You know--way back in pre-Code days--he wasn't that bad. A third-rate rip-off of the Spirit[1], okay, but "non-powered masked hero using his brain to catch vicious murderers" is *not* an inherently bad concept, dammit. And yeah, the writing was intended for kids, and the art got belted out (and still wasn't bad; a little crude, maybe, but the composition's good and the flow's decent--I mean, this *is* Bob Kane). Maybe not great, but not crap.
Now, WRT the Joker:
He started as a monster.
He was a vicious murdering extortionist and thief, whose modus operandi involved killing people who didn't pay him (or who he was robbing, or who he thought it would be fun to kill), occasionally with a horrible chemical concoction that caused their face muscles to spasm into a terrible grin. Before they cleaned him up into a glitzy punny clown.
There is camp in Batman's history. There is a lot of crap, and a lot of jokes. But it did not start that way, dammit, and the Joker as callous monster and Batman as devoted detective[2] exist all the way back to the 1939 comics (or 1940, for the Joker).
They've changed (added to?) Batman, to make him darker and more broken and a better foil for the Joker.
For the Joker? Really, they're just going back to what he started as. --- [1] Or the Lone Ranger, or the Scarlet Pimpernel, or Zorro, or whoever the hell you want to go with. [2] Yes, I know he's turned into a driven detective. That's okay. That they're currently writing for an audience who goes "Uhm, he dresses as a bat...?" and requires the response "Yeah, this is *really* important to him" does not strike me as a change, more an expansion.
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Date: 2007-12-14 03:08 pm (UTC)You know--way back in pre-Code days--he wasn't that bad. A third-rate rip-off of the Spirit[1], okay, but "non-powered masked hero using his brain to catch vicious murderers" is *not* an inherently bad concept, dammit. And yeah, the writing was intended for kids, and the art got belted out (and still wasn't bad; a little crude, maybe, but the composition's good and the flow's decent--I mean, this *is* Bob Kane). Maybe not great, but not crap.
Now, WRT the Joker:
He started as a monster.
He was a vicious murdering extortionist and thief, whose modus operandi involved killing people who didn't pay him (or who he was robbing, or who he thought it would be fun to kill), occasionally with a horrible chemical concoction that caused their face muscles to spasm into a terrible grin. Before they cleaned him up into a glitzy punny clown.
There is camp in Batman's history. There is a lot of crap, and a lot of jokes. But it did not start that way, dammit, and the Joker as callous monster and Batman as devoted detective[2] exist all the way back to the 1939 comics (or 1940, for the Joker).
They've changed (added to?) Batman, to make him darker and more broken and a better foil for the Joker.
For the Joker? Really, they're just going back to what he started as.
---
[1] Or the Lone Ranger, or the Scarlet Pimpernel, or Zorro, or whoever the hell you want to go with.
[2] Yes, I know he's turned into a driven detective. That's okay. That they're currently writing for an audience who goes "Uhm, he dresses as a bat...?" and requires the response "Yeah, this is *really* important to him" does not strike me as a change, more an expansion.