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clownprince · 1 year

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Batjokes in Batman: Last Knight on Earth

I'd highly recommend reading LKOE before reading this meta, but I'll quickly summarize utc (spoilers, obviously).

Basically, Lex Luthor challenged Superman to a debate for evil versus good. Luthor won, Superman died, and the population picked off most of the superheroes. The remaining superheroes had a final meeting to try and decide what to do. The public was outside the hall. Batman opened the doors and let them in. They massacred everyone. Batman survived but barely and when he recovered his mentality was broken. He returned as Omega to try and save the population by acting as a dictator, essentially. The story follows Joker (who stayed alive as a severed head, somehow) and a Bruce Wayne created by Bruce's perpetual Batman machine, on their quest to stop Omega and save the world from being mind-controlled.

So, an idea that I've heard quite a bit is that Joker loves Batman, not Bruce. I've always been of the mind that it's more complicated than that.

A major theme in Batjokes is the idea of duality, Batman and Joker as opposing forces who complement each other. "You complete me." There are different interpretations of this idea, both from creators and fans. In The Dark Knight, Joker loves Batman because in Joker's own words, he's "too fun to kill". Joker is fascinated by Batman, and his interactions with Batman satiate his sensation seeking/need for stimulation.

Scott Snyder frames it as more of an ideological battle: "... the romance between them for me has always been this sense of them locked in this dance. 'We love each other. We can never leave each other. I am the other half of you. You complete me.'"

And then there's the aspect mentioned in Endgame: "fighting for meaninglessness but giving meaning by virtue of the fight." Engaging in this ideological battle with Batman gives Joker a reason to continue existing; it gives him a purpose in a reality he perceives as cruel and absurd and ultimately futile.

There are different aspects of this and different viewpoints and they're all valid. But I interpret the whole "you complete me" thing in somewhat of a different way.

To me, it's more like: I love you because in another world, our roles our swapped. I love you because you care about everything and everyone so deeply even though it doesn't matter in the end and you know that. I love you because you experienced the same kind of world-shattering trauma that I did, but rather than giving in to the futility of everything and embracing the chaos of the universe, you chose to fight back. I love you because you choose to try and save everyone even when logic says it's impossible, because you keep getting back up even when you know you're just going to get knocked right back down again. I love you because the world told you "life is meaningless" and instead of accepting and internalizing that, you said "then I'II create my own meaning". I love you because you are everything that I'm not.

I've always believed that Joker loves Batman for his humanity, for his hope and faith in his fellow people and his desire to help, his striving to make things better and to save people even if it doesn't ultimately change anything in a major way. But as I said before, it's complicated. I think that Joker is simultaneously frustrated by Batman continually trying to save everyone, in part because it's pointless to him, but also in part because of how it reflects on him and his worldviews. He hates the possibility that his way of dealing with the meaningless of everything is wrong. His nihilism is a survival strategy and not something he can easily let go of. Hope, optimism, and belief in the goodness of people are not luxuries that he can afford.

In a very real way, Batman embodies what's left of Joker's hope. Batman represents the possibility that people can go through the worst the world has to offer and still retain their compassion and belief in other people and desire to make things better. I think that's one of the reasons Joker pushes Batman like he does, and also one of the reasons Joker wants Batman to break his no killing rule on Joker specifically and not someone else; he doesn't want to be alive in a world where Batman is no longer a source of hope. I also don't think that he can admit this to himself, if he's even consciously aware of it.

Joker's conflict with Batman is his way of clinging on to hope. Hope that maybe, just maybe he's wrong. Maybe kindness and compassion and trying to help isn't futile. Maybe not everyone is bad, maybe people are deserving of help and the faith that Batman puts in them.

Joker is so traumatized that he genuinely cannot allow himself to have that kind of hope again. It's a common thing with complex trauma to have negative core beliefs about the world and humanity in general. Joker's nihilism is a coping mechanism. He cannot allow himself to be anything other than nihilistic, he can't afford the luxury of hope because if he dared to hope and it backfired it would break him (or that's his perception, at least). This is kind of echoed in TKJ, although you could argue that's more about trust. I think it's both.

I think that Joker loves the part of Batman who wants to save everyone, who puts on the cowl with the intention of not letting anyone else go through what he experienced as a child, who has compassion for even the worst of his rogues, just as much as he loves the part of Batman who is violent and pathological and wants revenge for what he went through. And he wants Batman to get the joke, i.e., accept that everything is meaningless and stop trying to fix things when it's ultimately futile, and stop trying to help people when they're fundamentally bad. But he also wants Batman to keep pushing back, to keep trying to prove him wrong.

Unfortunately, there isn't much evidence for this in comics (largely because not a lot of creators dare to tackle what's going on in Joker's mind and instead just use him as a chaos edgelord villain). The closest thing is this excerpt from TDKR:

You could make an argument that Batman keeping count isn't an expression of him caring about the victims, but l've personally always interpreted this quote as meaning "I love you because these people's lives mean nothing to me, but you care about every single one I take."

Asiide from TDKR, LKOE is one of the only comics that actually has some evidence for this idea.

This is obviously a reference to Bruce holding the door open for the mob of people. But you could also interpret this as a metaphor for a lot of things. Really any of those concepts I mentioned that Batman represents/embodies and that Joker denies himself, like hope, optimism, belief in the goodness of people, etc. So what he says next, "It's why Bats was always the best act in town in my opinion!"

You could also interpret this in a few ways. One is that he's saying that Batman was the best act in town because he was crazy, and Joker derived entertainment from that. But you could also interpret it more as Joker loves Batman because he would hold the door open, because he believes in people and he because he tries to save people, tries to help even if its dangerous or ultimately doomed.

Here we have Joker finally allowing himself the luxury of hope. He allows himself to believe in Batman's cause. And just prior to this, Joker took Tim's old Robin robot suit, which is significant of in itself. Obviously it varies with the person behind the mask, but the actual role of Robin represents the lighter side of Batman's crusade. Hope for the future, childlike optimism, belief in people and belief that things could be better, that people's actions do have the capacity to make things better. Batman needs a Robin to avoid getting sucked into a pit of anger and vengeance and despair. Aside from the human connection, needs someone to remind him of the lighter side of things.

So obviously having Joker take up this role when he usually represents pure nihilism and chaos, the idea that life is meaningless and people's actions and efforts to change things don't matter in the long run... It's a role reversal that shows how Joker and Batman's dynamic has been forced to change in this post-apocalyptic world. Earlier, Bruce says that Joker can't be Robin because Robin "was just a good person trying to help." Whether Joker fits that description is debatable, but he certainly has changed.

Joker's character development is further emphasized in this page, staring at his old costume, what he used to represent and fight for with his reflection showing where he is now. You could also argue that the next panel with Joker talking about the echoes is him trying to comfort Batman in his own way; that's more debatable but it would fit in nicely with the idea of him filling the role of Robin.

"All I've ever do is tried to challenge you, make you stronger. If you ever broke, you weren't worth it. But this time... this was it... you'd fall if you didn't see." For all the times Joker has said that he wants Batman to be in on the joke, for him to see that everything is meaningless and that what he's doing as Batman is insane and won't help anything because people are not good and don't matter anyway…. Well, imo this quote shows that it's not the entire truth.

The key here, I think, is in the quote "if you ever broke, you weren't worth it." Joker wants to push Batman to the point of breaking, but he doesn't actually want him to break. He wants to challenge Batman and his worldview, but if he ever actually changed his worldview to match Joker's, if he actually stopped trying to change things for the better and gave in to the idea that everything is meaningless, then he wouldn't be worth it.

He's constantly pushing Batman to try to get him and break, to see the joke and stop trying, but also if Batman stopped trying, if he stopped being a source of hope and stubborn determination in the face of a meaningless universe, Joker wouldn't have the same interest in him.

As stated in the I Am A Gun arc, without Bruce Wayne, Batman is just hollow anger. His hope and compassion and desire to help are what differentiate him from all the other dark angry edgelord vigilantes out there. Bruce Wayne is the soft, tender, hopeful human part of Batman.

Joker does love Bruce Wayne, or at least parts of him. He just either isn't necessarily aware of it, or can't bring himself to admit it under normal circumstances.

The circumstances in LKOE are anything but normal, though. Usually Joker wouldn't be able to admit this, that he values Batman's belief people and his has hope and faith and compassion and softness. But things have changed.

Omega is a Batman who has broken. He's lost his faith in people. He's lost his hope. The only way he can imagine a world that isn't violent and awful is by mind controlling the populous. He doesn't believe that people could be good enough to make the world good. He's become a dictator rather than a source of hope.

Omega has given up on the world, and he's trying to create a new, better one. But the thing is, Batman would never give up on the world as it is. He would try to save it regardless of whether his quest to save it is doomed, and regardless of whether it even wants saving.

I think this really encapsulates what Joker both loves and hates most about Batman. In a world that says "I have no place for your optimism, there is no room for your point of view and your futile attempts to save everyone in this meaningless, doomed world", Batman says "I'll make my own place. I'll try to save everyone regardless of whether it's doomed to fail and regardless of whether it's ultimately meaningless or futile. I'll make my own place and my own meaning."

Joker's Batman would hold open the door. Because Batman believes in people, has faith in them and their goodness. And Joker knows this, and he loves and hates it.

Ultimately, Joker is the one who helps talk Bruce into not giving up in his fight against Omega. He's usually advocating for the futility of trying to fight for good or trying to change anything, so this is clearly an inversion of that.

As for Joker's apparent hatred of Bruce Wayne; I could make a whole additional meta about this but basically I think it boils down to jealousy and fear of being abandoned by Batman. He hates that Batman is spending time with and energy on people other than him and he's afraid of becoming insignificant compared to the Batfam, essentially. He sees Batman growing as a person in the sense of him making connections, and he feels like he's being left behind because Batman is changing but he isn't. And then there's the jealousy; Batman has connections and people who care about him but Joker has no one.

While LKOE isn't canon, I would argue that Snyder's characterization of him and his motives is consistent enough to generalize across all of his work. So with LKOE in mind and the idea of Joker loving Batman's hope and compassion but not being able to admit it, and him framing it as an ideological battle as a way to rationalize it so he doesn't have to admit to himself that he loves Batman for the softer parts of him (in addition to his darker qualities ofc). There are some examples that hint at this, too.

Here we have Joker admitting he doesn't want either of them to win. To me, this has always read like Joker wants to believe in Batman's message, he wants to believe that things are meaningful and that people can be good but he can't, and this eternal fight is his way of preserving a shred of hope and creating meaning for himself. He doesn't actually want to win, he wants to push Batman and see him continue believing and being a source of hope and trying to change things even though Joker is trying to break him and his worldview. It's almost like every time Joker challenges Batman's worldview and he doesn't break, it gives Joker just the tiniest little additional bit of hope.

And then we have this. It's not as direct as LKOE, but I think the sentiment of Joker loving Batman for his caring and trying to change things and making his own meaning in the face of a meaningless universe is very much present in this panel. I suppose you could read this as sarcastic or trying to make fun of him, but I still think there's at least a shred of truth to it.

So, while LKOE isn't canon, I still consider all of this to be accurate to Joker's character in general, including in canon continuity. Although you're more than welcome to disagree with me.

#this is my magnum opus #batjokes #batman #joker #mega #batman: last knight on earth #lkoe

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