Hi Sara and comicvine community,
The conversation got pretty heated in last week’s podcast, as always, Joker creates nothing but chaos, the dog chasing cars that he is.
I agree with you and loved your article, I too was really looking forward to the conclusion of Death of the Family and hoped these events would finally drive Batman to kill the Joker.
However, I knew that since this arc is attached to DC’s main continuity, if you can call it that, also meant that it was virtually impossible for such an event to take place.
Furthermore, in order for Batman to be driven to finish the Joker for good, at least one, meaningful, if not all members of the family would have to be killed.
Which seem also impossible, has they all have their own ongoing series.
Comic books remains a business, but if we disregard those facts and dream for a minute, the events throughout the story arc and the premise of that last issue, was leaving very little room for it’s climax.
Who would die? Which death would have pushed Batman’s to cross the one line, he refused to cross for so long?
Well, all of them would do, of course, but in my opinion, the two deaths that could have driven Batman to kill, would have been Alfred’s and or Damian’s, as Jason’s death didn’t pushed Bruce over the edge before, it would have seem strange to me that the death of either Red Hood (again), Nightwing or even Batgirl suddenly sparked the fire.
The reason why I think Batman should end the Joker is because unlike his other villains, Joker is a monster that Batman created, the man clearly is not getting cured and the circus (pun intended), keeps on going leaving quite a death toll by now.
Which brings me to my other point, even if the fight between Batman and the Joker is a really personal one. What about the society Batman lives in? In the end, Batman’s role is not to be judge, jury and executioner and no one would feel confortable if Batman suddenly decided to take on this role.
Clearly, a man like the Joker would have been dealt with at this point, I really feel like Gotham as a whole are being a dismissive on Joker by relying on Batman to catch him again and again, while avoiding to take that one decision that would make sense at this point.
Beyond all of these arguments, I still loved the arc and it’s conclusion, Scott Snyder brilliantly tied the story together and the outcome makes complete sense in the context of his story, and everything is served so brilliantly by Greg Capullo's outstanding art. In the end, this is a great comic all around, people like us Sara, can always read Miller’s Dark Knight Returns again and call it even and hope that one day, it will happen for real and that Batman takes over the league of assassin.
Would we be able to get Scott on the Podcast this week ? How great it would be to hear the opinion of the creator on this.
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