No most modern Jokers are not bad rip offs of Heath Ledger's.

At most I would say maybe The Joker we got briefly in The Batman and it's deleted scene can be criticized that way.  But given how little we have to go off there I'm reserving judgment. 

The high profile Joker we've gotten most egregious criticized this way in Jared Leto's in Suicide Squad.  I've already talked about how Jared Leto's Joker is supposed to be Cringe, and pointed people to both Jack Saint's video on the topic and 16 Attempts to Talk to You about Suicide Squad. 

But as far accusing the performance on ripping off Ledger's goes, i really don't see it, he doesn't o that thing his tonge. At most the fact that both sometimes annunciate certain words weirdly could be seen as similar. 

The perception that so many post Ledger Jokers are just pale imitations on Ledger's Joker is really just people saying quietly that they're upset the Joker hasn't gone back to being more of the same they usually got before Ledger's Joker. 

Caesar Romero's Joker, Jack Nicholson's Joker and Mark Hamil's in Batman The Animated Series, as different form each other as they may seem in execution are each in my view the same basic kind of Joker.  For each of them the Clown/Comedy gimmick antics are a means to an end of conventional criminal goals.  And The Joker's has been written like that in The Comics sometimes, he was like that in A Death in The Family much to my personal disappointment when I first read it. 

And those three were the only particularly mainstream popular takes on The Joker well known to most non Comic Readers before 2008. The Dark Knight was the first time we got a Joker for whom the Madness was the ends and the conventional criminal activity was the means. 

But The Comics had introduced takes on The Joker who didn't have conventional criminal goals at least by the 80s with The Dark Knight Returns and The Killing Joke.  These stories were quite philosophically different from each other, Miller and Moore allegedly had an argument about The Joker with Moore saying The Joker is Insane and Miller saying The Joker is Evil. There's also Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum A Serious House on Serious Earth.

But even non Comic Readers had gotten a few tastes of this kind of Joker, just off the beaten path of the mainstream. Kerry Shale's performance in the 90s BBC Radio Drama adaptation of Knightfall. Andrew Koenig in the 2003 fan film Batman: Dead End. Even Mark Hamil arguably got his first shot at becoming a better class of criminal in Batman Beyond: Return of The Joker. It is Koenig's performance in particular that I suspect people would be calling a Ledger's Joker knock off if it came after 2008 rather then before. 

The irony is Jared Leto's Joker in terms of what we can see of what he usually does is arguably back to being the regular Criminal with a gimmick take on The Joker that dominated what we got before 2008. But with the added flavor that he's a cringey edgelord who likes to think of himself as something grander then he actually is. 

My point is every time people talk about the history of The Joker in a way that implies Ledger's take is the sole source of every remotely "Edgy" Joker to come since, they are demonstrating their ignorance of how "Edgy" The Joker already was. 

That includes when some makes a deep philosophical video essays founded on this premise treating the Crigeyness of Leto's Joker as a failure rather then the intention. 

Madlax thoughts

Below I'm going to repeat some thoughts on the Anime Madlax I expressed on my Mastadon a couple years ago.

The cool thing about Friday Monday as a villain is that he has the ideology of Heath Ledger's Joker and methodology of Emperor Palpatine.  And Mike Kleinhenz personifies it perfectly.

Just another thing that makes Madlax really fun.

The thing about the ending of Madlax is that it's really really stupid, there is no pretending it makes sense, it is entirely built on asspulls and breaking rules right after establishing them.

And I love every minute of it, because for my tastes it's running on pure Rule of Cool.  I love every time Friday gets shot directly  in the face and brushes it off.  I love the Yuki Kajiura Music.  

And Luci Christian gives some of the best line delivery of her Career, "You're a stupid person" and "I'm a Bad little Girl Friday Monday", I can't believe I'd forgotten about the second of those.

It's everything I watch Anime for crammed into 1 20 minute finale.

I like when a Cool Intimidating Villain is Metaphorically Castrated in a sequel, adaptation, reboot or remake.

In the original 1997 TV Anime Revolutionary Girl Utena the character of Akio aka End Of The World is a very cool and charismatic villain, he needs to be for that original version of the Utena story to work the way it does.

But then Ikahara made a movie called Adolescence of Utena that was a reimagining of the entire premise of Utena but also maybe ambiguously a Sequel somehow???  Either way this more than any other Anime Film borne from a TV Anime it is not a stand alone work of art, every detail is wrapped up in the Symbolism codified by the original show.

In the movie Akio is no longer cool or charismatic, his first scene makes a Joke out of him and then later he’s presented as absolutely Pathetic.  And this was a deliberate artistic choice with deliberate meaning behind it.  VraiKaiser in their discussions of the movie breaks it down way better than I can.  

https://vraikaiser.com/2014/01/20/i-know-why-she-turns-into-a-car/

https://vraikaiser.com/2015/07/04/the-adolescence-of-utena/

Originally of course a good chunk of the fanbase had a negative reaction to this decision,
"how dare you take the coolness away from the cool character I liked". This sentiment was in Jacob Chapman’s review of the movie back when he was known as JesuOtaku.  However in this case continuing to feel that way has become more rare, WhiningAboutYuri on Tumblr was very critical of the movie but supported this specific choice.  And it wouldn’t surprise me if even Jacob himself has repented of that old bad take.

However The Joker is a different story, that character most people still want to see treated with respect.  JackSaint’s video on Suicide Squad’s take on The Joker argues that Leto’s Joker is supposed to be an uncool cringey edge lord, which is also independently hinted at in Josh McNamee’s Sixteen Attempts to talk to you about "Suicide Squad".  

It is a good idea to remind people that the real life Jokers of the world aren’t cool or charismatic but pathetic losers, and the same is true of Adult Men in positions of Authority who take advantage of teenagers.  That doesn’t actually make them not dangerous, but it does make them less glamorous.

However there is a certain kind of fan who identifies with such characters even if they would never approve of their actions in real life. And there is a not insignificant overlap between these fans and the kind who become Internet Neo-Reactionaries.

I’m not arguing the “cool” takes on these characters shouldn't exist, I do believe most people can separate fantasy from reality and those who can’t have deeper problems than how they read fiction.  I’m simply defending the innate value in taking that coolness away from them.  The intended message behind having a Pathetic villain is more potent when done with one previously seen as cool then it would be with one who was always depicted as pathetic.

Now for both of those examples I’ve already demonstrated that I’m far from the first to make this defense of them.  However as far as I’m aware I’m still the only person to read the Netflix Cowboy Bebop’s take on Vicious this way.  And even if I find out others have, I'm still confident I can claim to be among the first since I was reading him this way the day of the show's release. Largely because I was already familiar with the two above discourses, so I was prepared.  But if you’ve seen someone else talk about Vicious this way please link me to it because I would want read or watch it.

Netflix Vicious is entirely driven by how insecure he is in his masculinity, a problem that began with his daddy issues.  He is all through the show exposed to be a manchild who wants to be seen as intimidating far more than he actually is intimidating.  And the people who have that problem in real life who also watch Anime want to be like the Vicious of the original Cowboy Bebop or some other similar kind of Anime villain.  I’m not saying everyone who had a knee jerk negative reaction to this reinterpretation of Vicious did so because they are that kind of person, but I am saying this is why they should reconsider the value of this artistic choice.

Now it’s only with Ikuhara that I’m confident this reading was intentional.  Ayer and Leto have both said things that lead me to suspect that this isn’t what they intended.  With Netflix Bebop it does seem to be stated outright quite a bit that's what the message is, but you can never be certain with Netflix  But it doesn’t matter because the Author is Dead, this is a valid reading of the text whether those who wrote it like it or not.

And I want to see this done more.  As someone who’s devoted a chunk of their online identity to being a Star Wars Prequel Apologist I should show I’m not a hypocrite by saying I’d support Palpatine being given this treatment.  Of course I’m already Free from hypocrisy here, Batman is my oldest fandom and before I went full Weeb I considered The Dark Knight the greatest movie ever made. During the late 2000s and early 2010s I loved quoting Heath Ledger’s Joker to seem cool as much as anyone else did.  Yet I didn’t have a knee jerk negative reaction to Leto’s Joker, I didn’t in 2016 understand yet why I liked it, but I do think on some level this was always why.

In the context of Anime however I think the problematically Idolized Villain who needs to be taken down a peg the most is Light Yagami. And maybe to the fans of Netflix Death Note that’s why that movie works.  But the thing is there are lots of reasons I don’t like that movie, all three movies or shows I praised above have a lot more to like about them then just doing the thing I named this post after.

More importantly though the way in which Light Turner is Pathetic for most of the film functionally exonerates him of being fully culpable for most of his sins, his psycho girlfriend is the real monster and she is cool and charismatic (or at least the movie wants her to be).  The way the three villains above are Pathetic highlights how morally horrible they are.

But also the three examples I praised are not at their core entirely different characters from the prior versions that so many people found cool, we’re simply seeing them now from different angles, in different contexts.  They do act differently in ways that would make them hard to see as in the same continuity, but the most basic character description is the same, or at least can be.  Light Turner lacks any actual similarities to Light Yagami. I don't see him as a different interpretation of the same character, he simply is a different character.

"There's not gonna be any fireworks"

For 8 years I have held the position that The Dark Knight Rises is a great stand alone film but a crappy sequel to Nolan's first two Batman movies.  But that latter criticism was always expressed as merely nerdy whining that it contradicted what I felt The Dark Knight was saying was gonna happen next after the credits rolled.

However I have come to terms with having a deeper ideological issue with TDKR even as a stand alone film, that has also shown how it's in my eyes incongruity with Nolan's prior Batman films had more substance then I originally thought.

The Dark Knight Rises becoming it's endgame made the Nolanverse quite possibly the most Pro-Cop and Anti-Anarchist interpretation of Batman ever.  And perhaps that was always where it was destined to go, Batman Begins has all this Police Corruption stuff taken from Year One and The Long Halloween, but it was kind of always implying this is unique to Gotham and why Gotham uniquely needs The Batman.  And then TDK had the sonar plot that I've grown more conflicted on how it was handled.  But still the first two movies can be authorial intent or not read as pretty Anarchistic and here's why.

One of the problems with Ledger's Joker being called an "Anarchist" is that his view of Human nature is one actual philosophical Anarchists reject, when he says "when the chips are down, these civilized people, will eat each other" he is expressing a Hobbesian view of Human nature.  Watch the Jack Saint video on Post Apocalyptic fiction for a primer on what that term means.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwVN95XfOPM

BTW in this movie, of the scenes where The Joker is at least seemingly explaining his world view and motivations, what he says to Batman is where I think he's most honest, Batman is who he sees himself as making this argument with.  He lies to Batman about a basic statement of fact by switching Dent and Rachel's locations, but not about his goals and philosophy.  What he said to Dent was I think partly honest but also designed to "push" Dent where he wanted.

At the climax of the movie comes the scene which provides the title of this post, where all of the sudden Batman of all people is the DC character who sounds like an Anime protagonist expressing faith in the innate goodness of humanity.  And he is proven right and The Joker is proven wrong just like in The Killing Joke.

However there is a frequent take that the fall of Harvey Dent means The Joker did win, which is how The Joker saw it, he wanted us to think he already had Batman in a no wins scenario.  But from an Anarchist perspective what does that actually prove?  The one person corruptible enough for him to corrupt was an agent of the state, Gotham's second highest ranked politician.  And he needed to vindicate Dent's distrust of two corrupt cops to do it.  Even The Joker's victory vindicates actual Anarchism more then it does Hobbesianism.

But then comes The Dark Knight Rises with it's Tale of Two Cities inspired plot, Bane's plan is a Statist's perception of Anarchism much more so then The Joker's was.  And thus this film suddenly is vindicating a Hobbesian view of the unwashed masses while glorifying The Police with a heroic last stand.

However let's return to the Sonar plot of The Dark Knight.  The common cynical reading of the film is that it's saying this was okay in this extreme circumstance since it did work.  First of all I think arguing an authoritarian measure shouldn't be done because it doesn't work is the cheap cop out.  You can argue all day long that the death penalty isn't a good deterrent and torture doesn't get people to tell the truth and I would not consider you wrong, but I also feel those methods are inherently amoral even if they did work.

The Sonar did work for Batman at first, but it also glitched out and caused him to lose the actual physical fight with The Joker.  The fact is the people on those ferries are who actually defeated The Joker and not just ideologically, since The Joker probably wouldn't have been so caught off guard by that glove trick if he hadn't been frustrated by there being no fireworks.

And while the Sonar worked for finding The Joker was it really necessary?  Fact is he wasn't particularity hiding at that point, once the Ferry situation started places overlooking them would naturally be the first place to look.  

The one thing that was always going to need to be a part of the third Nolan Bat-Film was for the truth about Harvey Dent to come out and for Gotham to move past it's idealization of a fallen idol.  However everything surrounding what TDKR did with that undermined what the prior two films had built.

The Killing Joke is about how The Joker is wrong

I just watched a video essay call The Killing Joke a "Deconstruction" and it pissed me off.  I didn't think I'd need to defend my earlier statement that it's not a Deconstruction, but here we go.

The Joker is proven wrong in more ways then one, the big one is that Gordon was not broken, and it's kind of funny how confidently The Joker assumed he was.  However The Joker's "one bad day" speech is also not really supported by the flashback sequences.

When it comes to The Killing Joke as a Joker origin story people like to focus on the "multiple choice" quote giving us permission to not take the flashbacks as definitively canon.  But even if we take them at face value, they do NOT vindicate The Joker's "one bad day" thesis.  That person's life was already miserable before that day came along and he was already demonstrated to be unstable.  That day was a tipping point but he was in need of help even if that day had never happened.

When someone says that Batman is a psychopath in The Killing Joke I go "what were you reading?"  The Joker expresses the opinion Batman is just like him, but the story is all about The Joker being wrong.

I partly blame this on that animated movie from 2016.  There is a meme going around that only the tacked on Batgirl story is bad but once it becomes a direct adaptation it is great.  That is false, Hbomberguy did a video on the subtle ways that the movie is a pale imitation of what the comic drew.  But I want to focus on one specific scene they didn't cover.

[Update: Unshavedmouse also recently wrote something on how bad that movie was.]

When Batman almost falls into the pit with the big sharp spikes at the bottom, the Animated movie has him intentionally throw a random goon down into it, making him a killer.  Now I knew even from having not read the comic recently that that must be wrong, but I kind of assumed that the comic at least had a goon fall into the spikes and that's where it came from.  But no, I just reread the comic before writing this post after watching the Video Essay I'm responding to, and there is no goon in that scene at all, the spikes just look like they might have blood on them already.

I'm not as dead set against letting Batman kill in adaptations as some people are, I'm fine with how both Tim Burton and Zack Snyder handled it.  However this was a direct adaptation of a specific story where Batman not killing was specifically part of that story's framework.

The interpretation that Batman kills The Joker at the end was something proposed in only the last few years, but this video essay went and stated it as fact claiming you have to ignore the final page to make it "canon" to an ongoing continuity.  The notion that the story was not originally meant to be in continuity is also false, the reason why we have the "cripple the b!tch" quote is because Moore had to ask permission to cripple Barbara Gordon, and then before the novel was published in the same month DC released a Batgirl Special that gave Batgirl a proper send off (the movie should have just adapted that for the Batgirl story instead of letting Tim indulge in his weird shipping).

[Update 2026: SalazarKnight has done a video proving The Killing Joke was Always Canon.]

Guess what, I'm not against interpreting Batman to have killed The Joker is a beloved late 80s classic that allows us any excuse to say he didn't.  Batman killed The Joker in The Dark Knight Returns, that is proven by following how the dialogue balloons' colors changed.  That interpretation is also controversial, but it's based on the text in a way that's pretty irrefutable once you've noticed it.  Saying he killed The Joker in The Killing Joke undermines what that story was entirely about.

I say this as someone who considers the story overrated.  And no it's not because I'm upset with it's treatment of Barbara on Feminsit grounds.  Overrated doesn't mean bad, it's overrated compared to other Alan Moore Batman stories (more people need to read Mortal Clay, that story is beautiful), and it's overrated compared to some more modern usually not Comics works that repeat similar themes and ideas. The Dark Knight is a better take on a story where The Joker has the same goal, and 2019's Joker is a better elaboration on what the flashbacks were trying to do.

Basically people go "the guy who wrote Watchmen, must be another deconstruction".  The truth is every good Deconstruction is written by people who also know how to play that genre straight.  Watchmen is Moore's only Deconstruction, every other hero he wrote is sometimes maybe flawed but still a genuine hero.

Another problem with that original video essay is talking about not liking when Superhero movies or shows are Cynical and Self Aware but praising the 66 Batman show when that show was the most Cynical and Self Aware take on Batman.

The Last Laugh Reaction

Warning, this is a very Spoilery Reaction

I enjoyed this episode even more then the previous one.  I was quite impressed.

I want to comment on Theo Galavant.  The talk about his family having built the city and their legacy robbed has me more convinced then ever of a Court of Owls connection.  Not sure what it is but I think there certainly is one.

And by the end of the Episode I was definitely starting to get a David Xanatos vibe from the character.

And then there is Jerome.  

We suspected he could be a Red Herring from the start.  But then they started going all in on Jerome to start this season and we forgot that.  So that twist ending really hit me by surprise.  And the final ending shows it's not a waste, Jerome does play a role in how The Joker's legend begins.

My optimism from these last 2 episodes remains cautious.  I quite enjoyed how Season 1 started, and then it went down hill in the second half.

That said, there is a difference, one of the top issues I had with how Season 1 turned out did have it's warning signs from the start, the disjointedness of the plot.  But I held out hope because I'm fine with a season starting that way, it's how it brings things together for the end that matters, and Gotham did not do it nearly as well as True Blood Season 2 did.

Right now Season 2 of Gotham seems like it no longer has that problem.  A lot of the the Season 1 fluff is gone, what they cut isn't always what I'd have preferred them to cut out but still things are more focused now, and dropped characters can come back as long as they make sure they fit in right.

So I'm far more optimistic then I thought I would be at this point.  But come November I'll still be choosing Supergirl during the initial airing.

Ya know what I like about Arkham Origins?

Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns is based on the premise that an older Batman would be even nastier and scarier then usual.  And that premise has filtered into other takes on Batman, like the JLU episode where the older Batman Beyond Bruce and the younger one meet, and people are shocked to see Batman play the good cop.

But in the Arkham saga once you get to Origins and see that Batman younger, that expectation is inverted, this younger Batman is far more ruthless and frightening.  In the Arkhamverse Batman gets softer with age.  And I like that, it's far more realistic from my personal experience with people of different ages, as well as how I've changed with age.

And I loved Roger Craig Smith's voice in Arkham Origins, finally we have a Batman voice actor who's better then Conory.  It's a shame his first shot at it in an animated movie is this stupid Gods and Monsters premise.

I haven't played the Arkham games, they're not the kinds of games I play well, but I've watched them on Youtube.  Story-wise they're a pretty cool take on the Batman mythos, but have some flaws.

I like Harley Quinn's Arkham City costume, not the other one so much but that one.  Many people who are nostalgic for the 90s are upset about Harley's costume changing, but I always felt the original BTAS costume was too plain and unimaginative.  I do hate the horrible New 52 costume.  Her Arkham City costume is based on the same premise as the original but with more imagination.  Many people feel it's problematic that her newer costumes are "Sexier", if there is any character justified to wear a sexy costume it's Harley, the whole premise is she's a glorified fan-girl.

I also like Arkham City's costume for Robin the best, they addressed the issue of Robin's mask not really obscuring his face very much.  Robin in Arkham City is Tim Drake, but in my view all the Robins, or male ones at least, should wear the same costume, the idea is people not in the know shouldn't know that Robin changes.

I enjoyed Talia's look as well, though I prefer her more in exotic dresses.  Catwoman's Arkham City costume is Ok but I'm not big on the modern Catwoman outfits in general.  I hate Poison Ivy's look, I'm sick of her being re-imagined into a Human-Plant hybrid monster.

I find it amusing how Scarecrow is basically Freddy Kruger with syringes instead of knives.  And of course Nolan Peter Hastings North is awesome as The Penguin.

The one thing that kinda bugs me about the Arkham Games is how the final villain is always The Joker.  To me it demonstrates how awesome Batman's Rouges Gallery is that his main Archenemy is the greatest Supervillian of all time, yet at the same time he's the least dependent on his main Archenemy of any Superhero who has a great Iconic Supervillian.

Spiderman has the second best Rouges Gallery but he still in two continuities hasn't had a movie without at least a hint of The Goblin.  Superman's had some ok stories without Luthor but no truly great ones.  And X-Men without Magneto or Fantastic Four without Doom simply doesn't work.  And the latest Force Awakens trailer had to remind us of Darth Vader even though it would be stupid if he comes back somehow.

But Batman without The Joker has had in the comics, War Games, Bruce Wayne Murderer/Fugitive, The OMAC Project, and Superman/Batman stories usually go better when they don't have The Joker but do have Luthor.  And for movies Batman Returns, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rises were all great.

So the Arkham Games always defaulting to The Joker is kind of annoying.  But it works for a Video Game Batman saga because it uses a Trope usually affiliated with Video Games.  Where you have a franchise with a default main villain, a new Game will start out seeming to have a new Villain for a change, but then he turns out to be either a pawn or alias of the Default villain.

To me this Trope is the most egregiously used and also defined by Dr. Willy of the Megaman games.  Megaman 3-6 all pulled this.  But TVtropes has chosen to name the Trope for Ganon, which I feel is unfair, for both ALttP and Twilight Princess everyone expected them to have Ganon.

At any rate, Dr. Willy's hijacking antics are exactly what I thought of in Origins when The Black Mask took off his Mask revealing himself to be The Joker.

Lex Luthor and The Joker

Since people love to contrast Batman and Superman so much (I could rant on that someday) in my view that parallelism/contrast doesn't entirely work without contrasting Luthor and The Joker also.  Because each of them is like every good Arch-nemesis should be the Antithesis to to the Heroes they oppose.

Batman embodies Order while The Joker embodies Chaos.  Superman embodies Selflessness while Lex Luthor embodies Selfishness.  There was a time when these contrasts were defined more superficially.  Superman is Brawn while Luthor is Brains.  Batman is good disguised as something scary, while Joker is evil disguised as something that delights children.  But nowadays no one wants Superman to be stupid and few want Lex to be a weakling (which is the complaint about Eisenberg not being Intimidating, but I'm all for it).  And Clowns are now universally considered scary in any context.

So if Batman and Superman are somewhat opposite kinds of heroes, and Joker and Luthor are their total opposites.  Logic dictates they should be in some way be opposite kinds of villains.

I prefer to define Superman as the Rebel Seigel and Shuster wrote rather then the stupid Frank Miller perception (Chaotic Good rather then Lawful Good).  The Joker obviously is Chaotic Evil, he's become the definition of it.

Lex Luthor I have always felt works as an evil counter part to Batman better then any of the failed Batman characters created for that intent.  Both are about Order in a sense.  Batman has the best rouges gallery over all, but not a good Evil Counterpart, The Joker is a perfect antithesis, and many others have some parallels.  But the ones made to be Batman if he were Evil (like Zoom is for Flash and Sinestro is for Hal, and the Phantom Zone villains for Superman) tend to flop.

I read this article on The Joker
https://ladygeekgirl.wordpress.com/2012/04/28/sexualized-saturdays-the-joker/

And I hate it.  The Joker is not about control, that is Lex Luthor.  The Joker is about making other people lose control (Batman first and foremost but he will target others from time to time).  That's his blatant objective in both The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight.  Seeing someone who says they've read TKJ so monumentally misunderstanding it really annoys me.

Also The Joker is Asexual in my opinion, perhaps Homoromantic in relation to Batman but completely without any sex drive.  So no he did not rape or sexually assault Barbara Gordon in TKJ.

Lex Luthor however is a very sexual "Alpha-Male", the early CEO Lex who was very unattractive was the embodiment of why we have sexual harassment laws, when he later morphs into being more attractive he's more of a womanizer, which is an unfortunate implication since attractive people can be rapists too.  And slash shipping Lex and Clark on Smallville works very well.

The Batman villain who is a Sadist is Crane/The Scarecrow, but he gets off on psychological torture rather then physical torture, which is what Cillian Murphy captured perfectly in Batman Begins.  His parallel to Batman is that both use Fear as a weapon, one for good and one for evil.

Writers haven't put the same thought into how to contrast Luthor and The Joker they have into Batman and Superman.  Many Comic stories using both wind up seeming randomly lame.  However the World's Finest story-line on Superman The Animated Series did a decent Job.  I also enjoy their moment in Infinite Crisis, and I rather like what The Joker Blogs is doing.

What about the Pre-Crisis Lex?  Isn't he less Lawful and more Chaotic?  Maybe, but he's still about power and control, in that era his methods may have seemed more similar to some incarnations of The Joker, but the goals were still different.  As far as doing the Pre-Crisis Lex in a more developed way I enjoyed the Allstar Superman animated movie.  How he was in official continuity between losing the Presidency and Infinite Crisis also worked well.

Here is one interesting article on them that I mostly agree with
http://comicsalliance.com/ask-chris-188-lex-luthor-the-joker/

One finale important difference, that the article I just linked to didn't get.  The Joker has wanted to kill Batman in some stories but I prefer The Joker to never want Batman dead, he's more interested in making Batman break then killing him.  While Lex may want Superman alive at some times but ultimately his goal to be the one who kills Superman, which is why he was PISSED OFF at Doomsday.

The Joker can easily be overexposed

The Dark Knight was a big deal because we hadn't seen The Joker on the big screen in 19 years.  And in 89 we hadn't in 23 years.  After The Dark Knight I was prepared to be perfectly content if it did take that long or longer to get a third cinematic Joker (2027-2031).  And TDK achieved that with him having only 35 minutes of screen time out of a 2 hour and 24 minute film (not counting the closing credits in the run-time).

Now I've heard that Leto's contract signs him on to appear in 3 Suicide Squad films, 3 Solo Batfleck films, a Joker film with him and Robbie as the leads, and possible cameos in Justice League films.

If you're thinking "it's not a problem to see Batman in that many films" Batman was designed to be the main character.  Yet some people do think he's overexposed, being in at least 1 Animated film every year, sometimes all 3 Animated films DC does.  And now Batman elements are a core part of 2 Prime-Time TV shows.  Gotham and Arrow which get numerous lesser known Batman characters plus Ra's Al Ghoul. And soon Teen Titans will have Dick Grayson and Oracle/Batgirl.  A growing minority of people are getting sick of Batman.

And if you know me from my Internet activity elsewhere you might be thinking "You're ok with Lex being in every Superman film, and Dr.Doom in every F4 film, and Magneto in every X-Men film, and so on".

Well those are sagas that don't have the variety of awesome villains Batman has. And those Nemeses are also more human characters, who have personal relationships with the heroes.  Each has at least in some depictions been a Friend first.  There is no Frenimy vibe with The Joker, no teaming up against a greater threat, in TDK The Joker is the greater threat that causes Maroni to help the good guys.

But beyond that The Joker is not a run of the mill villain or Arch Nemesis "When Supervillians want to scare each other, they tell Joker stories".

In terms of what seeing The Joker show up in a Batman story should mean, I don't consider him comparable to Lex Luthor but rather to Brainiac.

Harley Quinn being in that many films I'm fine with.  In fact I think it may hurt Harley's character that Robbie's version of her will never be seen without The Joker.  Her relationship with Ivy is something I definitely want to see.  And Harley herself can be a reminder that The Joker exists without actually seeing him.

Even seeing The Joker is every Batman film of the future series I feel is bad, because how will other Bat-Villains truly get to shine if they're always in the shadow of The Clown Prince of Crime?  Lex appearing with other villains is different because he is designed to be (the CEO version anyway) an arc villain,  The Joker is the Wildcard that characters like Lex would want locked up just as much as Batman does.

But beyond that, is the idea of The Joker being in non Batman films.  I was iffy on him being in Suicide Squad to begin with.  Assault on Arkham works because those Animated films are supposed to be outside the box experiments.  Introducing the Suicide Squad to non Comic readers with The Joker's shadow hovering over them shows a certain lack of faith in the property, if Guardians of The Galaxy didn't need Loki then SS shouldn't need The Joker.  If however for all the hype Leto winds up being in the film no more then Thanos was in GotG then I might consider that a relief.

But now that it sounds like he may be in all 3 Suicide Squad films?  How does this even remotely represent the kinds of stories the Suicide Squad usually deals with?  They usually don't even operate within the US.  They should be like Mission Impossible but with a team of villains.

And a Joker solo film...... yes there have been Comics with The Joker as the Title Character.  Their appeal has always worn off pretty quickly.

A film with Harley and Ivy as the leads, that could work.  But ideally of characters who are Batman antagonists it's Catwoman who is best at carrying her own stories.  But of course Executives think the Halle Berry film failing means Catwoman can't carry a movie.  Rather then simply blaming that film's failure on being Catwoman in name only.

The Joker in a Justice League film could work maybe if they do a Legion of Doom story, but the LoD has never existed in the actual Comics, closest analogue is the Secret Society of Supervillians from the Infinite Crisis lead in.  Infinite Crisis issue #2 explains why The Joker wasn't asked to join that.  So I wouldn't want The Joker as a LoD member but as a Wild Card.

I was mentioned in the Gotham Podcast

http://www.podasterynetwork.com/2015/02/19/1x16-the-blind-fortune-teller/

I am quite glad they enjoyed my Emily Fields suggestion.  May or may not have realized I meant it partly as a reference to how Talia has a similar look.

There was another thing latter they replied to.  I made other comments in Chat, many were just repeating what I said in my last Gotham post on this blog.

One was something I expanded on in a comment on a DC TV Talk post.

I think it’s possible that Gotham’s Barbara is a merger of Barbara and Kate Kane and that she’ll become Batwoman

The last name they’ve given her is similar. And she has the Romantic link to Renee Montoya.

Plus is thematically works since she’s the mother of Batgirl

What made Jerome work as a good possible Joker to me is the emphasize on how freaked out Tompkins was by him.   I want The Joker to be a force that brings out the worst in others around him.
"When villains want to scare each other, they tell Joker stories"

The Joker needs to come off as an unfathomable evil even to people who deal with horrible psychopaths all the time.  And sometimes spread madness like a plague.  That's why I love about The Joker Blogs.

I want to see Montoya be a good Detective and ally to Gordon.

I honestly don't like her being The Question.  I feel like Comics sometimes take their crossoverness to far.  Someone introduced as a Batman side character becoming a successor to a character that was originally a completely different company is really lame to me.  I'm a fan of Montoya because of who she was before Infinite Crisis.  If they want to homage her Question future just have her meet Vic Sage.

I want Barbara to have marry Gordon and have Barbara II before the end of Season 2.  I don't want them putting that off forever.  Then have and Gordon get divorced.  Then have her become Batwoman like I suggested.

Gotham Circus TV Reaction

So Fish as a Marie Laveau look going with that hat.

So the Graysons are part of a Circus version of the Hatfields and McCoys.  I know those two were Robin's parents as soon as I saw them bickering.

That throw away Hellfire club thing sounds like it could lend itself to some kind of Monk or Brother Blood like plot.

Jerome had a very satisfying Laugh.

I called the Dollmaker thing.

My Revenge of The Joker fan trailer

This is a Fan Trailer I wrote but that SolyentBrak1 edited

I wrote this years ago, long before The Dark Knight Rises came out.

The Premise is The Joker breaking out fo Arkham a decade after the events of The Dark Knight.

The source materiel is The Dark Knight and it's Soundtrack, a deleted scene form Batman Forever and a scene from Halloween 4.