#bat reference

Another doodle based on actual vampire bats.🦇

I don't think hes crazy. Paul dini and Grant Morrison a both said something similar. Morrison even used the term super-sanity. 

“It’s quite possible we may actually be looking at some kind of super-sanity here. A brilliant new modification of human perception, more suited to urban life at the end of the twentieth century…He creates himself each day. He sees himself as the lord of misrule and the world as a theatre of the absurd.”

And I have to agree with that. I don't see the Joker as just crazy. I don't see him as the comic relief. I don't see him as just psychotic. In all of the best representations of him he's portrayed as having a genius-level intellect. One that rivals Bruce and Lex Luther both. So thinking back to that term of super-sanity. I think it's almost like how a scientist would view a lab rat. His mind is on such a different level, he sees the world from such a wider scope, that he doesn't care about the small and petty lives of the rest of us. The Joker sees how truly impossible and magnificent and chaotic the world is. 

“All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.” 

The Joker is a man who sees behind the curtain of that stage. And that's the joke. The lives that people live, the so-called normal nuclear families that they have, the 1.5 children, the white picket fence, the 9-5 office job. All those little things that people think make life worth living are actually the lies we tell ourselves in order to cope with the fact that we are just a tiny speck of dust in this sprawling and incomprehensible universe.

“And in a weird way I think he’s a hundred percent sane. I think the things he does, the way he dresses, the way he acts, is kind of an act. That he’s like a performance artist. Everybody says nobody would behave that way. And The Joker has the sort of clarity where he knows what he’s doing, he enjoys what he doing, he enjoys what he’s doing, he loves what he’s doing. And that must come from madness inside him. And I mean, I think Grant Morrison said something  something similar like that he’s sane in this weird insane way. I’m badly paraphrasing what he was saying. But it’s almost like a super-sanity, I think. And I’ve often felt that about about the Joker too. That his greatest joke is convincing people that he’s insane when he’s actually just this bastard. And, uh, well he’s a sociopath. There’s no doubt about that. Whether or not he’s he’s clinically insane is another matter.” -Paul Dini

And he believes that the Batman is on his level. He believes that the Batman has his same level of intelligence, the same capabilities of seeing what he believes to be the bigger picture. The Joker believes that the Batman is capable of so much more, but it's his need to defend the lie of these petty little innocent lives that's holding him back. All of the atrocities that the Joker commits, are a gift to the Batman. The Joker is trying to open his eyes. Trying to push the Batman over the edge so that he could finally break from the delusion and reach his full potential.

And I love that the Joker was in some ways created by the Batman. I know that his origins have changed from time to time, but the most common one is that he fell into a vat of chemicals during his first confrontation with the Batman. I believe that the Joker was always intelligent, I believe that he believed there was more to the world. But he grew up in a society, in a culture, that ingrained in him the same lie that we all have about what life is supposed to be. That moment of being on the edge of death, facing that new and exciting and nightmarish figure of the Batman for the first time, then being pushed into those chemicals and changing in ways he never would have expected, I think all of those things are what forced The Joker to open his eyes and become what he is now. Maybe that's the cause for his obsession with Batman, his need to give back to the one who birthed him into this new way of life and this new way of thinking.

And when I think of it in those terms, I can understand where the Joker is coming from. Batman lost his parents when he was a nine-year-old child. It wasn't some mass conspiracy. It wasn't a super villain. They weren't targeted for being rich. It was just a random mugging from a random person in a random dark alley. It was meaningless. Wrong place at the wrong time. A moment of Chaos. And Batman has grown up since then devoting his life to logic and reason. Becoming a detective, pouring himself into the Sciences, searching for meaning. Trying to understand crime in order to end it, and prevent it before it happens to someone else. Batman is all about logic and order and reason because he has to be. Because if he wasn't a man of reason, he would crack and lose his mind. He holds on so tightly to what he believes in because if he didn't, he might see the world just chaotic as the Joker sees it. 

To me, that is the point of the Joker. He's not meant to have an origin story. Not really. He's not meant to be someone you can sympathize with. He's meant to be the Batman's opposite. He is the agent of chaos, meant to tempt the man who is constantly on the edge.

Jared Leto sending a rat in the mail to Margot Robbie, and bullets to Viola Davis in some poor attempt to emulate the joker for the Suicide Squad movie was just insulting. insulting to the joker, to his cast mates, and to the profession of acting. he wasn’t acting like The Joker, he was acting like some emo-goth-columbine shooter worshipping-marilyn manson listening-hot topic shopping-hichschool asshole. that’s not the Joker. 

and now this new movie? this Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix Joker origin story doesn’t resemble anything of the Joker to me either. giving him a name. Arthur Fleck. A.Fleck. a name that is an obvious dig at a former Batman actor. it’s too much. a Joker origin isn’t needed. and a Joker story without the Batman is missing the entire point of the Joker. 

She knows what it means to be built into something terrible. The strength it takes to turn away from. She knows what it means to be alone, to be seperated from every instinct that raised you. She knows what it means to be an Orphan.

Detective Comics 950

i know that i’ve posted some of this before. but i can’t remember how i tagged it so i’m posting again. i took some pages out so it fits the tumblr pic limit. 

You are not what they made you to be. You are something more. You are what you choose to be. [...] You aren’t a monster, that’s what they tried to make you. But it didn’t work. You are a hero. Because that’s the path you took yourself. 

Writer and co-father of Harley Quinn did a recent interview with Chris Hardwick to talk about his new book Dark Knight: A true Batman story

Paul Dini: Well you know, you can sit down and be a victim or you can stand up and go on. And you gotta stand up, you know, it's the... the choice is up to you. And these are choices we make a lot through our lives, maybe every day, that we don't really recognize. But victim or hero, those are the roles that are quite often presented to you. And are you going to take them or are you going to take it from the world or are you going to do something for yourself

Chris: Did Batman help you?

Paul: He did. Because the character was in my head at the time. And when I was writing the show, I was thinking about him and his world and those characters 24/7. And it's very easy for me to ...um… as I live in my head a lot, to personify emotions or feelings or questions with another character. So I’ve always thought of Batman as a very stern character. I never really thought of him as a chum or a buddy or even very likeable character. He is somebody who is almost like a mean dad who just says “get up” you know, almost like a drill sergent who says “this is not right. I know what's right and wrong and what's right often times is hard and there's no room for compromise. It is black and white. There is no room for debate. If you want it,  get up and if you want to go on, you have to do this. And when I put it in those terms and when I can imagine his voice telling me that is like dispassionate and removed, it's like okay, I've got to do that.

You know, this is what happens. And I always think of it that way. You know. Once he puts on that mask, he’s pretty much a hardass.

Matt: Do you hear Kevin Conroy?

Paul: Oh yea. Oh yea. And, you know, as like I always hear Mark Hamill as The Joker. The Joker's the voice of things like “stay in, relax, order pizza.” you know “you can call in late. Your script was supposed to be in Thursday, it's Monday, you'll probably weasel to next Wednesday. Take it easy. Take out that girl you like.” It's the voice of Temptation. And that's the voice, the inner voice, that’s telling you these things. But at heart is kind of evil and it's like there's a bad part of yourself that wants you to fail. That knows that the outcome of the easy way is just destruction in some form or another. It's not... it's not the route to happiness. And at one point, you know, I, or the writer, confronts the Joker and says, you know, to really do you, to really get into your mindset, to embrace what you are and cruelty and all that stuff and think to fool yourself into a lifestyle and think that you're some way justified in being cruel or using cruelty, leads the person only to despair. And the Joker says “That’s the joke! Of course it does!” And.. and he knows because, nobody laughs harder at you then yourself in some way. And the Joker laughs at everybody because he wants, you know, because he’s the ultimate nihilist. He wants to crush things. To him, that’s great.

The Joker I always think of as a mad artist who, you know, he… he.. The art of destruction. Of totally taking everything away. To leave you absolutely humiliated. Maybe not even dead but just at the lowest point. That’s nirvana to him. It’s what he lives for.

Chris: Did you ever get into dark psychological reasons for why you think he does what he does?

Paul: He loves it!

Chris: He can’t just love it, there has to be a con.. there has to be a thing, you know. Is pain his art? Or is it just destruction his art?  

Paul: I feel that he must hate himself at some level so much that, that hatred must extend to everybody else. And in a weird way I think he's a hundred percent sane. I think the things he does, the way he dresses, the way he acts, is kind of an act. That he's like a performance artist. Everybody says nobody would behave that way. And The Joker has the sort of clarity where he knows what he's doing, he enjoys what he doing, he enjoys what he’s doing, he loves what he's doing. And that must come from madness inside him. And I mean, I think Grant Morrison said something  something similar like that he’s sane in this weird insane way. I’m badly paraphrasing what he was saying. But it’s almost like a super-sanity, I think. And I’ve often felt that about about the Joker too. That his greatest joke is convincing people that he’s insane when he’s actually just this bastard. And, uh, well he’s a sociopath. There’s no doubt about that. Whether or not he's he's clinically insane is another matter.

People have also asked me does the Joker ever really love Harley Quinn. And I kind of feel like he’s so far gone that like, real emotion doesn't work for him as I do about some of the other villains. But I do think that, kind of like Pygmalion,  Harley is a creation of his. Like, she is like a master work. That he took this trusting person, somebody who was giving him affection, emotion, and turned her into this sort of twisted work of art. And I think that he loves what she’s become. He loves what he made her. What he’s made of her. And she constantly surprises him And I think that may be as close as he can come to it. I look upon him, sort of like Pygmalion,  the guy who created like a perfect work of art and became obsessed and enchanted and it fell in love with it.

http://nerdist.com/nerdist-podcast-paul-dini/