone just kill the freaking Joker. I'm always amazed he hasn't just been shot seventy-million times while "resisting arrest."

[zylly]

Such as here, for example: http://comicsalliance.com/files/2014/11/Batman04.jpg

[lonewolf23k]

At the very least, after the first few killings, you'd think the Criminal Justice System would stop accepting that Insanity plea and condemn the Joker to the Gas Chamber.

[lonewolf23k]

In all honesty, they should stop it with the "Arkham Revolving Door" routine for a while. Which they seem to have done, as since the Nu52 relaunch, the Joker is more prone to suffer a "Never Found the Body" fate, seemingly dying only to come back to life later on.

[zylly]

You really would.

[nyadnar17]

Its been discussed in the comics and is part of the reason the latest Manhunter turned from DA to vigilante.

Not only did the courts of the DCU rule that Insanity was an acceptable plea for folks like Joker and even Penguin they created a new version of Insanity called "Mental Instability by reason of active Metahuman gene." So not only are serial killers like Zsasz impossible to send to prison or execute so is ANY villain with an super powers.

They few people who were not insane or declare unresponsible for their actions by way of a Metagene usually found it a simple matter to get their sentences reduced or eliminated by doing dirty work for the Feds. (Think Boomarang)

[icon_uk]

Though, of course, that sort of falls apart because the Joker, Penguin and Freeze don't HAVE an active Metagene.

The Joker and Prison, a Long Discussion

[espanolbot]

The explanation given in the regular comics is that pretty much all of the Joker's money goes towards a combination of paying for his huge legal team, bribing judges/juries, or just outright threatening the lives and families of people involved with his trial to get the verdict he wants.

There have been a number of times when this hasn't worked though. In Chuck Dixon's Devil's Advocate Gotham's new ADA manages to swing the Joker finally getting the death penalty by a) proving that he knows right from wrong, and b) indicating that his crimes are premeditated, and not impulsive things outside of his control (in this case, poisoning postage stamps and putting them back into circulation).

This actually works! ...But ironically, the Joker didn't actually do it for once, where instead a guy who owned a storage facility came across some of the Joker's poison, and decided that poisoning his wife and five other people in a Joker-ish crime would be a good way to avoid paying for a divorce. So yeah, this supposed one in a life time loophole was closed off despite the Joker being found legally competant, because he didn't commit the crime in question.

This actually did happen again, in a form, in a Birds of Prey issue (possibly also written by Dixon) where the Joker hide an atomic bomb in New York that not even Superman was able to find... So Barbara Gordon simply had the Joker physically moved to New York City, which forced him to say where the bomb was because he didn't want to die as well.

The fact that he had a concept of his own mortality and that he'd committed a crime outside of Gotham for a change lead to the Joker getting sent to a regular (albeit metahuman) prison, although not in such a way he'd get the death penalty.

Amusingly, in the Joker's Millions episode (based on an earlier comic) the Joker actually manages to have himself declared sane by an expert team of lawyers (including a Johnnie Cochran expy, because that reference would NEVER get old) so he'd be free to spend his newfound wealth...

...One could argue that this probably should have lead to him getting convicted for his prior crimes and the crimes that followed, but I guess a double jeopardy thing was in effect there somewhere.

[owlbrigade1]

The criminal justice system is not some faceless monolithic entity, a major part of it is ordinary people via juries. If the ordinary people say they prefer the Arkham Revolving Door in the hope that even one person can be cured over summary "Dredd-esque" executions then the criminal justice system is working. Clearly people like Dredd and Frank Castle skip their jury service, and don't turn up at voting booths. In short, Gotham gets the justice system it deserves and wants.

[starwolf_oakley]

I remember this story, and I thought it had the extra point that Reid was a friend of Bruce Wayne's parents. Guess not.

[sadoeuphemist]

Batman says in the last panel that Reid was one of his father's closest friends.

[starwolf_oakley]

D'oh.

[chrisdv]

It's one of those things like escaping from prison to prove your innocence, it's still illegal even if it doesn't wrap the story up nicely in the end.

Except in the A-Team movie, where that is the exact reason they wind up going back to prison at the end.

Only other time I can remember that being treated correctly was Prison Break, where it takes until the end of season 4 for them to gain pardons for the initial escape.

[yvonmukluk]

Eh, I doubt any man who put out a hit on the Joker would even be prosecuted, let alone convicted.

[espanolbot]

There were noncorrupt cops working to convict Catwoman for killing Black Mask in the regular comics, on the reasoning that they can't just pick and chose who is "worth" defending in the eyes of the law. It has to apply equally to everyone otherwise the thing is a farce.

Similarly, if someone was to execute the Joker for the crimes he was framed for in Devil's Advocate after the Warden of Blackgate got the official stay of execution call from the governor when they found the real murderer, that would be murder not an execution.

Bare in mind, Selina's murder of Black Mask was considered to be acceptable by BATMAN of all people, so whether or not it's acceptable to the audience is a matter of debate.

[lego_joker]

Yes. But Harry Reid is rich and an old friend of the Waynes, two things that Catwoman (her secret identities aside) isn't.

[janegray]

IIRC correctly, though, it was one cop who was working to convict Catwoman, and pretty much any person he spoke to was like "duuuuuude, come onnnnn."

I mean there is always going to be that one person or handful of people (IRL there were people defending Ariel Castro's rights too), but by and large people didn't gaf.

[skinrash]

Dang, you left out the best part, the homage to Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

[icon_uk]

The Joker was shown having killed people in "Holiday Knights", the very first "New Superman Batman Adventures" episode, because the new network they were on didn't have the same BSNP limits that the WB did.

So if it was orange shirt Joker was shown in front of dead people that doesn't work, but green shirted Joker was able to, and did.

[bariman]

You know, it wasn't until you just pointed it out that I noticed that his shirt color changed.