The Joker. He's a sadomasochist who has Batman all figured out & wrapped around his finger. He likes to recieve pain as much as he likes to distribute it, so beating him up is just part of his scheme. Litteraly, he expects Batman to play the usual song & dance of showing up, fighting, & waiting for the little men in white coats to haul him back home.
Sending him to Arkham is pointless since he used to live in the mansion it was built over. He knows all the escape routs.
He's a master of escape: straighjackets, cuffs, exploding buildings, crashing helecoptors; he's escaped them all.
He's never boring; lying, reinventing himself, a new origing story every year, he's unpredictable & whismsy. I'm actaly sometimes ashames of how little Batman seems to know about him when no matter how unique the scheme, the Joker likes to follow a repetitive pattern.
He knows who Batman really is & doesn't really give a shit. He also knows how Batman works, what he will & won't do. He didn't in the earlier campy days & in the earlier Modern Age comics, but it's like I said, he's got him all figured out know & knows how to push his buttons.
Much to Batman's ire, if the Joker is in a sticky situation, Batman's no-kill policy demands that he rescue the Joker. Knowing this, the Joker will sometimes put himself in danger & laugh when Batman does the predictable. It goes two-ways. If anyone but the Joker were to kill Batman, the Joker would be one of the first people out there seeking revenge for his death. Aside from reading a statement form Dido (I believe it was him) that Bruce doesn't die in RIP, the Joker's reaction to the situation in RIP was a give-away that he wasn't really helping Hurt, even before he mentioned that he used nonlethal gas.
He hates Batman wannabes. While he won't kill THE Batman, anyone who shows up in his place or works with him is free-game; Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Azrael, Catwoman, etc. I'll be super pissed if he doesn't play a big part in getting Bruce out of his funk & back in black.
He's the king of anarchy; no rules, no restrictions.
The other villains of Gotham are afraid of him. Even Killer Crock takes orders from him. He's like the boss of Arkham. He's also held his own against Hush & Lex Luthor, but he's still got a score to settle with Bane & probably Ra's al Ghul too. The new Sweeny Todd makeover makes me believe that he will be a better fighter who won't need to rely on henchmen anymore, though he might still hire some in the future for paltry missions & target practice.
He doesn't need muscles & a gay skin-tight suit.
He fights women like equals instead of going easy on them like weaklings.
Batman is not the only person who thinks of Joker as his ultimate nemesis. I'm pretty sure Oracle, Red Robin, Nightwing, & Robin share that sentiment.
No one can be used as a hostage against him. He doesn't even care if Harley dies. He doesn't have a concience & a code of morals to restrain him (that's one of the reasons his sentiment for his dead wife in Gotham Knights pissed me off. The other is because he was lamenting about the past. That's faux pas in itself.)
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