Scans_Daily

Now, this entry should not surprise anyone familiar with my posts here. I've been singing Mr. Dixon's praises since almost the day I discovered Batman, and now, many years after the fact, that hasn't changed.



( Behind the cut: the greatest Batman writer to ever rock a Hawaiian shirt! )

This should surprise no one who's familiar with my posts in this community, nor, really, anyone who pays attention to my username.

I. Love. The. Joker. Always have, probably always will.

Now, I'm fully aware of the "Batman/the police/some civilian should totally kill this asshole Villain Sue!" sentiment on many corners of the Internet, and I can understand them. Hell, in some ways, I emphasize with them. For the last ten or fifteen years, the man who once proudly called himself the Clown Prince of Crime has been headed down a pretty steep slide into mindless, humorless violence (interspersed with those obnoxious events that shove themselves in our faces and scream "SEE! SEE? THE JOKER IS BATMAN'S #1 VILLAIN AGAIN! HE'S NO LAUGHING MATTER NOW, BABY!"), and if anything, the DCnU and Scott Snyder have only exacerbated it.

And yet... and yet, no matter how low his low points get, they can never quite cancel out the highs. Perhaps those high points will never return, but even if that's so, he's already got plenty under his belt for us to peruse at our leisure.

Besides, I just can't hate a face like this.



( The Best of the J-Man, behind the cut! )

Yeah. I had a bunch more "Villains Being Awesome" moments to post, but there are so, so few days of October left. Ergo, I decided to lump several of them into one post!

As a last-ditch effort to establish some kind of connecting theme beyond "Batman villains", I chose the three villains featured in what popular opinion has deemed the worst Batman film to date, Batman & Robin. If anyone deserves to have their awesomeness trumpeted and the reputations that that movie gave them destroyed, it's these three. And I say that as a guy who's usually apathetic (at best) to two of them.

( Behind the cut: What Ahnold, Uma, and Swenson should have been! )