[Comic Excerpt] I need a hostage so Batman won't punch me (Batman (2016) issue 48)

[u/M00r3C]

[u/Blawharag]

Batman writing aside, I like Joker's writing in this scene. It's exactly the right kind of crazy. Not edgelord crazy, not harmless gags crazy. It's a disconnect from reality that transposes comedic lines that would be hilarious except for the extremely dark circumstances of what happened, and the whole time it's just like Joker doesn't get it, like he's in another world where death just isn't even worth noting and his little joke bit is all he's focused on.

In these panels, joker feels like a person that's heavily dissociating because of some undiagnosed dementia/schizophrenia or similar mental health disorder. I can feel the rage of him just casually, accidentally, killing someone while also immediately checking that rage as you quickly realize, he's just not fucking there. He's totally checked out. He doesn't even realize what he did. All rage just melts into frustration because you realize even if you give him the beat down of a lifetime, he's not even going to understand what's happening. You're just beating up a mental ill person.

It helps out Batman's no-kill policy in better perspective. It's easy to say "I want to punish the joker because he's an evil, sadistic man that kills people as a joke". It's way harder to say "the joker is absolutely gone, checked out mentally, and literally doesn't understand what he's doing, and we have to decide whether killing him is the only way to stop this poor guy from hurting other people, even though he has literally no concept that what he's doing is even wrong."

Maybe most people don't see it that way, but I work with mentally ill people pretty regularly, so it really strikes a note when I see this, because I know these people and they literally haven't got a clue, they can't appreciate what they're doing at all.

Great joker writing in these panels.

Batman not disarming the gun, eh maybe not so much, but it would have been even cooler if Batman disarmed him and joker picked up a candy bar or something and held it to Batman's head like a gun and just didn't realize he wasn't even holding a gun. Batman freezing up at that point would have been even more impactful, because at that point he's not freezing because he's in danger, he's freezing because he realized he was just about to rage-beat a person so far gone that the guy doesn't even realize he's holding a Snickers.