Aren't those limited series like the Watchman or Sin City or 300? And the only reason not every IP is made that way is because creators like to milk things for as much as possible (just like movies and games that should never have had a sequel do?).
I'm not really familiar with comic books, but don't Batman and Superman and their ilk also have limited series with their own independent storylines? They just happen to fall to the wayside because they're not 'part of the canon'?
President Rex on
0
Options
Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
Wouldn't it be similar Mob cases though? Yeah a policeman could kill the Joker but does anyone want to single themselves out as the guy who will kill super villains? I bet that guy would have lasted 12 hours before some Joker goons or Scarecrow killed him in a very painful and public way. Hell we're taking about a town that's been corrupted worse than any real town in history. Half the force is crooked and the mob has run the city for decades.
No cop would rat out another cop for shooting a multiple cop-killer. In the real world, much less brutal and corrupt police departments are willing to cover up the shooting of far less dangerous criminals.
The reason more criminals don't get shot by cops IRL is because most criminals, even the hardcore gangster types, know that there are certain lines that you don't cross. Killing a cop is one of those. Yeah, the Mafia is tough and will go after you if you cross them. But even they know better than to target cops.
But the criminals in Gotham don't really seem to follow those rules. They are able to kill cops with impunity, more or less. Which I always found pretty unrealistic. The idea that a police department as tough as the GPD would let these costumed lunatics get away with killing large numbers of cops kind of defies logic. If anything, crazy costumed supervillains would be in even more danger from the police than your average cop-killer. Shooting the Scarecrow or the Joker after they murdered a couple cops would send a pretty serious message to the costumed villain community- i.e., there's more of us, we have the power of the state behind us, sooner or later Batman or some other do-gooder will capture you and no one will say "boo" if you "accidentally" fall out of a GPD helicopter.
Modern Man on
Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
Rigorous Scholarship
I imagine that because there is so much corruption in the government forces that criminals get away with shooting cops because they've paid off the right people. Easy when 1/3 of the force is owned by the Italian and 1/3 the force is owned by the Russian, the the other 1/3 is scared of both. According to Gotham Knight the Russian and Italian were enemies at one point.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
I imagine that because there is so much corruption in the government forces that criminals get away with shooting cops because they've paid off the right people. Easy when 1/3 of the force is owned by the Italian and 1/3 the force is owned by the Russian, the the other 1/3 is scared of both. According to Gotham Knight the Russian and Italian were enemies at one point.
But there's a difference between organized crime and the costumed villains that bedevil Gotham. Maybe organized crime will kill cops in the regular course of business, but random violence against large numbers of civilians and cops isn't really their goal. If anything, organized crime is happy to avoid such messiness. Not much profit in blowing up a police station.
On the other hand, the Joker and Scarecrow don't have cops in their pocket. And they're happy to kill cops, regardles of whether those cops are owned by organized crime or not. So, if one of those costumed lunatics kills cops, there's really nothing preventing the police from engaging in extrajudicial retribution against them.
Modern Man on
Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
Rigorous Scholarship
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds.2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
0
Options
MalReynoldsThe Hunter S Thompson of incredibly mild medicinesRegistered Userregular
edited January 2011
I actually wrote a story about Batman and his impotence when it comes to silencing the Joker.
I look out over the rain slicked streets of my city, pulling a drag off my cigarette and wincing as my reflection illuminates in the window. The veins that run between the buildings, that pump life blood through the purple and bloated corpse of my home are empty. They’re always empty at night now. Didn’t used to be that way – there was a time when commerce thrived and people weren’t afraid to leave the safety of their homes or tenement houses or wherever the hell they’re living. Even the drug trade is down.
Surprising, I know, because Time Magazine named my fair city to have one of the highest concentration of narcotics peddlers in the United States. It makes perfect sense, as everyone knows that my city has more vice cops on the take than Vegas.
My city has been a graveyard ever since those two egomaniacs took their battle to the streets.
Shitheads.
I take another drag off my cigarette and pay careful attention so that I don’t see myself again. Too many scars on my face to count. That’s what happens when you get a face full of glass just for walking around. Heading down Beaumont Avenue, six or seven weeks ago – shit, or is it eight? who knows – when I hear an airplane. At least, I thought it was an airplane. The goddamn engine sounded so loud, I started having flashbacks to 9/11 and all the repeat footage the news birds regurgitated down the throats of us waiting chicks. But it wasn’t an airplane. It was that goddamn car, that signature icon that makes some people in this city proud. Never made me proud. Especially not after that night.
I didn’t even see who was being chased. I saw the car pass as a black blur over my shoulder, ruffling my coat and sending a fine spray of stagnant puddle water over my clothes, and I was plenty mad about that, until I lost the feeling of gravity. Upthrust like I was pulled by a harness into the air with heat scorching my back, and before I knew the ground from the sky I was flying through a window across the street, a human projectile shot forth from the cannon of Beaumont by a stray explosive. I landed on top of a mannequin in Grady’s Fashion Boutique, a store that I never would have normally set foot in to, but when you’re being carried by an explosion you don’t really get to dictate where you land.
As I lay, bleeding from my face which had so conveniently broken the window so the rest of my body could pass through, I thought about all the water that goddamn eyesore had splashed on me, and how I couldn’t tell in the dark what was the moldy street puddle or my own insides.
I spent weeks in the hospital. The doctor told me I was lucky to still have my life, that one of the pieces of glass had buried itself in my neck a few inches from my carotid artery and that had things played out a little differently, I wouldn’t be here anymore.
If things had played out differently?
The cops found three liquids at the scene of my accident – the water that I carried in with me on my coat, the blood, which I lovingly spilled from my face, and the milk that I purchased from Zhang’s Corner Market.
If things had played out differently, I wouldn’t have gone out to buy milk.
I would have just turned on the news the next morning, eating toast instead of an IV drip, and acted irritated that those two confused idiots had spilled their petty shit into civilian life one more time. The cycle would have repeated, too. The same shit would have happened a week after and I would have felt the same.
Seventy stitches to your face will change your life philosophy pretty quick.
They’re both menaces.
I stub my cigarette out and keep staring at the street.
After my accident – the coppers called it such, not me, that’s not a name I would give it, accidents imply there is no one at fault and maybe the cops just want to look the other way because of all the ‘good’ that comes from the public foist, the private grudge match turned Pay-Per-View event, who knows, I think the Commissioner is in on it anyway – I started thinking. I knew I wasn’t the only person who had been hurt by this, by the senseless violence traipsing around under the guise of heroism, but no one ever came forward.
Heroes get put on pedestals, made of bullshit and politics and fear that without that symbol, that person standing atop the ivory pillar adorned with laurels, their world will collapse, break. Like a window that average Joe Citizen gets flung through for walking after dusk.
I kept thinking about that so called do-gooder and how no matter how many times he catches his quarry, it’s only a matter of time before the insanity begins again. Before his prey blows up another building or holds a bus full of kids hostage. Before the hero begins the hunt and the game escalates and more people die and are injured on both sides, by the trapper and his victim.
The people cry out, only he can save us.
Yeah.
He saves us a lot, doesn’t he?
He keeps letting us get hurt, too.
In the violence cycle, they call the euphoric state after the outburst the ‘Honeymoon Phase.’ It’s characterized by an apparent end to the violence and sometimes an apology, like that talking head on the news expressing grief over the lives lost, the Commissioner standing right behind him like a goddamn shadow, nodding solemnly like he gets it.
The people buy it. They eat that shit right up and ask for seconds. Everything seems peaceful while the prey is locked up, because the state says you can’t execute someone who is criminally insane. Then the tension starts to mount. We hear the report that there’s been an escape at the nut house and yes, he managed to slip out. Again.
And again.
And again.
The people pray for their hero, their knight in shining armor to save them and he does, but everything just… repeats. It’s been this way for years.
The first day home from the hospital, it dawned on me. I was still eating through a straw and applying ointment that smelled like dogshit to my face every twenty minutes so my stitches wouldn’t get infected. Smearing that salve over barely closed wounds can make your mind wander onto anything that isn’t what you’re doing. I thought about the never ending hunt. About why all hunts usually come to an end. Because the animal or the hunter…
One of them has to die.
The hero, or the villain. It didn’t matter. If the hunter died, the animal would leave. If the animal died, the hunter would turn to other quarry.
And no quarry was as violent or unpredictable.
As I stare out my window, at the decaying corpse of my bloodless city, my heart skips a beat. At first, I thought it was just an ill advised civilian out for a stroll, but he’s wearing a coat – an unmistakable coat, a garish coat of his own making, a purple, almost velvet looking piece of garbage with a dead flower in the lapel, and best of all, he’s alone, walking along his own creation. None of his posse in sight.
I burst through the front door of my complex and freeze – he’s gone. I begin to think I imagined him walking along, when I hear his footfalls down the alley next to my building. Without hesitation, I follow. I manage a casual stroll even though the blood in my veins is both fire and ice.
Yeah, the so-called hero talks a big game but nothing ever changes. I don’t think he wants anything to change. I think without the thrill, without the threat, his life would be empty.
I’m okay with that.
The man in the purple coat has his head hung low and I can hear him humming ‘Oh-Susanna!’ under his breath and chuckling as he gets to the part about the banjo on the knee. Jesus, his laugh sends a chill down my spine. Ever since they started playing it on the news… it’s the sound nightmares are made of. Enough to make a child weep and a grown man cower.
I think of calling out, ‘Hey!’ or ‘Scumbag!’ or ‘Clown!’
But I decide to let my pistol do the talking.
And talk it does. Like an animal – like a lion roaring in the cage of a deserted circus, begging to be set free before it starves, my pistol roars. The man in the purple coat stumbles and clutches the brick of my apartment and tumbles to the ground. I let my gun speak for me again. Twice.
I know how tricky this bastard is. I’m not new. I don’t approach his body in case he has it booby-trapped with one of his jokes. He rolls himself over and stares at me, his pale eyes searching for any kind of recognition, but I know he won’t find any. I’m just a man with a fucked up face.
He smiles, the scars at the edge of his mouth pulling tight. I can’t tell if his lips are bloody or if that’s just the shade of makeup he wears.
And he laughs. Like he remembers some to-die for punch line he laughs and laughs until he’s spitting up blood onto his vest, onto his legs, onto the ground where it mixes with the stuff pumping from the holes in his back. He stares at me and it’s the most hilarious thing he’s ever seen, and he won’t stop laughing.
For a second, I think he’ll wake the whole city up.
Then he stops. His head rolls back and his eye close. His breathing slows.
His laugh echoes through the alleyway, through the streets, in between the buildings like a man bouncing around the padded walls of a cell until it finally fades. I stand, pistol still smoking and I indulge myself. Even though I know it will hurt, I allow myself the pain of a smile.
He’s dead.
I accomplished in one night what the so-called knight could never do. I don’t even care that the animal went out with a grin, with a laugh. It was kind of his bag anyway.
I know I’ll be tried for this. You can’t gun down a man in cold blood without standing trial. I might even be brought to the station by the egomaniac himself. I might get a chance to spit on the Commissioner!
When the press asks me how I could do it, I have an answer ready:
“It wasn’t so hard. I just shot him.”
Maybe they’ll laugh. I doubt it – not with the scars crisscrossing over my cheeks and forehead and nose and throat like a subway map, but maybe. It’s a good punch line. I think the animal would have appreciated it.
He was a joker anyway.
I understand the need for The Joker's existence, but at the same time, I'm shocked that another citizen hasn't offed the clown.
MalReynolds on
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
I actually wrote a story about Batman and his impotence when it comes to silencing the Joker.
I look out over the rain slicked streets of my city, pulling a drag off my cigarette and wincing as my reflection illuminates in the window. The veins that run between the buildings, that pump life blood through the purple and bloated corpse of my home are empty. They’re always empty at night now. Didn’t used to be that way – there was a time when commerce thrived and people weren’t afraid to leave the safety of their homes or tenement houses or wherever the hell they’re living. Even the drug trade is down.
Surprising, I know, because Time Magazine named my fair city to have one of the highest concentration of narcotics peddlers in the United States. It makes perfect sense, as everyone knows that my city has more vice cops on the take than Vegas.
My city has been a graveyard ever since those two egomaniacs took their battle to the streets.
Shitheads.
I take another drag off my cigarette and pay careful attention so that I don’t see myself again. Too many scars on my face to count. That’s what happens when you get a face full of glass just for walking around. Heading down Beaumont Avenue, six or seven weeks ago – shit, or is it eight? who knows – when I hear an airplane. At least, I thought it was an airplane. The goddamn engine sounded so loud, I started having flashbacks to 9/11 and all the repeat footage the news birds regurgitated down the throats of us waiting chicks. But it wasn’t an airplane. It was that goddamn car, that signature icon that makes some people in this city proud. Never made me proud. Especially not after that night.
I didn’t even see who was being chased. I saw the car pass as a black blur over my shoulder, ruffling my coat and sending a fine spray of stagnant puddle water over my clothes, and I was plenty mad about that, until I lost the feeling of gravity. Upthrust like I was pulled by a harness into the air with heat scorching my back, and before I knew the ground from the sky I was flying through a window across the street, a human projectile shot forth from the cannon of Beaumont by a stray explosive. I landed on top of a mannequin in Grady’s Fashion Boutique, a store that I never would have normally set foot in to, but when you’re being carried by an explosion you don’t really get to dictate where you land.
As I lay, bleeding from my face which had so conveniently broken the window so the rest of my body could pass through, I thought about all the water that goddamn eyesore had splashed on me, and how I couldn’t tell in the dark what was the moldy street puddle or my own insides.
I spent weeks in the hospital. The doctor told me I was lucky to still have my life, that one of the pieces of glass had buried itself in my neck a few inches from my carotid artery and that had things played out a little differently, I wouldn’t be here anymore.
If things had played out differently?
The cops found three liquids at the scene of my accident – the water that I carried in with me on my coat, the blood, which I lovingly spilled from my face, and the milk that I purchased from Zhang’s Corner Market.
If things had played out differently, I wouldn’t have gone out to buy milk.
I would have just turned on the news the next morning, eating toast instead of an IV drip, and acted irritated that those two confused idiots had spilled their petty shit into civilian life one more time. The cycle would have repeated, too. The same shit would have happened a week after and I would have felt the same.
Seventy stitches to your face will change your life philosophy pretty quick.
They’re both menaces.
I stub my cigarette out and keep staring at the street.
After my accident – the coppers called it such, not me, that’s not a name I would give it, accidents imply there is no one at fault and maybe the cops just want to look the other way because of all the ‘good’ that comes from the public foist, the private grudge match turned Pay-Per-View event, who knows, I think the Commissioner is in on it anyway – I started thinking. I knew I wasn’t the only person who had been hurt by this, by the senseless violence traipsing around under the guise of heroism, but no one ever came forward.
Heroes get put on pedestals, made of bullshit and politics and fear that without that symbol, that person standing atop the ivory pillar adorned with laurels, their world will collapse, break. Like a window that average Joe Citizen gets flung through for walking after dusk.
I kept thinking about that so called do-gooder and how no matter how many times he catches his quarry, it’s only a matter of time before the insanity begins again. Before his prey blows up another building or holds a bus full of kids hostage. Before the hero begins the hunt and the game escalates and more people die and are injured on both sides, by the trapper and his victim.
The people cry out, only he can save us.
Yeah.
He saves us a lot, doesn’t he?
He keeps letting us get hurt, too.
In the violence cycle, they call the euphoric state after the outburst the ‘Honeymoon Phase.’ It’s characterized by an apparent end to the violence and sometimes an apology, like that talking head on the news expressing grief over the lives lost, the Commissioner standing right behind him like a goddamn shadow, nodding solemnly like he gets it.
The people buy it. They eat that shit right up and ask for seconds. Everything seems peaceful while the prey is locked up, because the state says you can’t execute someone who is criminally insane. Then the tension starts to mount. We hear the report that there’s been an escape at the nut house and yes, he managed to slip out. Again.
And again.
And again.
The people pray for their hero, their knight in shining armor to save them and he does, but everything just… repeats. It’s been this way for years.
The first day home from the hospital, it dawned on me. I was still eating through a straw and applying ointment that smelled like dogshit to my face every twenty minutes so my stitches wouldn’t get infected. Smearing that salve over barely closed wounds can make your mind wander onto anything that isn’t what you’re doing. I thought about the never ending hunt. About why all hunts usually come to an end. Because the animal or the hunter…
One of them has to die.
The hero, or the villain. It didn’t matter. If the hunter died, the animal would leave. If the animal died, the hunter would turn to other quarry.
And no quarry was as violent or unpredictable.
As I stare out my window, at the decaying corpse of my bloodless city, my heart skips a beat. At first, I thought it was just an ill advised civilian out for a stroll, but he’s wearing a coat – an unmistakable coat, a garish coat of his own making, a purple, almost velvet looking piece of garbage with a dead flower in the lapel, and best of all, he’s alone, walking along his own creation. None of his posse in sight.
I burst through the front door of my complex and freeze – he’s gone. I begin to think I imagined him walking along, when I hear his footfalls down the alley next to my building. Without hesitation, I follow. I manage a casual stroll even though the blood in my veins is both fire and ice.
Yeah, the so-called hero talks a big game but nothing ever changes. I don’t think he wants anything to change. I think without the thrill, without the threat, his life would be empty.
I’m okay with that.
The man in the purple coat has his head hung low and I can hear him humming ‘Oh-Susanna!’ under his breath and chuckling as he gets to the part about the banjo on the knee. Jesus, his laugh sends a chill down my spine. Ever since they started playing it on the news… it’s the sound nightmares are made of. Enough to make a child weep and a grown man cower.
I think of calling out, ‘Hey!’ or ‘Scumbag!’ or ‘Clown!’
But I decide to let my pistol do the talking.
And talk it does. Like an animal – like a lion roaring in the cage of a deserted circus, begging to be set free before it starves, my pistol roars. The man in the purple coat stumbles and clutches the brick of my apartment and tumbles to the ground. I let my gun speak for me again. Twice.
I know how tricky this bastard is. I’m not new. I don’t approach his body in case he has it booby-trapped with one of his jokes. He rolls himself over and stares at me, his pale eyes searching for any kind of recognition, but I know he won’t find any. I’m just a man with a fucked up face.
He smiles, the scars at the edge of his mouth pulling tight. I can’t tell if his lips are bloody or if that’s just the shade of makeup he wears.
And he laughs. Like he remembers some to-die for punch line he laughs and laughs until he’s spitting up blood onto his vest, onto his legs, onto the ground where it mixes with the stuff pumping from the holes in his back. He stares at me and it’s the most hilarious thing he’s ever seen, and he won’t stop laughing.
For a second, I think he’ll wake the whole city up.
Then he stops. His head rolls back and his eye close. His breathing slows.
His laugh echoes through the alleyway, through the streets, in between the buildings like a man bouncing around the padded walls of a cell until it finally fades. I stand, pistol still smoking and I indulge myself. Even though I know it will hurt, I allow myself the pain of a smile.
He’s dead.
I accomplished in one night what the so-called knight could never do. I don’t even care that the animal went out with a grin, with a laugh. It was kind of his bag anyway.
I know I’ll be tried for this. You can’t gun down a man in cold blood without standing trial. I might even be brought to the station by the egomaniac himself. I might get a chance to spit on the Commissioner!
When the press asks me how I could do it, I have an answer ready:
“It wasn’t so hard. I just shot him.”
Maybe they’ll laugh. I doubt it – not with the scars crisscrossing over my cheeks and forehead and nose and throat like a subway map, but maybe. It’s a good punch line. I think the animal would have appreciated it.
He was a joker anyway.
I understand the need for The Joker's existence, but at the same time, I'm shocked that another citizen hasn't offed the clown.
Have you seen the recent DTV movie "Under the Red Hood"?
I actually wrote a story about Batman and his impotence when it comes to silencing the Joker.
I look out over the rain slicked streets of my city, pulling a drag off my cigarette and wincing as my reflection illuminates in the window. The veins that run between the buildings, that pump life blood through the purple and bloated corpse of my home are empty. They’re always empty at night now. Didn’t used to be that way – there was a time when commerce thrived and people weren’t afraid to leave the safety of their homes or tenement houses or wherever the hell they’re living. Even the drug trade is down.
Surprising, I know, because Time Magazine named my fair city to have one of the highest concentration of narcotics peddlers in the United States. It makes perfect sense, as everyone knows that my city has more vice cops on the take than Vegas.
My city has been a graveyard ever since those two egomaniacs took their battle to the streets.
Shitheads.
I take another drag off my cigarette and pay careful attention so that I don’t see myself again. Too many scars on my face to count. That’s what happens when you get a face full of glass just for walking around. Heading down Beaumont Avenue, six or seven weeks ago – shit, or is it eight? who knows – when I hear an airplane. At least, I thought it was an airplane. The goddamn engine sounded so loud, I started having flashbacks to 9/11 and all the repeat footage the news birds regurgitated down the throats of us waiting chicks. But it wasn’t an airplane. It was that goddamn car, that signature icon that makes some people in this city proud. Never made me proud. Especially not after that night.
I didn’t even see who was being chased. I saw the car pass as a black blur over my shoulder, ruffling my coat and sending a fine spray of stagnant puddle water over my clothes, and I was plenty mad about that, until I lost the feeling of gravity. Upthrust like I was pulled by a harness into the air with heat scorching my back, and before I knew the ground from the sky I was flying through a window across the street, a human projectile shot forth from the cannon of Beaumont by a stray explosive. I landed on top of a mannequin in Grady’s Fashion Boutique, a store that I never would have normally set foot in to, but when you’re being carried by an explosion you don’t really get to dictate where you land.
As I lay, bleeding from my face which had so conveniently broken the window so the rest of my body could pass through, I thought about all the water that goddamn eyesore had splashed on me, and how I couldn’t tell in the dark what was the moldy street puddle or my own insides.
I spent weeks in the hospital. The doctor told me I was lucky to still have my life, that one of the pieces of glass had buried itself in my neck a few inches from my carotid artery and that had things played out a little differently, I wouldn’t be here anymore.
If things had played out differently?
The cops found three liquids at the scene of my accident – the water that I carried in with me on my coat, the blood, which I lovingly spilled from my face, and the milk that I purchased from Zhang’s Corner Market.
If things had played out differently, I wouldn’t have gone out to buy milk.
I would have just turned on the news the next morning, eating toast instead of an IV drip, and acted irritated that those two confused idiots had spilled their petty shit into civilian life one more time. The cycle would have repeated, too. The same shit would have happened a week after and I would have felt the same.
Seventy stitches to your face will change your life philosophy pretty quick.
They’re both menaces.
I stub my cigarette out and keep staring at the street.
After my accident – the coppers called it such, not me, that’s not a name I would give it, accidents imply there is no one at fault and maybe the cops just want to look the other way because of all the ‘good’ that comes from the public foist, the private grudge match turned Pay-Per-View event, who knows, I think the Commissioner is in on it anyway – I started thinking. I knew I wasn’t the only person who had been hurt by this, by the senseless violence traipsing around under the guise of heroism, but no one ever came forward.
Heroes get put on pedestals, made of bullshit and politics and fear that without that symbol, that person standing atop the ivory pillar adorned with laurels, their world will collapse, break. Like a window that average Joe Citizen gets flung through for walking after dusk.
I kept thinking about that so called do-gooder and how no matter how many times he catches his quarry, it’s only a matter of time before the insanity begins again. Before his prey blows up another building or holds a bus full of kids hostage. Before the hero begins the hunt and the game escalates and more people die and are injured on both sides, by the trapper and his victim.
The people cry out, only he can save us.
Yeah.
He saves us a lot, doesn’t he?
He keeps letting us get hurt, too.
In the violence cycle, they call the euphoric state after the outburst the ‘Honeymoon Phase.’ It’s characterized by an apparent end to the violence and sometimes an apology, like that talking head on the news expressing grief over the lives lost, the Commissioner standing right behind him like a goddamn shadow, nodding solemnly like he gets it.
The people buy it. They eat that shit right up and ask for seconds. Everything seems peaceful while the prey is locked up, because the state says you can’t execute someone who is criminally insane. Then the tension starts to mount. We hear the report that there’s been an escape at the nut house and yes, he managed to slip out. Again.
And again.
And again.
The people pray for their hero, their knight in shining armor to save them and he does, but everything just… repeats. It’s been this way for years.
The first day home from the hospital, it dawned on me. I was still eating through a straw and applying ointment that smelled like dogshit to my face every twenty minutes so my stitches wouldn’t get infected. Smearing that salve over barely closed wounds can make your mind wander onto anything that isn’t what you’re doing. I thought about the never ending hunt. About why all hunts usually come to an end. Because the animal or the hunter…
One of them has to die.
The hero, or the villain. It didn’t matter. If the hunter died, the animal would leave. If the animal died, the hunter would turn to other quarry.
And no quarry was as violent or unpredictable.
As I stare out my window, at the decaying corpse of my bloodless city, my heart skips a beat. At first, I thought it was just an ill advised civilian out for a stroll, but he’s wearing a coat – an unmistakable coat, a garish coat of his own making, a purple, almost velvet looking piece of garbage with a dead flower in the lapel, and best of all, he’s alone, walking along his own creation. None of his posse in sight.
I burst through the front door of my complex and freeze – he’s gone. I begin to think I imagined him walking along, when I hear his footfalls down the alley next to my building. Without hesitation, I follow. I manage a casual stroll even though the blood in my veins is both fire and ice.
Yeah, the so-called hero talks a big game but nothing ever changes. I don’t think he wants anything to change. I think without the thrill, without the threat, his life would be empty.
I’m okay with that.
The man in the purple coat has his head hung low and I can hear him humming ‘Oh-Susanna!’ under his breath and chuckling as he gets to the part about the banjo on the knee. Jesus, his laugh sends a chill down my spine. Ever since they started playing it on the news… it’s the sound nightmares are made of. Enough to make a child weep and a grown man cower.
I think of calling out, ‘Hey!’ or ‘Scumbag!’ or ‘Clown!’
But I decide to let my pistol do the talking.
And talk it does. Like an animal – like a lion roaring in the cage of a deserted circus, begging to be set free before it starves, my pistol roars. The man in the purple coat stumbles and clutches the brick of my apartment and tumbles to the ground. I let my gun speak for me again. Twice.
I know how tricky this bastard is. I’m not new. I don’t approach his body in case he has it booby-trapped with one of his jokes. He rolls himself over and stares at me, his pale eyes searching for any kind of recognition, but I know he won’t find any. I’m just a man with a fucked up face.
He smiles, the scars at the edge of his mouth pulling tight. I can’t tell if his lips are bloody or if that’s just the shade of makeup he wears.
And he laughs. Like he remembers some to-die for punch line he laughs and laughs until he’s spitting up blood onto his vest, onto his legs, onto the ground where it mixes with the stuff pumping from the holes in his back. He stares at me and it’s the most hilarious thing he’s ever seen, and he won’t stop laughing.
For a second, I think he’ll wake the whole city up.
Then he stops. His head rolls back and his eye close. His breathing slows.
His laugh echoes through the alleyway, through the streets, in between the buildings like a man bouncing around the padded walls of a cell until it finally fades. I stand, pistol still smoking and I indulge myself. Even though I know it will hurt, I allow myself the pain of a smile.
He’s dead.
I accomplished in one night what the so-called knight could never do. I don’t even care that the animal went out with a grin, with a laugh. It was kind of his bag anyway.
I know I’ll be tried for this. You can’t gun down a man in cold blood without standing trial. I might even be brought to the station by the egomaniac himself. I might get a chance to spit on the Commissioner!
When the press asks me how I could do it, I have an answer ready:
“It wasn’t so hard. I just shot him.”
Maybe they’ll laugh. I doubt it – not with the scars crisscrossing over my cheeks and forehead and nose and throat like a subway map, but maybe. It’s a good punch line. I think the animal would have appreciated it.
He was a joker anyway.
I understand the need for The Joker's existence, but at the same time, I'm shocked that another citizen hasn't offed the clown.
Have you seen the recent DTV movie "Under the Red Hood"?
No. It's in my Netflix queue, though.
MalReynolds on
"A new take on the epic fantasy genre... Darkly comic, relatable characters... twisted storyline."
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
I actually wrote a story about Batman and his impotence when it comes to silencing the Joker.
I look out over the rain slicked streets of my city, pulling a drag off my cigarette and wincing as my reflection illuminates in the window. The veins that run between the buildings, that pump life blood through the purple and bloated corpse of my home are empty. They’re always empty at night now. Didn’t used to be that way – there was a time when commerce thrived and people weren’t afraid to leave the safety of their homes or tenement houses or wherever the hell they’re living. Even the drug trade is down.
Surprising, I know, because Time Magazine named my fair city to have one of the highest concentration of narcotics peddlers in the United States. It makes perfect sense, as everyone knows that my city has more vice cops on the take than Vegas.
My city has been a graveyard ever since those two egomaniacs took their battle to the streets.
Shitheads.
I take another drag off my cigarette and pay careful attention so that I don’t see myself again. Too many scars on my face to count. That’s what happens when you get a face full of glass just for walking around. Heading down Beaumont Avenue, six or seven weeks ago – shit, or is it eight? who knows – when I hear an airplane. At least, I thought it was an airplane. The goddamn engine sounded so loud, I started having flashbacks to 9/11 and all the repeat footage the news birds regurgitated down the throats of us waiting chicks. But it wasn’t an airplane. It was that goddamn car, that signature icon that makes some people in this city proud. Never made me proud. Especially not after that night.
I didn’t even see who was being chased. I saw the car pass as a black blur over my shoulder, ruffling my coat and sending a fine spray of stagnant puddle water over my clothes, and I was plenty mad about that, until I lost the feeling of gravity. Upthrust like I was pulled by a harness into the air with heat scorching my back, and before I knew the ground from the sky I was flying through a window across the street, a human projectile shot forth from the cannon of Beaumont by a stray explosive. I landed on top of a mannequin in Grady’s Fashion Boutique, a store that I never would have normally set foot in to, but when you’re being carried by an explosion you don’t really get to dictate where you land.
As I lay, bleeding from my face which had so conveniently broken the window so the rest of my body could pass through, I thought about all the water that goddamn eyesore had splashed on me, and how I couldn’t tell in the dark what was the moldy street puddle or my own insides.
I spent weeks in the hospital. The doctor told me I was lucky to still have my life, that one of the pieces of glass had buried itself in my neck a few inches from my carotid artery and that had things played out a little differently, I wouldn’t be here anymore.
If things had played out differently?
The cops found three liquids at the scene of my accident – the water that I carried in with me on my coat, the blood, which I lovingly spilled from my face, and the milk that I purchased from Zhang’s Corner Market.
If things had played out differently, I wouldn’t have gone out to buy milk.
I would have just turned on the news the next morning, eating toast instead of an IV drip, and acted irritated that those two confused idiots had spilled their petty shit into civilian life one more time. The cycle would have repeated, too. The same shit would have happened a week after and I would have felt the same.
Seventy stitches to your face will change your life philosophy pretty quick.
They’re both menaces.
I stub my cigarette out and keep staring at the street.
After my accident – the coppers called it such, not me, that’s not a name I would give it, accidents imply there is no one at fault and maybe the cops just want to look the other way because of all the ‘good’ that comes from the public foist, the private grudge match turned Pay-Per-View event, who knows, I think the Commissioner is in on it anyway – I started thinking. I knew I wasn’t the only person who had been hurt by this, by the senseless violence traipsing around under the guise of heroism, but no one ever came forward.
Heroes get put on pedestals, made of bullshit and politics and fear that without that symbol, that person standing atop the ivory pillar adorned with laurels, their world will collapse, break. Like a window that average Joe Citizen gets flung through for walking after dusk.
I kept thinking about that so called do-gooder and how no matter how many times he catches his quarry, it’s only a matter of time before the insanity begins again. Before his prey blows up another building or holds a bus full of kids hostage. Before the hero begins the hunt and the game escalates and more people die and are injured on both sides, by the trapper and his victim.
The people cry out, only he can save us.
Yeah.
He saves us a lot, doesn’t he?
He keeps letting us get hurt, too.
In the violence cycle, they call the euphoric state after the outburst the ‘Honeymoon Phase.’ It’s characterized by an apparent end to the violence and sometimes an apology, like that talking head on the news expressing grief over the lives lost, the Commissioner standing right behind him like a goddamn shadow, nodding solemnly like he gets it.
The people buy it. They eat that shit right up and ask for seconds. Everything seems peaceful while the prey is locked up, because the state says you can’t execute someone who is criminally insane. Then the tension starts to mount. We hear the report that there’s been an escape at the nut house and yes, he managed to slip out. Again.
And again.
And again.
The people pray for their hero, their knight in shining armor to save them and he does, but everything just… repeats. It’s been this way for years.
The first day home from the hospital, it dawned on me. I was still eating through a straw and applying ointment that smelled like dogshit to my face every twenty minutes so my stitches wouldn’t get infected. Smearing that salve over barely closed wounds can make your mind wander onto anything that isn’t what you’re doing. I thought about the never ending hunt. About why all hunts usually come to an end. Because the animal or the hunter…
One of them has to die.
The hero, or the villain. It didn’t matter. If the hunter died, the animal would leave. If the animal died, the hunter would turn to other quarry.
And no quarry was as violent or unpredictable.
As I stare out my window, at the decaying corpse of my bloodless city, my heart skips a beat. At first, I thought it was just an ill advised civilian out for a stroll, but he’s wearing a coat – an unmistakable coat, a garish coat of his own making, a purple, almost velvet looking piece of garbage with a dead flower in the lapel, and best of all, he’s alone, walking along his own creation. None of his posse in sight.
I burst through the front door of my complex and freeze – he’s gone. I begin to think I imagined him walking along, when I hear his footfalls down the alley next to my building. Without hesitation, I follow. I manage a casual stroll even though the blood in my veins is both fire and ice.
Yeah, the so-called hero talks a big game but nothing ever changes. I don’t think he wants anything to change. I think without the thrill, without the threat, his life would be empty.
I’m okay with that.
The man in the purple coat has his head hung low and I can hear him humming ‘Oh-Susanna!’ under his breath and chuckling as he gets to the part about the banjo on the knee. Jesus, his laugh sends a chill down my spine. Ever since they started playing it on the news… it’s the sound nightmares are made of. Enough to make a child weep and a grown man cower.
I think of calling out, ‘Hey!’ or ‘Scumbag!’ or ‘Clown!’
But I decide to let my pistol do the talking.
And talk it does. Like an animal – like a lion roaring in the cage of a deserted circus, begging to be set free before it starves, my pistol roars. The man in the purple coat stumbles and clutches the brick of my apartment and tumbles to the ground. I let my gun speak for me again. Twice.
I know how tricky this bastard is. I’m not new. I don’t approach his body in case he has it booby-trapped with one of his jokes. He rolls himself over and stares at me, his pale eyes searching for any kind of recognition, but I know he won’t find any. I’m just a man with a fucked up face.
He smiles, the scars at the edge of his mouth pulling tight. I can’t tell if his lips are bloody or if that’s just the shade of makeup he wears.
And he laughs. Like he remembers some to-die for punch line he laughs and laughs until he’s spitting up blood onto his vest, onto his legs, onto the ground where it mixes with the stuff pumping from the holes in his back. He stares at me and it’s the most hilarious thing he’s ever seen, and he won’t stop laughing.
For a second, I think he’ll wake the whole city up.
Then he stops. His head rolls back and his eye close. His breathing slows.
His laugh echoes through the alleyway, through the streets, in between the buildings like a man bouncing around the padded walls of a cell until it finally fades. I stand, pistol still smoking and I indulge myself. Even though I know it will hurt, I allow myself the pain of a smile.
He’s dead.
I accomplished in one night what the so-called knight could never do. I don’t even care that the animal went out with a grin, with a laugh. It was kind of his bag anyway.
I know I’ll be tried for this. You can’t gun down a man in cold blood without standing trial. I might even be brought to the station by the egomaniac himself. I might get a chance to spit on the Commissioner!
When the press asks me how I could do it, I have an answer ready:
“It wasn’t so hard. I just shot him.”
Maybe they’ll laugh. I doubt it – not with the scars crisscrossing over my cheeks and forehead and nose and throat like a subway map, but maybe. It’s a good punch line. I think the animal would have appreciated it.
He was a joker anyway.
I understand the need for The Joker's existence, but at the same time, I'm shocked that another citizen hasn't offed the clown.
Have you seen the recent DTV movie "Under the Red Hood"?
No. It's in my Netflix queue, though.
I signed up yesterday for the one month trial and I'm slowly checking out all the DCAU stuff that's on Netflix to catch up...but yeah it's good stuff. Deals with The Joker and why Batman can never sink to the level of offing the guy.
I imagine that because there is so much corruption in the government forces that criminals get away with shooting cops because they've paid off the right people. Easy when 1/3 of the force is owned by the Italian and 1/3 the force is owned by the Russian, the the other 1/3 is scared of both. According to Gotham Knight the Russian and Italian were enemies at one point.
But there's a difference between organized crime and the costumed villains that bedevil Gotham. Maybe organized crime will kill cops in the regular course of business, but random violence against large numbers of civilians and cops isn't really their goal. If anything, organized crime is happy to avoid such messiness. Not much profit in blowing up a police station.
On the other hand, the Joker and Scarecrow don't have cops in their pocket. And they're happy to kill cops, regardles of whether those cops are owned by organized crime or not. So, if one of those costumed lunatics kills cops, there's really nothing preventing the police from engaging in extrajudicial retribution against them.
I really don't see why that seems so unreasonable. How do people find out that a guy killed the joker? Because he killed the freaking Joker. In the movie the cop you were talking about, the one that was alone with the Joker was a alone with the Joker when he died(in what, I'm 90% sure would be equipped with a camera). Sure I'll buy that its likely the DA would never manage a conviction but you can't tell me he wouldn't be something of a Legend/City Hero for the rest of his life.
I honestly can't think of a situation that wouldn't allow someone to cut the suspects list down to 7-8 guys who all die very quickly.
nightmarenny on
0
Options
KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
edited January 2011
There was a recent storyline that I thought could have had some legs - IIRC, a cop dressed up as Batman and, after some rough-housing, shot Joker in the face. In Batman RIP Joker still has this bullet-shaped scar on his forehead. I think part of the deal was supposed to be that the relationship between Joker and Batman got all fucked up and Joker was offended or something that Batman actually tried to kill him.
I forget how it actually played out, other than it had something to do with RIP.
The thing is, the costumed criminals have already declared war on the Gotham PD. Every cop is in danger when he puts on that uniform. But, for whatever reason, the GPD are never really shown fighting back. They seem to follow the rules to a surprising extent. And Batman seems to put a serious damper on costumed crimefighters who are willing to do what needs to be done and end the threat permanently.
Batman has a skewed morality which is incredibly self-centered. He seems to be afraid that killing the Joker will turn him into a monster. Fine, don't kill the Joker if you're too much of a pussy to deal with it. But there are plenty of people out there who would be willing to take care of the problem and leave your hands clean. If a DC version of the Punisher wanted to help clean up the criminal problem in Gotham, why go out of your way to stop him?
Modern Man on
Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
Rigorous Scholarship
0
Options
KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
The thing is, the costumed criminals have already declared war on the Gotham PD. Every cop is in danger when he puts on that uniform. But, for whatever reason, the GPD are never really shown fighting back. They seem to follow the rules to a surprising extent. And Batman seems to put a serious damper on costumed crimefighters who are willing to do what needs to be done and end the threat permanently.
Batman has a skewed morality which is incredibly self-centered. He seems to be afraid that killing the Joker will turn him into a monster. Fine, don't kill the Joker if you're too much of a pussy to deal with it. But there are plenty of people out there who would be willing to take care of the problem and leave your hands clean. If a DC version of the Punisher wanted to help clean up the criminal problem in Gotham, why go out of your way to stop him?
That happened in an Elseworlds book - the preamble of "Kingdom Come" is that Magog killed the Joker in broad daylight on the way to his trial or something, and every non-superhero thought it was a great idea.
The thing is, the costumed criminals have already declared war on the Gotham PD. Every cop is in danger when he puts on that uniform. But, for whatever reason, the GPD are never really shown fighting back. They seem to follow the rules to a surprising extent. And Batman seems to put a serious damper on costumed crimefighters who are willing to do what needs to be done and end the threat permanently.
Batman has a skewed morality which is incredibly self-centered. He seems to be afraid that killing the Joker will turn him into a monster. Fine, don't kill the Joker if you're too much of a pussy to deal with it. But there are plenty of people out there who would be willing to take care of the problem and leave your hands clean. If a DC version of the Punisher wanted to help clean up the criminal problem in Gotham, why go out of your way to stop him?
That happened in an Elseworlds book - the preamble of "Kingdom Come" is that Magog killed the Joker in broad daylight on the way to his trial or something, and every non-superhero thought it was a great idea.
Yeah and the results show exactly why Batman maintains that line. By the way, Kingdom Come still my favorite DC story ever. It was sooo good.
There was a recent storyline that I thought could have had some legs - IIRC, a cop dressed up as Batman and, after some rough-housing, shot Joker in the face. In Batman RIP Joker still has this bullet-shaped scar on his forehead. I think part of the deal was supposed to be that the relationship between Joker and Batman got all fucked up and Joker was offended or something that Batman actually tried to kill him.
I forget how it actually played out, other than it had something to do with RIP.
I was going to mention this. The cop beat the Joker with a crowbar and then shot him in the head while dressed as Batman. It was a very meta thing to do. Joker lost the ability to speak for a while. I don't think anything significant ever came of it though, although it did show a cop at least attempting to get away with killing the Joker, although I do believe he was arrested.
Sentry on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
wrote:
When I was a little kid, I always pretended I was the hero,' Skip said.
'Fuck yeah, me too. What little kid ever pretended to be part of the lynch-mob?'
Who exactly would seek vengeance on the behalf of the Joker anyway? In the animated series there's Harley Quinn but outside that his mooks are just a bunch of lunatics who, while surprisingly reliable, aren't exactly the best investigators and planners.
I'm cool with the Joker being untouchable, but we're discussing how things would play out IRL then the police would murder him then stand together not saying a fucking thing. Every time there's a controversial shooting or something cops band together, and for something as crazy as this they definitely would.
Someone mentioned the guy alone with the Joker in TDK, not only would the video footage from that room be found missing but every cop in the station would swear that the Joker was alone in the room, they didn't see anyone go in there, etc. Many among the police will know who did it of course, but that guy won't have his name in the papers or be a "City Hero" or anything unless he wants to.
But ultimately, I just don't see the Scarecrow or whoever giving a fuck that the Joker died.
Aren't those limited series like the Watchman or Sin City or 300? And the only reason not every IP is made that way is because creators like to milk things for as much as possible (just like movies and games that should never have had a sequel do?).
I'm not really familiar with comic books, but don't Batman and Superman and their ilk also have limited series with their own independent storylines? They just happen to fall to the wayside because they're not 'part of the canon'?
Most story arcs, if they are successful, are later released in trade paperback form. That basically takes the arc out of the canon stream of why and makes it a standalone book - obviously knowledge of the characters helps, but the trade version of No Man's Land for example stands as a self contained story.
The point isn't that the Joker died. Its that if he died so could anyone else. Batman's Rogue have shown just as much solidarity. They hate each other but I bet any attack against one would be seen as what it was. A danger to all. Honestly though I'd think that a few years in the Police would be mostly watch Bats and the Baddies do their stuff and then clean up. Anything else would be suicide. So to me the Police just got their first bloody-ing by the Joker in Arkham and even though they don't trust Batman they let him handle a the fight for lack of casualties.
Honestly I'm surprised some of the other rogues haven't tried harder to off the Joker. Poison Ivy, for example, would probably be thrilled to see him dead, considering how he threats her only friend(Harley).
The point isn't that the Joker died. Its that if he died so could anyone else. Batman's Rogue have shown just as much solidarity. They hate each other but I bet any attack against one would be seen as what it was. A danger to all. Honestly though I'd think that a few years in the Police would be mostly watch Bats and the Baddies do their stuff and then clean up. Anything else would be suicide. So to me the Police just got their first bloody-ing by the Joker in Arkham and even though they don't trust Batman they let him handle a the fight for lack of casualties.
Except, Joker and the other loons in Gotham keep killing your friends. Guys with guns, a badge and the legal right to shoot people don't really take kindly to that sort of thing. Yeah, maybe you don't want to do the dirty work of helping Batman arrest the Joker. But when Batman turns him over to the authorities, his life is completely in your hands. Just because you're on the take to look the other way and ignore a drug shipment or illegal brothel doesn't mean you'll just shrug your shoulders when the Joker murders your partner or academy buddy. Even if there's a real fear that some other supercriminal will hunt you down, sooner or later some cop will give in to grief or anger and just put a bullet in the Joker's brain while he's handcuffed in a holding cell.
Story-wise, that's the problem with street-level criminals, even ones like the Joker. You have to suspend disbelief that they keep surviving the tender mercies of an organization like the Gotham PD. The Joker's just a guy- killing him is no harder than killing any other handcuffed perp. It's not like he's Darkseid.
And the fact that he keeps getting out of prison is another thing you just have to ignore. Locking him up permanently in a secure location wouldn't be that tough.
Modern Man on
Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
Rigorous Scholarship
The Joker's just a guy- killing him is no harder than killing any other handcuffed perp. It's not like he's Darkseid.
The Joker's plot armor is thicker than Darkseid's. If a cop tried to execute a handcuffed Joker, the fired bullet would reverse direction mid-air and hit the shooter. Twice.
The Joker's just a guy- killing him is no harder than killing any other handcuffed perp. It's not like he's Darkseid.
The Joker's plot armor is thicker than Darkseid's. If a cop tried to execute a handcuffed Joker, the fired bullet would reverse direction mid-air and hit the shooter. Twice.
With Flash punching the bullet each time it exited his body after that.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
That's some major plot armor right there- a professional doesn't just shoot you in the head once. If you really want someone dead, you empty the clip into his brain.
Modern Man on
Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
Rigorous Scholarship
I say comic books as a culture need to be remade. The idea of sweeping continuities and persistent villains and worlds is a conceit that leads to A) stupid things and whacky implausible things.
Comics should be condensed into short runs that tell complete stories - much like the Nolan Batman movies. Batman catches Joker, he escapes once or twice before Batman finds a final solution - like a concrete box half kilometre under ground (with ample food and supplies for 2 lifetimes - or something less lame and more creative and less cruel. More Bathumane if you will). Joker doesn't escape again and the Batman story comes to a close. Then, they start again with a new take/twist/style (which isn't radically different to what happens now, with all the different comic lines just greatly condensed or without a persistent continuity.)
Of course this is probably not economically viable and sort of swims against the tide so wouldn't work for a whole range of reasons.
It's an incredibly common argument within the industry. A lot of writers hate being forced to change their plans solely to incorporate the latest world changing bullshit that's going on, especially when their book is completely run off the tracks and eventually cancelled thanks to said bullshit event (see: All New Atom). Nothing's going to happen any time soon though, the entire industry is basically run by fanboys for fanboys, even if those fanboys are an ever dwindling number.
Best bet is to just stick with one-offs/elseworlds and recommended runs that don't really require any extra reading (or have references that you odn't really have to bother with). Batman: The Long Halloween, All Star Superman, Red Son, Batman: No Mans Land, Astonishing X-Men, Blue Beetle, etc. Or looking a bit wider than superhero comics, stick entirely with Vertigo. Sandman, Transmetropolitan, Invisibles, Fables and Madame Xanadu are some of my favourites.
Edit: Oh and I feel like I should point out that Joker wasn't shot in the head in RIP, he was shot 2-3 arcs earlier, in the first issue of Batman and Son.
What were the one offs called that featured Batman - I think Superman as well - in different time periods, it would be like Batman, Joker, and Catwoman as like pirates or something? I remember enjoying those.
CanadianWolverine on
0
Options
chiasaur11Never doubt a raccoon.Do you think it's trademarked?Registered Userregular
What were the one offs called that featured Batman - I think Superman as well - in different time periods, it would be like Batman, Joker, and Catwoman as like pirates or something? I remember enjoying those.
I say comic books as a culture need to be remade. The idea of sweeping continuities and persistent villains and worlds is a conceit that leads to A) stupid things and whacky implausible things.
Comics should be condensed into short runs that tell complete stories - much like the Nolan Batman movies. Batman catches Joker, he escapes once or twice before Batman finds a final solution - like a concrete box half kilometre under ground (with ample food and supplies for 2 lifetimes - or something less lame and more creative and less cruel. More Bathumane if you will). Joker doesn't escape again and the Batman story comes to a close. Then, they start again with a new take/twist/style (which isn't radically different to what happens now, with all the different comic lines just greatly condensed or without a persistent continuity.)
Of course this is probably not economically viable and sort of swims against the tide so wouldn't work for a whole range of reasons.
I don't think that's quite what I'd want
I have no problem with Batman never dealing with the Joker once and for all. What I'd like to see though, is the idea of continuity between story arcs pretty much done away with. Make everything self contained and not part of a greater continuity unless it explicitly references some other story arc. The Joker's not running around in this story because he's escaped for the umpteenth time, he's running around because the story where he got caught has no bearing on the one you're currently reading. Have stories where Batman's a member of the JLA, but also ones where he works alone (or with Oracle and Robin and whoever else) in a world where Superman et all don't exist. Make stories blatantly contradict each other if that's what the writer needs to explore the characters in a new and interesting way.
Best bet is to just stick with one-offs/elseworlds and recommended runs that don't really require any extra reading (or have references that you odn't really have to bother with). Batman: The Long Halloween, All Star Superman, Red Son, Batman: No Mans Land, Astonishing X-Men, Blue Beetle, etc. Or looking a bit wider than superhero comics, stick entirely with Vertigo. Sandman, Transmetropolitan, Invisibles, Fables and Madame Xanadu are some of my favourites.
Man, I can't say enough good things about Fables. I hope it does eventually get turned into a TV show, as has been discussed for some time.
Modern Man on
Aetian Jupiter - 41 Gunslinger - The Old Republic
Rigorous Scholarship
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds.2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
0
Options
KalTorakOne way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered Userregular
edited January 2011
I should give Fables another chance... I tried to get into it but the first book just didn't sell it for me. By the time I started Animal Farm I was pretty much done.
I say comic books as a culture need to be remade. The idea of sweeping continuities and persistent villains and worlds is a conceit that leads to A) stupid things and whacky implausible things.
Comics should be condensed into short runs that tell complete stories - much like the Nolan Batman movies. Batman catches Joker, he escapes once or twice before Batman finds a final solution - like a concrete box half kilometre under ground (with ample food and supplies for 2 lifetimes - or something less lame and more creative and less cruel. More Bathumane if you will). Joker doesn't escape again and the Batman story comes to a close. Then, they start again with a new take/twist/style (which isn't radically different to what happens now, with all the different comic lines just greatly condensed or without a persistent continuity.)
Of course this is probably not economically viable and sort of swims against the tide so wouldn't work for a whole range of reasons.
I don't think that's quite what I'd want
I have no problem with Batman never dealing with the Joker once and for all. What I'd like to see though, is the idea of continuity between story arcs pretty much done away with. Make everything self contained and not part of a greater continuity unless it explicitly references some other story arc. The Joker's not running around in this story because he's escaped for the umpteenth time, he's running around because the story where he got caught has no bearing on the one you're currently reading. Have stories where Batman's a member of the JLA, but also ones where he works alone (or with Oracle and Robin and whoever else) in a world where Superman et all don't exist. Make stories blatantly contradict each other if that's what the writer needs to explore the characters in a new and interesting way.
But then people can't argue over fantasy world inconsistencies.
That's like half the reason to discuss comics right there.
Someone take me literally, I dare you.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
To be fair, continuity can provide a more in-depth story.
Or, it can be a soulless cash grab designed to screw over the consumer. You can guess which one is typically the default.
Sentry on
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
wrote:
When I was a little kid, I always pretended I was the hero,' Skip said.
'Fuck yeah, me too. What little kid ever pretended to be part of the lynch-mob?'
See, I very much like the ongoing continuity, and the shared universe. They just need to handle it better, and actually allow changes to stick instead of constantly retconning everything.
I say comic books as a culture need to be remade. The idea of sweeping continuities and persistent villains and worlds is a conceit that leads to A) stupid things and whacky implausible things.
Comics should be condensed into short runs that tell complete stories - much like the Nolan Batman movies. Batman catches Joker, he escapes once or twice before Batman finds a final solution - like a concrete box half kilometre under ground (with ample food and supplies for 2 lifetimes - or something less lame and more creative and less cruel. More Bathumane if you will). Joker doesn't escape again and the Batman story comes to a close. Then, they start again with a new take/twist/style (which isn't radically different to what happens now, with all the different comic lines just greatly condensed or without a persistent continuity.)
Of course this is probably not economically viable and sort of swims against the tide so wouldn't work for a whole range of reasons.
I don't think that's quite what I'd want
I have no problem with Batman never dealing with the Joker once and for all. What I'd like to see though, is the idea of continuity between story arcs pretty much done away with. Make everything self contained and not part of a greater continuity unless it explicitly references some other story arc. The Joker's not running around in this story because he's escaped for the umpteenth time, he's running around because the story where he got caught has no bearing on the one you're currently reading. Have stories where Batman's a member of the JLA, but also ones where he works alone (or with Oracle and Robin and whoever else) in a world where Superman et all don't exist. Make stories blatantly contradict each other if that's what the writer needs to explore the characters in a new and interesting way.
But then people can't argue over fantasy world inconsistencies.
That's like half the reason to discuss comics right there.
I say comic books as a culture need to be remade. The idea of sweeping continuities and persistent villains and worlds is a conceit that leads to A) stupid things and whacky implausible things.
Comics should be condensed into short runs that tell complete stories - much like the Nolan Batman movies. Batman catches Joker, he escapes once or twice before Batman finds a final solution - like a concrete box half kilometre under ground (with ample food and supplies for 2 lifetimes - or something less lame and more creative and less cruel. More Bathumane if you will). Joker doesn't escape again and the Batman story comes to a close. Then, they start again with a new take/twist/style (which isn't radically different to what happens now, with all the different comic lines just greatly condensed or without a persistent continuity.)
Of course this is probably not economically viable and sort of swims against the tide so wouldn't work for a whole range of reasons.
I don't think that's quite what I'd want
I have no problem with Batman never dealing with the Joker once and for all. What I'd like to see though, is the idea of continuity between story arcs pretty much done away with. Make everything self contained and not part of a greater continuity unless it explicitly references some other story arc. The Joker's not running around in this story because he's escaped for the umpteenth time, he's running around because the story where he got caught has no bearing on the one you're currently reading. Have stories where Batman's a member of the JLA, but also ones where he works alone (or with Oracle and Robin and whoever else) in a world where Superman et all don't exist. Make stories blatantly contradict each other if that's what the writer needs to explore the characters in a new and interesting way.
Posts
I'm not really familiar with comic books, but don't Batman and Superman and their ilk also have limited series with their own independent storylines? They just happen to fall to the wayside because they're not 'part of the canon'?
The reason more criminals don't get shot by cops IRL is because most criminals, even the hardcore gangster types, know that there are certain lines that you don't cross. Killing a cop is one of those. Yeah, the Mafia is tough and will go after you if you cross them. But even they know better than to target cops.
But the criminals in Gotham don't really seem to follow those rules. They are able to kill cops with impunity, more or less. Which I always found pretty unrealistic. The idea that a police department as tough as the GPD would let these costumed lunatics get away with killing large numbers of cops kind of defies logic. If anything, crazy costumed supervillains would be in even more danger from the police than your average cop-killer. Shooting the Scarecrow or the Joker after they murdered a couple cops would send a pretty serious message to the costumed villain community- i.e., there's more of us, we have the power of the state behind us, sooner or later Batman or some other do-gooder will capture you and no one will say "boo" if you "accidentally" fall out of a GPD helicopter.
Rigorous Scholarship
I can imagine how that rivalry started ...
" 'ey! You got vodka in my linguini!"
"Your linguini is in my vodka - this means war!"
On the other hand, the Joker and Scarecrow don't have cops in their pocket. And they're happy to kill cops, regardles of whether those cops are owned by organized crime or not. So, if one of those costumed lunatics kills cops, there's really nothing preventing the police from engaging in extrajudicial retribution against them.
Rigorous Scholarship
Back when there was a Bludhaven.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Surprising, I know, because Time Magazine named my fair city to have one of the highest concentration of narcotics peddlers in the United States. It makes perfect sense, as everyone knows that my city has more vice cops on the take than Vegas.
My city has been a graveyard ever since those two egomaniacs took their battle to the streets.
Shitheads.
I take another drag off my cigarette and pay careful attention so that I don’t see myself again. Too many scars on my face to count. That’s what happens when you get a face full of glass just for walking around. Heading down Beaumont Avenue, six or seven weeks ago – shit, or is it eight? who knows – when I hear an airplane. At least, I thought it was an airplane. The goddamn engine sounded so loud, I started having flashbacks to 9/11 and all the repeat footage the news birds regurgitated down the throats of us waiting chicks. But it wasn’t an airplane. It was that goddamn car, that signature icon that makes some people in this city proud. Never made me proud. Especially not after that night.
I didn’t even see who was being chased. I saw the car pass as a black blur over my shoulder, ruffling my coat and sending a fine spray of stagnant puddle water over my clothes, and I was plenty mad about that, until I lost the feeling of gravity. Upthrust like I was pulled by a harness into the air with heat scorching my back, and before I knew the ground from the sky I was flying through a window across the street, a human projectile shot forth from the cannon of Beaumont by a stray explosive. I landed on top of a mannequin in Grady’s Fashion Boutique, a store that I never would have normally set foot in to, but when you’re being carried by an explosion you don’t really get to dictate where you land.
As I lay, bleeding from my face which had so conveniently broken the window so the rest of my body could pass through, I thought about all the water that goddamn eyesore had splashed on me, and how I couldn’t tell in the dark what was the moldy street puddle or my own insides.
I spent weeks in the hospital. The doctor told me I was lucky to still have my life, that one of the pieces of glass had buried itself in my neck a few inches from my carotid artery and that had things played out a little differently, I wouldn’t be here anymore.
If things had played out differently?
The cops found three liquids at the scene of my accident – the water that I carried in with me on my coat, the blood, which I lovingly spilled from my face, and the milk that I purchased from Zhang’s Corner Market.
If things had played out differently, I wouldn’t have gone out to buy milk.
I would have just turned on the news the next morning, eating toast instead of an IV drip, and acted irritated that those two confused idiots had spilled their petty shit into civilian life one more time. The cycle would have repeated, too. The same shit would have happened a week after and I would have felt the same.
Seventy stitches to your face will change your life philosophy pretty quick.
They’re both menaces.
I stub my cigarette out and keep staring at the street.
After my accident – the coppers called it such, not me, that’s not a name I would give it, accidents imply there is no one at fault and maybe the cops just want to look the other way because of all the ‘good’ that comes from the public foist, the private grudge match turned Pay-Per-View event, who knows, I think the Commissioner is in on it anyway – I started thinking. I knew I wasn’t the only person who had been hurt by this, by the senseless violence traipsing around under the guise of heroism, but no one ever came forward.
Heroes get put on pedestals, made of bullshit and politics and fear that without that symbol, that person standing atop the ivory pillar adorned with laurels, their world will collapse, break. Like a window that average Joe Citizen gets flung through for walking after dusk.
I kept thinking about that so called do-gooder and how no matter how many times he catches his quarry, it’s only a matter of time before the insanity begins again. Before his prey blows up another building or holds a bus full of kids hostage. Before the hero begins the hunt and the game escalates and more people die and are injured on both sides, by the trapper and his victim.
The people cry out, only he can save us.
Yeah.
He saves us a lot, doesn’t he?
He keeps letting us get hurt, too.
In the violence cycle, they call the euphoric state after the outburst the ‘Honeymoon Phase.’ It’s characterized by an apparent end to the violence and sometimes an apology, like that talking head on the news expressing grief over the lives lost, the Commissioner standing right behind him like a goddamn shadow, nodding solemnly like he gets it.
The people buy it. They eat that shit right up and ask for seconds. Everything seems peaceful while the prey is locked up, because the state says you can’t execute someone who is criminally insane. Then the tension starts to mount. We hear the report that there’s been an escape at the nut house and yes, he managed to slip out. Again.
And again.
And again.
The people pray for their hero, their knight in shining armor to save them and he does, but everything just… repeats. It’s been this way for years.
The first day home from the hospital, it dawned on me. I was still eating through a straw and applying ointment that smelled like dogshit to my face every twenty minutes so my stitches wouldn’t get infected. Smearing that salve over barely closed wounds can make your mind wander onto anything that isn’t what you’re doing. I thought about the never ending hunt. About why all hunts usually come to an end. Because the animal or the hunter…
One of them has to die.
The hero, or the villain. It didn’t matter. If the hunter died, the animal would leave. If the animal died, the hunter would turn to other quarry.
And no quarry was as violent or unpredictable.
As I stare out my window, at the decaying corpse of my bloodless city, my heart skips a beat. At first, I thought it was just an ill advised civilian out for a stroll, but he’s wearing a coat – an unmistakable coat, a garish coat of his own making, a purple, almost velvet looking piece of garbage with a dead flower in the lapel, and best of all, he’s alone, walking along his own creation. None of his posse in sight.
I burst through the front door of my complex and freeze – he’s gone. I begin to think I imagined him walking along, when I hear his footfalls down the alley next to my building. Without hesitation, I follow. I manage a casual stroll even though the blood in my veins is both fire and ice.
Yeah, the so-called hero talks a big game but nothing ever changes. I don’t think he wants anything to change. I think without the thrill, without the threat, his life would be empty.
I’m okay with that.
The man in the purple coat has his head hung low and I can hear him humming ‘Oh-Susanna!’ under his breath and chuckling as he gets to the part about the banjo on the knee. Jesus, his laugh sends a chill down my spine. Ever since they started playing it on the news… it’s the sound nightmares are made of. Enough to make a child weep and a grown man cower.
I think of calling out, ‘Hey!’ or ‘Scumbag!’ or ‘Clown!’
But I decide to let my pistol do the talking.
And talk it does. Like an animal – like a lion roaring in the cage of a deserted circus, begging to be set free before it starves, my pistol roars. The man in the purple coat stumbles and clutches the brick of my apartment and tumbles to the ground. I let my gun speak for me again. Twice.
I know how tricky this bastard is. I’m not new. I don’t approach his body in case he has it booby-trapped with one of his jokes. He rolls himself over and stares at me, his pale eyes searching for any kind of recognition, but I know he won’t find any. I’m just a man with a fucked up face.
He smiles, the scars at the edge of his mouth pulling tight. I can’t tell if his lips are bloody or if that’s just the shade of makeup he wears.
And he laughs. Like he remembers some to-die for punch line he laughs and laughs until he’s spitting up blood onto his vest, onto his legs, onto the ground where it mixes with the stuff pumping from the holes in his back. He stares at me and it’s the most hilarious thing he’s ever seen, and he won’t stop laughing.
For a second, I think he’ll wake the whole city up.
Then he stops. His head rolls back and his eye close. His breathing slows.
His laugh echoes through the alleyway, through the streets, in between the buildings like a man bouncing around the padded walls of a cell until it finally fades. I stand, pistol still smoking and I indulge myself. Even though I know it will hurt, I allow myself the pain of a smile.
He’s dead.
I accomplished in one night what the so-called knight could never do. I don’t even care that the animal went out with a grin, with a laugh. It was kind of his bag anyway.
I know I’ll be tried for this. You can’t gun down a man in cold blood without standing trial. I might even be brought to the station by the egomaniac himself. I might get a chance to spit on the Commissioner!
When the press asks me how I could do it, I have an answer ready:
“It wasn’t so hard. I just shot him.”
Maybe they’ll laugh. I doubt it – not with the scars crisscrossing over my cheeks and forehead and nose and throat like a subway map, but maybe. It’s a good punch line. I think the animal would have appreciated it.
He was a joker anyway.
I understand the need for The Joker's existence, but at the same time, I'm shocked that another citizen hasn't offed the clown.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
Have you seen the recent DTV movie "Under the Red Hood"?
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
No. It's in my Netflix queue, though.
"Readers who prefer tension and romance, Maledictions: The Offering, delivers... As serious YA fiction, I’ll give it five stars out of five. As a novel? Four and a half." - Liz Ellor
My new novel: Maledictions: The Offering. Now in Paperback!
I signed up yesterday for the one month trial and I'm slowly checking out all the DCAU stuff that's on Netflix to catch up...but yeah it's good stuff. Deals with The Joker and why Batman can never sink to the level of offing the guy.
Switch: 6200-8149-0919 / Wii U: maximumzero / 3DS: 0860-3352-3335 / eBay Shop
I really don't see why that seems so unreasonable. How do people find out that a guy killed the joker? Because he killed the freaking Joker. In the movie the cop you were talking about, the one that was alone with the Joker was a alone with the Joker when he died(in what, I'm 90% sure would be equipped with a camera). Sure I'll buy that its likely the DA would never manage a conviction but you can't tell me he wouldn't be something of a Legend/City Hero for the rest of his life.
I honestly can't think of a situation that wouldn't allow someone to cut the suspects list down to 7-8 guys who all die very quickly.
I forget how it actually played out, other than it had something to do with RIP.
Batman has a skewed morality which is incredibly self-centered. He seems to be afraid that killing the Joker will turn him into a monster. Fine, don't kill the Joker if you're too much of a pussy to deal with it. But there are plenty of people out there who would be willing to take care of the problem and leave your hands clean. If a DC version of the Punisher wanted to help clean up the criminal problem in Gotham, why go out of your way to stop him?
Rigorous Scholarship
That happened in an Elseworlds book - the preamble of "Kingdom Come" is that Magog killed the Joker in broad daylight on the way to his trial or something, and every non-superhero thought it was a great idea.
Yeah and the results show exactly why Batman maintains that line. By the way, Kingdom Come still my favorite DC story ever. It was sooo good.
I was going to mention this. The cop beat the Joker with a crowbar and then shot him in the head while dressed as Batman. It was a very meta thing to do. Joker lost the ability to speak for a while. I don't think anything significant ever came of it though, although it did show a cop at least attempting to get away with killing the Joker, although I do believe he was arrested.
I'm cool with the Joker being untouchable, but we're discussing how things would play out IRL then the police would murder him then stand together not saying a fucking thing. Every time there's a controversial shooting or something cops band together, and for something as crazy as this they definitely would.
Someone mentioned the guy alone with the Joker in TDK, not only would the video footage from that room be found missing but every cop in the station would swear that the Joker was alone in the room, they didn't see anyone go in there, etc. Many among the police will know who did it of course, but that guy won't have his name in the papers or be a "City Hero" or anything unless he wants to.
But ultimately, I just don't see the Scarecrow or whoever giving a fuck that the Joker died.
Most story arcs, if they are successful, are later released in trade paperback form. That basically takes the arc out of the canon stream of why and makes it a standalone book - obviously knowledge of the characters helps, but the trade version of No Man's Land for example stands as a self contained story.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
Story-wise, that's the problem with street-level criminals, even ones like the Joker. You have to suspend disbelief that they keep surviving the tender mercies of an organization like the Gotham PD. The Joker's just a guy- killing him is no harder than killing any other handcuffed perp. It's not like he's Darkseid.
And the fact that he keeps getting out of prison is another thing you just have to ignore. Locking him up permanently in a secure location wouldn't be that tough.
Rigorous Scholarship
The Joker's plot armor is thicker than Darkseid's. If a cop tried to execute a handcuffed Joker, the fired bullet would reverse direction mid-air and hit the shooter. Twice.
With Flash punching the bullet each time it exited his body after that.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Rigorous Scholarship
It's an incredibly common argument within the industry. A lot of writers hate being forced to change their plans solely to incorporate the latest world changing bullshit that's going on, especially when their book is completely run off the tracks and eventually cancelled thanks to said bullshit event (see: All New Atom). Nothing's going to happen any time soon though, the entire industry is basically run by fanboys for fanboys, even if those fanboys are an ever dwindling number.
Best bet is to just stick with one-offs/elseworlds and recommended runs that don't really require any extra reading (or have references that you odn't really have to bother with). Batman: The Long Halloween, All Star Superman, Red Son, Batman: No Mans Land, Astonishing X-Men, Blue Beetle, etc. Or looking a bit wider than superhero comics, stick entirely with Vertigo. Sandman, Transmetropolitan, Invisibles, Fables and Madame Xanadu are some of my favourites.
Edit: Oh and I feel like I should point out that Joker wasn't shot in the head in RIP, he was shot 2-3 arcs earlier, in the first issue of Batman and Son.
Elseworlds.
Why I fear the ocean.
I will never ever forget that terrible Marvel comic cover after 9/11 with fucking DOCTOR DOOM crying over Ground Zero.
I don't think that's quite what I'd want
I have no problem with Batman never dealing with the Joker once and for all. What I'd like to see though, is the idea of continuity between story arcs pretty much done away with. Make everything self contained and not part of a greater continuity unless it explicitly references some other story arc. The Joker's not running around in this story because he's escaped for the umpteenth time, he's running around because the story where he got caught has no bearing on the one you're currently reading. Have stories where Batman's a member of the JLA, but also ones where he works alone (or with Oracle and Robin and whoever else) in a world where Superman et all don't exist. Make stories blatantly contradict each other if that's what the writer needs to explore the characters in a new and interesting way.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Rigorous Scholarship
Need to get caught up.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
But then people can't argue over fantasy world inconsistencies.
That's like half the reason to discuss comics right there.
Or, it can be a soulless cash grab designed to screw over the consumer. You can guess which one is typically the default.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
More like 2/3rds!
Why I fear the ocean.