Laughter After Midnight

[cyberghostface]

This is from The Batman Adventures Annual #1.

Joker finds himself thrown from a blimp amidst a battle with Batman.









Joker calls Harley and asks for a ride home but she's already been detained by the police. Another officer tries to stop him.

Comments

[lordultimus]

Is it sad that I miss this Joker?

[tianyulong]

No, I miss him too.

[icon_uk]

I love this take on the Joker and that's a genuinely unsettling last line.

My one gripe is that he still kills too many people, my preferred idea would be the Joker in the donut shop NOT killing the kid (there's not even a punchline), but instead tip him well, and tell him that he's been VERY impressed with Stan's service and that he intends to make this is regular donut stop, and he will ALWAYS expect Stan to serve him, regardless of when he shows up, and that he will be... dangerously upset if Stan's not there. That way he still destroy poor Stan's life (as in "Joker's Favour") but doesn't have to kill him to do it.

[dcbanacek]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06sCA8KOgjA

[scelestus]

I agree- I'm not a fan of the Joker as godlike murderer. Your solution makes the Joker actually interesting, and seemingly crazier than he's depicted. Which I like.

Honestly, if he's just running around the city killing people at random, the best thing the cops could do is just shoot him in the head. Problem solved.

[dcbanacek]

Yeah, lets be honest here. A cop comes up on the Joker, sees who it is, discharges his service weapon 10-15 times, "where upon the suspect proceeded to stop", reloads, shoots the Joker in the head 10-15 times, reloads, does it AGAIN and I bet he wouldn't even get an unofficial or even an official reprimand.

[icon_uk]

He'd get a bleedin' PARADE!

[cypherfdp]

I think Joker would approve, it's a pretty funny way for Batman's archenemy to go out.

[crinos]

I recall a comic where Joker stops at this fancy restaurant or something with a valet, and he gives the valet his car keys, and the valet is freaking out like "Oh my God you're gonna kill me." And Joker is like "I'm not going to kill you I only kill someone when its funny."

[lego_joker]

Neil Gaiman's Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader. I don't care much for it overall, but Gaiman's Joker steals pretty much every damn scene he's in.

[crinos]

Wasn't that the one where a bunch of people were giving Eulogies for Batman with radically different versions, and one of them was Alfred, whose version was that all the Bat rogues were just Alfred and his actor friends playing pretend for Bruce to keep him from hurting himself against real criminals, and Alfred himself was the Joker?

[beeyo]

Yup. It was the first story I read that focused more on Martha than Thomas

[beeyo]

Either I am getting a serious case of deja vu, or I've read nearly this exact comment before, possibly on the issue where Joker takes Tim for a Christmas joyride.

That's not a slight at you, by the way. I agree 100 percent, but I'm pretty sleep deprived at the moment and this is seriously messing with me.

[icon_uk]

Well spotted! :) I've posted this exact same comment before when this story was previously posted.

I am old and set in my ways

:P

[sadoeuphemist]

I honestly don't see how that makes him any better. He'd still be a godlike sadist who can threaten to ruin a person's life without worrying about facing any repercussions for it. He can just say outright, I'll be coming back to this shop, and not all the police protection in the world will be able to stop him.

What's the significant difference if, instead of killing people, he just terrorizes them and ruins their lives? It's even more needlessly cruel that way, I think.

[cyberghostface]

Better as in more effective/scarier.

[sadoeuphemist]

I don't see how it would be more effective either, because like I said, it's just giving him godlike plot powers where he can threaten to become a regular of this donut shop, and all the police on Earth will be powerless to stop him.

It's just making the Joker do something arbitrarily terrible, and everyone else just throws up their hands and goes, welp, nothing we can do!

[cyberghostface]

I suppose but by that criteria pretty much any human Batman villain would fall under the same criticism given how often they escape Arkham and cause chaos without any real comeuppance.

[sadoeuphemist]

I mean, there's a difference between a villain, like, releasing toxic gas over the city or whatever, and a villain walking into a donut shop and threatening to keep coming back and terrorizing the donut shop clerk.

Instead of doing something dramatic or cool or important to the plot, it's a villain using their plot immunity to make a single person extremely uncomfortable.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

There's something to be said for variety, too.

[icon_uk]

Couple of points. It makes him WORSE, not better, but it does so by making him more varied.

It shows the Joker is more than a murder machine, that he thinks about what he's doing. He MIGHT kill you, but he might not, that's part of the joke to him, if he can think of another way of wrecking your life, he'll use it.

It makes him crueller, because he's consciously picking on the little guy.

I don't get where you assume this gives him godlike plot powers, for starters you're assuming he's actually telling the truth, he probably will never come back at all, but Stan doesn't know that, and can't take that chance. In four years time the Joker might come back just rto amuse himself, and either find Stan there for his six zillionth shift in this tedious little shop, in which case he's won by wrecking his life, or he's not, in which case he has an excuse to blow the place up (or somesuch).

And sadly, even in real life the police can't always do very much against what the Joker would be saying.

[sadoeuphemist]

For starters, this whole sequence is Joker demonstrating godlike plot powers. He tools around town, blows up a building, kills a few people, knocks out the single cop who tries to stop him and escapes effortlessly. He is, as balbanes said, like the player character in GTA, except more so. He's effectively immune to consequences.

But more to the point, there's essentially an infinite amount of variation of cruelty one can inflict without killing. He could, like, permanently maim Stan, or force Stan to do something reprehensible, or torture him, or whatever whatever whatever. Not all of these variations are going to be interesting.

Take your suggestion: In response, either Stan quits and gets a new job as soon as he is able, or he decides it's a freak occupational hazard and he keeps working there. Either way, life goes on. You're imagining a possible scenario where Stan unwillingly keeps working the same dead-end job for years just because he's so terrified of the Joker's offhand threat - this not even remotely a plausible outcome. You're imputing to the Joker such an aura of terror that he could plausibly destroy a person's life just by making an extremely corny threat. It's ridiculous. That's what I mean when I say you're making him godlike.

[icon_uk]

I genuinely struggling to get where you're coming from in this discussion, A supervillain acting like a supervillain, in a superhero comic. is not really anything new, and genuine consequences being a sure thing left the building in about 1939 and it aren't coming back. (After all, our hero is simultaneously stronger than a weightlifter, more agile than a gymnast, swings between buildings for hours at a time without wrenching his arms out of his sockets and successfully fights mixed martial arts whilst wearing a cape that varies between 6 and 30 feet long depending on the ambient level of drama.)

Part and parcel of that universe is that villains are immune from consequences until they're not.. Otherwise the Riddler would be blown away by a SWAT team during the first of his half dozen themed crimes.

Of course Joker could maim, and hurt, but I didn't suggest them because to me they're NOT interesting approaches narratively, and I wanted to suggest something completely other than murder. (I do distinguish between killing with consequence and being a criminal without consequence)

You're imagining a possible scenario where Stan unwillingly keeps working the same dead-end job for years just because he's so terrified of the Joker's offhand threat - this not even remotely a plausible outcome.

Why not, reputation is everything in these situations. Look at "Joker's Favour", which is pretty much exactly the setup I described, the Joker using intimidation and the implied threat of harm, based on his reputation for ruthless and quixotic lethality, to destroy a person's life because he thinks it's fun (or worse, actually thinks he's being a nice guy about it). He never once physically injures the guy in all those years because he never has to. When he is finally forced to confront the consequences, he backs down because he claims it's not fun any more.

Of course Stan could get help from Batman and the GCPD and witness protection and so on, and maybe he would, but this is a story told from the Joker's POV so we never see ANY consequences, but Stan has no reason to believe that Joker wouldn't be telling the truth, and is he prepared to risk that chance? That uncertainty is where the story comes from and it seems to be a more interesting story than "Joker kills shop assistant for no real reason."

You're imputing to the Joker such an aura of terror that he could plausibly destroy a person's life just by making an extremely corny threat. It's ridiculous.

And par for the course. Especially since half the Gotham underworld has has been believing that Batman is a possibly demonic entity since before the start of World War II. Of course it's ridiculous, but that doesn't mean it can't be entertaining.

[sadoeuphemist]

They're not the same at all. In Joker's Favor, Charlie is forced to promise a personal favor to the Joker, not some vague threat about the Joker possibly returning to his place of employment someday. And even then, he does not live in fear for the rest of his life. He relocates and changes his name, uproots his life, sure. But having done that, he is actually peaceful and contented until the Joker calls him. His life only goes to shit again after the Joker goes to all that effort to track him down and demand the return of his favor.

Stan's solution is even simpler: he quits his donut job and finds a new one.

Your suggestion completely skips the 'Joker putting in effort' part. Just the threat, and oh no, his life is ruined. If that was the entire plot of Joker's Favor, no, I don't think it would be entertaining, it would just be sadistic and masturbatory, where a guy runs into the Joker once and then ruins his own life for him.

[commodus]

I think making The Joker kill too many people kind of misses the point about his character, namely that he's a clown, and the danger comes from the unpredictability of what he might do.

[crinos]

Yeah, again one of my favorite all time Joker stories is from the Joker's asylum Horror Anthology. in the issue about the Joker himself, he takes a talk show hostage, and the director refuses to stop rolling or to call the cops or help because he thinks having the Joker kill someone on live TV would be good for ratings. And the Joker proceeds to just play harmless practical jokes on the hostages without killing anyone, and the director becomes more and more unhinged until he's chomping at the bit for Joker to kill someone.... and its revealed that Joker was videotaping and broadcasting the Director acting this way the entire time.

So Joker manages to ruin someone's life without harming a single person.

[lordultimus]

He even calls out the audience at home for continuing to watch just to see what would happen next.

[balbanes]

Too many pointless murders. This is like watching a preteen play Grand Theft Auto.

Also... that is an inordinate amount of jelly in that jelly donut. Would be fine if it were Joker Donut, but I got the impression it's a normal version that was procured from the donut shop earlier.

[icon_uk]

If the Joker says he wants jelly FILLED... would you want to be the one to say "No!?

[lego_joker]

Now imagine him at a Build-a-Bear workshop ordering a Bulbasaur...

[bradygirl_12]

Poor ol' Stan.

I don't care if I had to hitchhike, I'd get out of Gotham. My life expectancy would go way up.