BW Vs Literature Devil: Why Batman Needed To Save The Joker

It’s not easy to disagree with someone who you actually agree with most of the time. I do not live in an echo chamber and there has been the occasional BW Vs article where I displayed that disagreement–admittedly too many in a row, so I think I need to widen my discussion sources. Maybe I HAVE been in an echo chamber? I still enjoy and agree with them enough to use them in Daily Videos or Saturday Article Link, but sometimes I have a different perspective. “BW Vs.” has always been more of a counterpoint deal than attacking anyone no matter how much of their views I agree with or not.

This time the counterpoint goes to the Literature Devil, host of the Morning Nonsense podcast I listen to every weekday when I’m getting up. The screen name of the pen name S.A. Rivera (I don’t think he’s revealed his true name due to his place in the cultural discussion of storytelling and the internet being the internet–or maybe he’s just shy), LD has some great takes on storytelling, heroes, and their current state in the storytelling industry…namely that it’s all being poorly done by people who hate heroism and identify more with the villain, or want to change everything to fit their tastes and worldview because anything popular needs to be made for them, like the “cool kids” of high school. Or as we call them around here, the “everything for meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” crowd. The Hollywood mindset is very high school. Take it from a high school victim. You’ve seen some of his videos posted in the Daily Video, and there’s a few in the coffer I want to use in the future.

However, I have to disagree with something he said in his latest video, “When Is Batman’s Mercy Actually Unethical?”, released on Batman Day, when the Caped Crusader made his comic debut. Not the entire video. Just one particular point he made in the ye ol’ argument “should Batman kill the Joker”, or rather in this case “should Batman let the Joker die if he’s dying?”. LD makes the case that trying to save the Joker when he should have chased the killer and let Joker pay for his sins was the wrong move. I haven’t read the comic storyline myself, but I do believe this is the inciting incident for the Bat Family cutting ties with him recently. That’s a rant for another time if I ever do read the arc to have a better idea of what I’m talking about beyond “I hate this plot and I’m sick of the Loner Batman BS”. The problem is the particular scenario as LD presents it that I have problems with. I built this article out of my comment, and altered it with other responses I saw and extended thoughts.

Like with Ra’s Al Ghul in Batman Begins, did Batman make the right move or just the right move for him? Personally I think there are times when letting Joker die wouldn’t hurt Batman’s reputation, at least with me. This particular scenario, though, I think he made the right call.

On a general level I can agree. If Batman didn’t warn the Joker that the building was going to explode if he hit the button Batman rejiggered. If someone was after the Joker, you stop him because he’s about to commit murder. However, if you can watch someone bleed out and die suffering and call it justice, you kind of scare me. Also, I’m going only by LD’s argument, given that I don’t know who the character who tried to kill the Joker was, and we know the real reason DC doesn’t kill the Joker is because they don’t want to give up the character. He’s so popular that even when people were complaining they broke out the Clown Prince Of Crime way too often people didn’t stop liking seeing Batman and company square off with him.

Revenge killings in fiction are usually pretty quick. You stab or shoot them or blow them up and they die maybe with enough time to give a soliloquy because the writer’s weird.  Look at a Charles Bronson movie or Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride.  Those are exceptions based on particular circumstances. Nobody else is stopping them and their death is the only way to do because there is no authority available or willing to do it.

For other heroes, if you can’t save them then maybe you won’t mourn for them and be relieved the nightmare is over…but hopefully you don’t celebrate it, either. I didn’t celebrate when Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden died, but I’m not sorry they’re gone. It had to be done. I’m not anti-death penalty, but you have to be a particular level of evil before I’m comfortable with it. Some people are too dangerous to leave alive, and the Joker as he’s “evolved” over the decades has become part of that category, another victim of modern comic’s obsession with “EPIC”. Remember when the Joker’s plans might involve killing but not in the high body counts he does now? Every story has to be the largest stakes possible, which is one of the reasons I posted a previous commentary on how the writers have set Batman up to be a failure as a superhero. As one of his commenters,@shagohad3, stated

I think a big part of this problem boils down to escalation and the status quo. The writers have escalated the Joker far past what the audience is willing to suspend their disbelief that Batman hasn’t put a batarang through his temple. And they’ve made him too iconic to Batman’s image to ever truly get rid of him.

In the comic LD is going by the Joker is bleeding out, or in Batman Begins Ra’s in on the train about to be derailed. The “I don’t have to save you” line ruined the movie in the end for me, and I accepted quite a few adaptation errors by that point in the film. Yes he does have to save him. He saves his life, turns him over to the authorities, and lets Ra’s experience Gotham’s justice or profit by its failing. If Batman left the Joker to bleed out and die, is that humane? This isn’t a “battlefield” situation. The Joker is lying there helpless. You’re asking Batman to let him die when he’s helpless and can’t kill anyone. It sounds more like revenge for past deeds unless you’re psychic enough to know what he will do. We do it for him, what about Gotham’s other killers? He still has to live with that one death, the one he watched happen or left knowing what would happen unless Joker’s minions found him and did nothing. Bleeding out is suffering, and Batman doesn’t let people suffer.

Compare it to his dying in Arkham City above. (I still need to finish Arkham Asylum, which is where I thought he died, and was a voice in his head in Arkham City. I goofed in LD’s comments). Joker dies and Batman can’t stop it, but he tried. Joker dies by his own actions. So were many of the false deaths where Batman didn’t reach him in time. Could Batman really be that cold, even to the Joker? Even the Punisher, at least in the few stories I’ve seen, doesn’t go that far, but it is easier for him to kill mobsters than it was, and in some rather violent ways. I wonder if there will be a day when civilians become “collateral damage”, thus turning him into the very type of person that led to him becoming the Punisher in the first place. Another example is the end of the “Worlds Finest”  crossover episode that started The New Batman Superman Adventures.

I think Batman made the joke because by this point the Joker failed to die so often you might have to cut off his head and release the Quickening to get him to die. (And given how some writers try to “explain” the Joker, they might actually think that.) Still, he  and Superman both prioritized saving Lex and Harley over the Joker because they had to. They would have saved all three if they could have. As it stands, “Puddin'” wasn’t and would come back multiple times. We could go over the Return Of The Joker death, too, but that wasn’t Batman and it depends on which version you go with. In the TV version it’s an accident so the Saturday morning kids don’t have to see a hero, even one driven that far, cause a death like in the uncensored version. (Personally the gas killing of the Jokerz gang member was more DCAU matching than the firing “bang” flag, which is more comic Joker, but your view may vary.)

Just to slip this in here, as a few people pointed out in the comments, it’s always “why doesn’t Batman kill the Joker” and ignoring “why doesn’t anyone else”? Why does it have to be Batman who violates the rule? It’s the writers that drove the Joker further into mass murder status over the decades when in the past Joker was more into causing chaos, killing only for revenge purposes rather than wanting the city to die. That’s a fairly recent take compared to how long the character has existed, and it’s their fault that we even have a Joker so into the death march by way of showmanship that we have now. So why doesn’t someone in Arkham slip him some poison? Why doesn’t a cop (it’s not Gotham doesn’t have any rogue cops) just shoot him in his cell or in the paddy wagon? Once Batman turns him over, why doesn’t Gordon and the GCPD “fail to reach the hospital in time oh what a shame”? I gravitate to heroes who don’t just fight crime, but champion life. It’s why I was drawn to the DC superheroes. It’s why I celebrate with the Doctor on the rare occasion where “everyone lives”. Don’t forget Batman’s response:

If he crossed that line just once, even with the Joker, he wasn’t sure he could come back. Why not Ra’s, who gets driven crazier every time his corpse gets shoved into the Lazarus pit? Mr. Freeze has a body count. Bane is still out there. Scarecrow wants to run over Robin and Wonder Woman with a combine harvester. When does Bruce start acting more like Jean Paul Valley? Call it the Lay’s Potato Chip theory if you want, but that’s what Bruce is scared off: himself. The more you kill, the easier it becomes. The movie having Batman stop Jason in a less violent manner than the comic is more Batman’s style. (Plus my usual pointing out that Batarangs are supposed to be blunt object boomerangs, not bladed weapons.) In Superman vs The Elite, Superman even points out how easy it would be to do what the Elite does. And look what happened when HE killed the Joker in the Injustice universe. It was the first step into becoming everything people who don’t understand Superman thinks someone with Superman’s power would do.

Meanwhile, Batman DID try to take the Joker down after Jason’s death (he got better–Lazarus pits and Superboy-Prime punching reality or some nonsense), unless the comic story was changed for the Legends Of Robin audiodrama which everyone should take a listen to because it’s that good. (Jim Soriero is the Tim Drake in my head and should’ve voiced him again in something.) Superman had to stop him because Joker managed to get himself made an ambassador with diplomatic immunity. Would he have killed him? Maybe, but the situation and Superman (ironic in the Injustice scenario) cooled him down and he stopped the Joker’s latest scheme involving nukes and the UN. As for the Joker’s insanity, there are times he has turned sane. I give you the following from NeedleMouse Productions.

Without his sanity the Joker becomes a normal person, not a criminal. If he retains his memory he even hates what he became. Also, one version of Batman killing the Joker led to the “Batman Who Laughs”, and we don’t want that. Tim Burton and the DCAU Joker were already henchmen to a mafia boss, but the The Killing Joke version (and Joker does like to have a multiple choice backstory) was forced into it. That’s usually what’s treated as Joker’s origin, accurate or not. So Batman was right about the Joker’s sanity.

And now we unleash my bias, in the interest of honesty. What makes me gravitate to the DC heroes, or did until recently when all the fun was drained from it, is that these aren’t just crimefighters. They’re champions of life. Most of the heroes I grew up with were, and only the majority came from Saturday morning, or first run syndication where the rules are less strict. They try to save everybody, and it hurts them when they can’t. Superheroes save people, even the bad guys. That’s how it worked when I was a kid. He-Man saved Skeletor, Optimus Prime worked with Megatron, and Batman saves everyone, including the Joker.

YouTube wouldn’t let me speed to the 3 min mark, but what do you do there? Leave and hope he falls, do it yourself, or what Batman does. There are scenarios where Batman doesn’t have to save him. They may even come a time when Batman would have to kill the Joker to save an innocent life, or the whole city. Or the multiverse if he wants to risk that whole “Batman Who Laughs” situation, given how obsessed modern writers are with the largest stakes possible in every story (speaking of commentaries I’ve done before—more than once). Batman doesn’t do revenge or “pre-crime”. Batman saves lives, even if they don’t deserve it, not just because of everything that would happen if Batman crosses that line and Commissioner Gordon has to come after him. Gordon himself in that scenario even wanted to let the Joker die, but it’s not Batman letting him live. The courts don’t put him to death, nobody has challenged Arkham Asylum for being so easy to break out or upgraded security, and nobody else in the area except for that guy in the cheap outfit has even tried to it himself.

So in the scenario presented, yes, Batman should have saved the Joker. There are other times he didn’t have to, but in this particular instance…yes, you do have to save him. You’re Batman! It’s what you do. I would derail the trolley somehow, or at least try. Maybe hit the switch as the trolley hits the fork and hope it works, not knowing for sure how the science would result. So my question is…could you leave a man to bleed out and slowly die in agony? Even the Joker, who totally could if it helped the “joke”? Under the circumstances presented in that interpretation of Cacaphony, I do think Batman did the right thing. Because he’s Batman.