Dudes in Distress Week - The Dynamic Duo get metatexual about deathtraps

[icon_uk]

From Batman Adventures #9 may I present...

Deathtrap-A-Go-Go! (No, seriously again that's the name, honest...)

We open with Batman and Robin as we have seen them so many times....



Batman, then proceeds to relate to Tim about some REAL deathtraps he's been in.... Including Killer Croc's chamber of underfed mutant alligators (unaware that Bruce spent a summer wrestling alligators in Florida during his training years) and the Penguin in his Bye-Bi-Bird-Plane (Which is as good a name as his Aviary of Doom in the classic BTAS episode "Almost Got Him") and of course...



Oh, and The Mad Hatter is (apparently) a good haberdasher, but lousy at rope tying (Which sort of misses the point of BTAS Mad Hatter methinks, but we'll let that slide)

And then of course there was the Scarecrow's House of Horrors...



Awesome! And it looks like a certain Boy Wonder agrees.... and has some observations of his own to share with his mentor.





Good points on both sides there I think... deathtraps are a matter of PRIDE for the villains of Gotham. Crowbars to the head are unthinkable when you can produce something that is over elaborate, over the top, but uniquely your OWN.

It ends with our heroes escaping their chains to face... whoever it is doing the trapping here (It's never made clear) and Robin lists the three points he's learned from Batman's stories;

1) Batman's enemies are, to a fault, arts and crafts NUTS.
2) Batman has a VERY hard head.
3) Don't sweat the deathtraps.

Which seems like a good lesson to learn for a career in Gotham crimefighting.

Though... "They have to lure you into it"? Seriously Robin? Haven't you sussed yet that that's what YOU'RE for? Oh well, if you haven't worked it out about being the "Boy Hostage", I'm not going to spoil it for you.

Comments

[icon_uk]

I was actually accepting the apology on behalf of the first sentence you quoted which you said you found problematic. :)

One of the more common discussions about the Joker is whether he's classifiable as insane or just evil. He certainly doesn't qualify as legally insane, which requires the person to be unable to comprehend the outcome of their actions. The Joker is more than aware of the consequences of his actions, he just doesn't care, which is a very different problem.

And cases only happen on school nights because they say they happen on schoolnights. They could easily have set stories during vacation times, or just happened to have stories happening on weekends. I can sort of imagine Batman taking on Batgirl because he has no more to teach Dick (who disappears off for over a year anyway) and because, simply put, he was lonely, and wanted a partner.

[runespoor]

Oops. Sorry.

I'll rescind my objection about the Joker but the rest of my point stands.
(Tangent: though I do think a case can be made about how sanity and absence of mental disorder aren't synonymous. Law.com's definition of "insanity" includes this: mental illness of such a severe nature that a person cannot distinguish fantasy from reality, cannot conduct her/his affairs due to psychosis, or is subject to uncontrollable impulsive behavior., emphasis mine. Is Joker currently considered legally sane in comics? Because if he's not, that's not helping the ableism.)

I don't know the Doylist reason for not having Tim in more episodes (maybe he was the Replacement Scrappy?), but at least the Watsonian one makes sense. Oh, I can certainly see Batman do that. But it does strange things to what it means about Babs, imo, it makes her very different from the character in comics canon. Yes, I remember it's an adaptation, but it seems to me like there was more thinking done on Timmy Todd than on how DCAU!Babs is different from comics!Babs. It changes the dynamic of Babs' character a lot. For one, she doesn't get bored or frustrated with Batgirl.

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The Joker is currently considered to be insane, but because comic-lawyers say so, rather than because he fits an accurate assessment of what legal insanity is.

[whitesycamore]

Oh man, comics labouring the point of how insane the Joker is is one of my biggest pet peeves. Because he's not. Most of the time he's not written as even mildly psychotic.

If writers really wanted to give him some sort of realistic diagnosis, they should go for Antisocial personality disorder. And really, even that is more an uneasily medicalised description of a particularly baffling and objectionable type of person rather than a clear cut 'condition.'

[icon_uk]

Indeed, the Joker going to an Asylum instead of jail only dates as far back as the 1970's. Prior to that he was a criminal who happened to look like a clown and was always treated as being sane enough to face criminal charges.

There's even a Golden Age story about the Joker having to convince the authorities that he was mad so he WOULD be sent to an asylum, as part of a criminal scheme.