@IamKryptonite: Like seriously what is up with DC and red and black color schemes? I loved the blue and black Nightwing costume because it had something unique about it (read: gauntlets and finger stripes...) and the red lenses/eyes thing seems wierd. Then theres tim drake's new costume...
What your failing to realize man is that batmans villians are suppossed to be both his opposite and a dark reflection, like a metaphorical bat-mirror. Think of it this way: doesnt jokers wildly flamboyount style, almost feminine, loud, and boisterous demanor contrast perfectly with the mysteriously frightening and brooding direction our dark knight delves into? Joker says it himself that he and Bats are more alike than he wants to admit, like two sociopaths walking in opposite directions down arkham's hallway. While bats always has focus and motive, jokers appear to raise hell for..well, the hell of it. Batman is at the peak of physical perfection, yet his frail clownish nemesis has bested him in combat before. And the fact that jokers ability to go two-to-two with Bats fluctuates adds to his percieved notion of changing character depending on the day. Jokers has developed as the dcu's free agent capable of matching both wits and brawns with the best (just ask alexander luthors head) when he feels like it. Joker is an enigma, who knows when hes telling the truth, and i think the writers have been using him as an impasse of the direction batman could go in had he broken psychologically. After all, isnt every batman villian as obsessed with him as he is with keeping some "punk with a gun" off the streets? Batman comics are as much about narrative as they are about detective work and fisticuffs. And notice, he has all this brilliant characterization partly BECAUSE he is a complete 180* of bats and BECAUSE he is, physically, very comical. Joker is plenty scary without being obvious, although i love heath ledgers depiction and i like how joker has that glasgow smile now, the dcu's colorful, clown garbed, version just works better in a comic book.
P.S. Technically you can't count what happened in batman #1 because of that little crisis thing back in the 80's, plus wasnt that earth-one whch doesnt exist anyhow.
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