The Spectre #51

[cyberghostface]

I really love Batman here and how he sticks up for the Joker even up against the wrath of God.

Comments

[alschroeder3]

I loved that issue. The Joker's sanity, is, as always, temporary, but it was a great moment. And the horror of realizing the Joker had the Spectre's power...

....And the ending afterwards, when the Joker-imitators became Spectre-imitators.

[joetuss]

I think writers get a little ridiculous with the whole Batman loves Joker thing. Even God wants this guy dead...sheesh

[alicemacher]

But the beauty of the DCU is that even God can be wrong!

And I don't know where you and cyberghostface are getting this "Batman loves Joker" stuff. He simply believes in the principle that a person who is truly incapable of understanding the difference between right and wrong should not be killed. That's it. That's all there is to it.

[sadoeuphemist]

The Joker is obviously capable of telling right from wrong, though. He finds it funny to hurt people, but he clearly recognizes that he is hurting people.

[alicemacher]

But he has no working conscience, and without that, he can't fully understand--on a gut level, not merely a conceptual one--that hurting people is wrong.

[sadoeuphemist]

But you don't need to understand ethics on a gut level. The point of formulating a code of morality is that it isn't dependent on emotions. Even if you really hate someone, and would feel genuinely fantastic if they died, that doesn't make it morally correct to kill them. It's through a conceptual understanding of morality that a person realizes that it wouldn't be right to kill someone.

[alicemacher]

I think we do need a gut-level understanding of ethics in order to supplement rational comprehension. That's because we human beings tend to be selectively rational: we use, or acknowledge, reason when it suits us and ignore it when it doesn't. Or, we use counter-rationalizations to justify wrongdoing to ourselves. That's why, for example, petty theft is so common even though people know conceptually that it's wrong. ("My coworker will never know it was I who took her cupcake." "This company makes so many pens, and this store sells so many, neither will be hurt if I steal this one little box. Besides, this is a small store without any security, and the only clerk is in the back.")

But when it comes to the sorts of crimes the Joker specializes in-kidnapping, torture, murder--for the majority of people it becomes much, much harder to rationalize committing them. Is it because most people, when tempted, do a dispassionate run-through in their head of the arguments for and against committing such acts, and then decide not to because the arguments against are stronger? No. It's because most people have a conscience that makes them intuitively and viscerally opposed to committing them. Not "This person is in my way of achieving x...What if I were to kill that person... No, there's a good chance I'll be caught and jailed," but "What if I were to kill that person... NO! What am I thinking?! That's horrible!"

The Joker, in contrast, understands conceptually that society considers kidnapping, torture and murder wrong, but he lacks that inner sense of utter revulsion at the thought of committing them. That's why he does what he does. Of course, that doesn't mean he shouldn't face any consequences for it, but it does mean that by the very legal system which Batman normally upholds--as opposed to "God's" desires, or, as kamino_neko suggests below, what the Spectre thinks is God's desires, God being conspicuously silent in the DCU--he can't be executed for it.

[sadoeuphemist]

That's not what the legal system says at all, though. A terrorist, for example, may not feel any revulsion at the thought of killing people. They may in fact feel completely righteous and justified in their cause. The legal system still holds them fully responsible for their actions.

The question is not whether a person thinks what they were doing was wrong. If that was the standard, it would be incredibly difficult to prosecute anybody. "That bastard deserved to die." "What I did hurt nobody." "I don't believe what I did should be illegal." The question is whether they are mentally competent enough to understand what they are doing.

[cainofdreaming]

But he doesn't recognize that hurting people is bad. At least when under this portrayal. Only when under outside influence does he do that.

[sadoeuphemist]

The point is, he understands what he is doing. He understands that people dislike being hurt and suffer when he does things to them. If I am a sadist, and I enjoy going around hurting people because it's all good fun to me, that does not absolve me of responsibility for my actions because I still understand what I am doing.

[cainofdreaming]

But that isn't what's happening here. He didn't get empathy induced to him, he got conscience. The whole morality of hurting people is foreign to him. That's not sadism, that's sociopathy.

[sadoeuphemist]

No, he clearly understands the concept. He understands that Batman seeks to avoid hurting innocent people, for example, and knows how to take advantage of that. He does not share Batman's morality, but he understands it.

Being sociopathic still does not absolve him of responsibility of his actions. I can just not care about the well-being of anyone other than myself. But if I like, run someone off the road in order to get to a meeting on time, I still understand the consequences of what I am doing, and I can still be held responsible.

[dr_archeville]

I've always favored the Paul Dini/Bruce Timm explanation: Joker knows fully well what he's doing, he is evil (and DRAMATIC), and he just acts insane (which is a legal term, not a medical one) so he'll be put into Arkham, which is easier to break out of than Blackgate.

Of course, that then gets into discussion of what "Evil" actually is... which is particularly tricky in this case given how often "Evil" (or, rather, people who've done evil things like murder) and various mental illnesses (psychopathy, schizophrenia, sociopathy) have been conflated.

[cyberghostface]

To me it's pretty clear that looking at multiple appearances that Batman has some affinity with the Joker that goes beyond his standard morals. But I don't take issue with it I think the relationship is an interesting one.

[ozaline]

"But the beauty of the DCU is that even God can be wrong!"

Though the Spectre has some autonomy as well, there's one version of Eclipso's backstory that stated he had Spectre's job before Spectre...

He lost it after he tried really hard to kill Noah against orders... So Eclipso caused the flood and Spectre killed the first born Egyptians.

[kamino_neko]

The Spectre wants everybody dead. If you've ever jaywalked, he has a magical car waiting to run you down.

[lyricalswagger]

He should make a magical Punisher appear and shoot you.

[kamino_neko]

Heh...I considered referencing that story.

[yvonmukluk]

Who do you think is driving the magical car?

[bruinsfan]

A magical Mr. Magoo!

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

Oh God, that reminds me of a DC short with the Spectre. He forces a driver over a ramp, into mid air, and then makes his seat belt disappear.

The ghost is freakin' brutal

[starwolf_oakley]

Something like this happened at the end of "Emperor Joker." The Joker is semi catatonic, saying "Emperor Joker" backwards over and over. That also involved the Spectre, but the Hal Jordan Spectre.

[tcampbell1000]

The entire story would have been worth it just for Batman's hilariously understated reaction when the Joker assumes the Spectre's power.

"Something has gone seriously wrong."

[burkeonthesly]

Oh, look, Joker can wrest the power of God's own wrath away from its divinely-chosen bearer, because he's just soooo chaotic. Sigh.

[alicemacher]

Third scan, lower right corner: Joker points out that the Spectre has been weakened recently and hasn't fully recovered.

It's like how Batman was able to beat up Superman in the climax of The Dark Knight Returns mainly because Superman had just been weakened by a nuclear detonation that blocked out the sun, the source of his power, and by a lightning strike during that period.

[burkeonthesly]

It still bothers me that Joker gets to exploit that weakness just 'cuz he's so darn crazy. I am deeply tired of god-mode Joker. Seeing him suffer a crippling moment of conscience is great, I just don't like the road they took to get there.

[lb_lee]

Ooh, headspace battles! I love those! I don't even care about the excuse, I just love when they happen and people (usually crazy) get to utilize their own twisted rules of reality to their benefit. (There's a reason in my own superhero serial, I have a mentally ill superhero who gets hired purely because of their resistance to mind control.)

Joker's really hit or miss for me most of the time, but I really enjoy how his mindscape is depicted here, and how he's undone by the same rules he exploits. The image of him in a fetal ball of soul-killing horror is particularly striking for me.