We join Captain Gordon at the scene of a grisly crime, where at least 10 bodies have been found hideously disfigured in a disused warehouse. Crime scene technicians and paramedics alike are physically sick at the sight of the horrors within. Batman isn't far behind - having received the call on his police scanner at the end of Batman and the Mad Monk - and gives his theory on what has happened here. Someone has been 'practicing'.
Gordon's inner monologue questions 'What the hell is happening to my city?' - clearly wishing for a return to the days where Carmine Falcone was the worst thing to happen to Gotham City.
Not long after, a broadcast from outside Arkham Asylum is interrupted when the newsreader bursts into hysterical laughter, literally laughing herself to death. A man with a shock of green hair, skin deathly white, steps out from the shadows and greets Gothan and it's Gothamites. He makes the bold claim that one of their top businessmen will die at midnight that night, before executing the cameraman.
Bruce Wayne witnesses this whilst at some sort of function with the man in question - Henry Claridge - and quickly escapes down a ventilation shaft, before heading to Arkham in the Batmobile.
We rejoin Jim Gordon, seeing hints of the corruption that he still has to deal with as the police commissioner and the mayor both throw him to the wolves (Gotham's press) at a press conference regarding the threat against Claridge's life. One of the press even seems to give The Joker his name.
Batman battles this crazed clown at every twist and turn of his plan, finding links between the victims only to be thrown off balance when something doesn't fit. He dons another of his disguises and sees a worker at the old ACE Chemical factory with a strange white discolouration on his face. Despite all his training though, Batman does seem to struggle at times with this new type of criminal.
What I love about the Joker is the way he seems to be acting without a plan on the surface, but his insanity is sometimes a mask for the criminal genius underneath. He strolls around, murdering people without a second thought and cracking jokes, yet he spends at least a month perfecting his Joker toxin. Not to mention there are times when he really does seem to outthink Batman, at least in this early stage of his career. He switches his M.O. from a fast acting toxin, to slow, to an all out assault on someone's home.
The only way Batman is able to beat him is to change the way he thinks. Before the final attack - aimed at both Bruce Wayne and Judge Lake - Wayne even admits that this was not the sort of criminal he had trained for. Eventually it is only when he injects himself with the Joker toxin, twisting his mind so he can think like the Joker, that he is able to decipher his plan and defeat him.
Batman's Rogues Gallery are the best villains in all of comics, in my opinion. When written well, they are the only villains that can truly push their hero to the limit and force him to change the way he fights. Batman's villains make him a better hero. Some may disagree with me, but Superman is never really in danger from the villains he faces. The Flash's villains are more organised, sure, but they never consistently push him to change the way he fights, not always anyway. I can't even name many interesting Green Lantern villains apart from Sinestro.
The Joker also adapts every time he is defeated. His personality shifts, which whilst more a case of changing writers than anything else, is attributed to a new condition by Grant Morrison in Arkham Asylum and then his 6+ year run on Batman.
It is fitting that The Joker is the first 'freak' that Batman faces that really tests him in this timeline. It wouldn't be the same if it was the Penguin or Poison Ivy. When you look at the timeline as a whole, their careers are so intertwined, intersecting at all of the key events. Batman even created The Joker, if you believe that version of his origin story. And as we see here, The Joker helps to recreate the Batman and his way of thinking, of fighting crime.
It'll be interesting to see how Batman is forced to adapt the next time they meet...
Next up - Four of a Kind.
No comments:
Post a Comment