Note: Kelly has supplied TWO articles for this issue of the newsletter - scroll down past the first to find the second. Enjoy!
THE JOKER CONNECTION
You know, until 1992, I did not like the Joker at all. There was something about him that I just did not like, and I couldn't put my finger on it. Perhaps I felt he'd never been given a proper voice or look, or maybe I just hated how damned skinny he was.
Then, Batman: The Animated Series came along and ruined everything.
The Bruce Timm/Mike Mignola/Kevin Nowlan/others designs recreated a Gotham City vague to most and well-known to almost none. They messed around with things and threw out what didn't work, and the result was gold. My personal favorite twist was to hand over
the Clown Prince of Crime to a funny-animal writer named Dini and see what he could do with him.
I'd already been impressed with the new designs. Man-Bat was terrifying and monstrous. Mr. Freeze was heartbreaking, and Catwoman was voluptuous and sleek. I'd seen the Penguin and a good deal of the other villains, but I hadn't seen hide nor hair of
the Joker.
Then, five minutes into "Joker's Favor", he turned and winked at Charles Michael Collins, and I swear to God I thought he was looking at me.
>From there on in, it's been part hero worship, part total revulsion. He's an unrepentant monster, an evil man who kills for fun and takes pleasure from torturing and humiliating everyone around him. But LOOK at him! Debonair profile, impeccable
taste, personal style, and a devil's wit. Coupled with the Grace Allen of the cartoon world, Harley Quinn, he became droll. No longer a cartoon misfit, the Joker had become a sly, sleazy, narcissistic con man, whose strength was mad genius and whose weapons were words as much
as guns.
Mark Hamill's voice brought a vaudevillian twist to the character...no longer was he simply a scattered maniac, but spoke as though he had carefully chosen his own personal dialog. He spoke with the burr and tilt of a classic actor, convinced that the high-level
crimes he was pulling off were more like psychopathic performance art. The whole world was watching, and that's what the Joker wanted. Who in their right mind would have ever considered Luke Skywalker for the part of the greatest comic-book villain of all time?
The hair...nobody I've ever talked to has noted the hair, but it has to be said. Look how much better he looked with sleek, tilted-up hair, an emerald green so deep it appeared black. As a logical extension of his head beyond his gruesome jaw, the hair gave
him a profile that is totally unmistakable. I didn't miss the curly locks one bit.
The writing was, of course, marvelous. Dini mined the history of the character, and threw in everything from the Joker's famous ability with explosives to his novelty weapons. The laughing fish were in there, but so was Joker's knack for disguise. We
saw him fly an airplane, we saw him play the piano. We saw him swallow swords, and we saw him deal cards. Not only the Joker of his personal deck, but a Jack of all trades, and a King in his own mind. And his own world. With Harley as his Queen (and phantom Ace as
well), the Joker proved time and time again that it's okay to root for the bad guy. As long as you realize that the man in
the bat suit is not going to be in on the joke.
* * * * *
HARLEY QUINN:
WHO IS THE JOKE ON, ANYWAY?
Perhaps the most curious enigma of the entire Batman cartoon empire that has dominated the minds of young boys for nearly a decade is Harleen Quinzel, doctor of psychoanalysis and total nutbag. Yes, this high priestess of the cracker factory has somehow tunneled
her way into the collective dim unconscious of those who know of comic books. She has, of course, catapulted directly into the forefront of those who simply love her. With her own title, a la Catwoman, on the way, let's take a look at the merry little misfit, shall we?
And let me be the first to say that it better not stink to hell like Catwoman does. Every month, there it is, right next the Batman titles, just waiting to suck.
Harley is innocent. She's also sexy, and innocent sexiness is perhaps one of the most endearing traits of a woman in ANY popular culture arena. Particularly a blonde. Let's not forget Chrissie on Three's Company, shall we? Goldie Hawn giggled to
fame on Laugh-In, and any toffee-topped mendicant on anything from Full House to whatever teen nightmare is 'genre-bending' mindless t.v. audiences this week is bound to attract both female and male attention.
Harley is capable. She's deceptively intelligent, incredibly agile, and thanks to a slight overhaul by overseer and Joker guru Paul Dini, is now commander of superhuman powers. This is not a bad thing. It's good to see a woman so clearly hooked on a
man be perfectly capable of taking her life in her own hands. She can take care of herself, where a lot of women can not.
She's also the anti-bad girl, which is something comics need these days. Bad girls can't be explicit on television, but Catwoman and Harley are NOT a good match...and thus, have never really met. Except for the time Harley tried to kill her, but any henchmen would do the same.
It's also refreshing, sort of, to see a woman in a book be truly in love with somebody, and try to change that person for the better. The Joker is not going to become a hero any time soon (and if he does, I'm moving to Nebraska and calling myself 'Spud'),
but his characters wrinkles are definitely more in evidence when his awesome ego is conflicted by a flighty little, as he calls her, 'minx'.
It remains to be seen how the comics are going to treat Harley now that she's dipped below the radar of the savvy tv viewer...Let's hope she's not put in situations where she gets to deal with terribly pathetic villains such as the Hellcats or Catmans that Catwoman has
had to deal with. Let's hope she finds her voice and becomes an important addition to DC's lineup, and not another Anarky or Creeper, waiting patiently to be cancelled.
After all, kiddo...we're rootin' for ya!
Now, why didn't Dini and Timm come up with any other characters so successful? All I see is Montoya and, uck, Lock-Up....
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AND THAT'S THE FACTS
(by "Reliable Source")
(Yes, I understand that the title is grammatically incorrect. So sue us. Actually, nix that. Don't sue us.)
(DISCLAIMER: For those of you who are not yet familiar, Reliable Source is an anonymous character who first surfaced on Batman: The Animated Message Boards, spewing forth ridiculous predictions about the future of Batman Beyond under the guise of spoiler
warnings. His controversial posts created quite a buzz, and have landed him a temporary column with this newsletter. The thoughts and ideas expressed by this shady character are in no way officially connected to Kids WB, Batman Beyond, this newsletter, or anything that is
decent or holy. That said, on with the show.)
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SPECIAL IN THIS ISSUE (#1)
Jay Allman is a long-time subscriber to BATMAN: THE ANIMATED NEWSLETTER, and recently decided to submit an article in direct opposition to my Paul Dini article WAY back in . Anyhow, enjoy!
A DEFENSE OF PAUL DINI
Tim "TWO FACE" Leighton fell into heresy a few months back - he actually denied the divinity of Paul Dini. Paul Dini! They guy who wrote "Heart of Ice"! And created Harley Quinn! Who wrote Batman: Animated! Clearly ol'
"Two-Face" needs to be tossed back into Arkham with the other loonies.
But seriously, folks. "Two-Face" likes a lot of Dini's stuff; the man's "got talent, that's a given," our editor wrote in issue 40. But he thinks Dini's gone soft: Instead of "in-depth scripts, delving into the human psyche,
now all his scripts [are] filled with lame jokes and cheap sex shows."
To which the obvious response is: What's wrong with lame jokes and cheap sex shows?
OK, that's a poor response. And I'm not going to argue that "Joker's Millions" and "Harlequinade" are terrific. In fact, to defend him I'm going to have to argue for a deep reappraisal of his work.
You see, most Batman watchers think Dini has only two modes: Tragic and Comic. Sometimes he mixes them together, but usually he leans one way or the other - though lately though he's mostly gone the comedy route. But I think Dini's got three modes, not
two: what I'll call "Heavy Psychodrama," "Light Psychodrama", and "Artifice." Understand this, and you'll understand why "Joker's Millions," though not to all tastes, is not the horrible betrayal a lot people take it to be.
HEAVY PSYCHODRAMA
When people praise Dini, it's usually for his sympathetic villains, like Mr. Freeze. Of course, Dini isn't the only Batman writer to make his villains sympathetic, but I think he's up to something deeper. True, Dini's villains are victims, but they are really victims of their
own illusions, and these stories are cautionary tales about self-deception.
The clearest instance of this is "Mad as a Hatter." Jervis Tetch starts (and ends) sympathetically, as nothing more than a man in love with a girl who is by no means outside his class. He's not a freak or a madman, only a shy man progressively
overwhelmed by his insecurities, and who becomes a villain only when he uses his mind-control devices to win her affections. That is, his failure is one of imagination: He simply cannot picture Alice loving him as he is. His great mistake is in trying to change the world
instead of himself (or his self-image); and his tragedy is that he finally prefers the illusion of love to the real thing. This is how a purely psychological delusion leads to the tragic deformation of the real world, and how the action of the episode doubles as the dramatic
expression of Tetch's inner turmoil.
Tetch knows what he wants, but drives himself toward an unsatisfactory substitute. "Joker's Favor" is also about a man suffering under an illusion, but escapes. Collins, the Joker's victim and catspaw, spends most of the episode thinking that he
only needs to escape, and that if he runs far enough and fast enough he can make it. But escape would be unsatisfactory, because in running from the Joker Collins is also running away from his own self-respect. Fortunately, he realizes this in time, and turns, confronts and
beats the Joker on his own terms and turf. His is a tragedy averted, but it is still the story of an individual trying to right his psyche.
These stories (and I would include "Heart of Ice," "House and Garden," "Babydoll," and "Over the Edge" among them) are deeply interiorized, in that they are fundamentally about some character confronting (or avoiding) their own
true selves, desires and needs, and use the external action mainly to dramatize these inner states; they are stories about inner distortions projected onto the outer world. And they are serious not because they lack humor or rely on pathos, but because they illustrate a serious
theme: the havoc that can result from a dangerous lack of self-knowledge and the unwillingness to confront oneself unsparingly.
ARTIFICES
Usually, an episode like "Heart of Ice" will be contrasted (favorably) with one like "Harlequinade," because the former is serious and the latter comic. But if "Heart of Ice" stands as just a particularly dark instance of Dini's desire to probe the
psychology of his characters, then the real contrast should be with something completely lacking in character and psychology: something like "Almost Got 'Im."
That episode is a game, and a game only, on every level: villains at a card-game, swapping stories about the fun they've had trying to "get" Batman, with one of them being Batman in disguise, playing along so he can find out where the Joker's stashed the
kidnapped Catwoman. And Dini's playing a game too, abandoning story and psychological exploration so he can tease us with the games that comic books play to keep our attention. By giving us a series of set- pieces and climaxes, with neither set-up or pay-off, he kiddingly
accuses us of having only the shallowest kind of interest in cartoon adventure.
It's a highly stylized episode, which by manipulating story and character in superficial and artificial ways emphasizes the superficial and artificial nature of the comic-book genre. So, too, "Holiday Knights" concentrates on the absurd notion that
criminal loonies should tailor their plots to the particular season, and impudently reminds us of the way that villains glom onto and exploit a schtick to all lengths. "Joker's Wild" asks us to root for the Joker, and so teases us into admitting that, secretly, we
oftentimes want to see the villain win. "The Man Who Killed Batman" reminds us that absurd heroics and villainy require an absurdly over-endowed hero, and does so by giving us the adventure while keeping the hero off-screen as much as possible.
These are remarkable and entirely successful attempts to explore the limits of the genre: By concentrating on the artificial conventions that sustain it, an episode like this reminds us that it is a brittle genre that works only through the awesome suspension of
disbelief, and tempts our capacity for disbelief (and hence our capacity to enjoy the genre) by presenting wildly stylized stories. A proper enjoyment of these stories presupposes a certain distance between story and audience, the better to appreciate the games being played.
But there's also an attendant risk, that they will create just such a distance, and wind up confusing or alienating the audience. So it is quite remarkable that these episodes haven't provoked much outrage.
LIGHT PSYCHODRAMAS
Instead, that wrath winds up being almost wholly directed againt Dini's third mode, best typified by "Harley's Holiday" and "Joker's Millions." These episodes strike many people as ill-conceived, a fact I grant in the oxymoronic name I've applied to them:
How can a "psychodrama" be "light"?
But a close look shows that "Harley's Holiday," despite its farcical tone, is structured just like "Heart of Ice," as the psychological exploration of a particular character. Harley Quinn, released from Arkham but still trapped inside her own
reality, is altogether oblivious to the effect she has on the outside world, and the episode shows how even innocent misunderstandings lead to large complications. As in the "heavy" psychodramas, then, external action is entirely a function of Harley's inner turmoil;
unwittingly, Harley warps the world so that it conforms to her own imagining of the way it is or should be. But the episode is "light," not because it has a funny tone ("Joker's Favor" is quite funny), but because the world she creates proves trivial and
unrealistic. That is: it shows Harley to be as psychologically complex as Freeze or Tetch, and relates her to the world in just the same way. But because her actions have only cartoony ramifications, they cannot be treated with the same seriousness. Psychological
exploration can make a character and her world deep; equally, as is proved here, they can make it shallow.
These episodes, then, use the same techniques that the heavy ones do, but, like the artificial, game-playing episodes, they point up the limitations of the genre by diminishing the characters. So "Joker's Millions" starts with the Joker honorably plying
his craft in difficult circumstances (he's broke), and then tempts him into abandoning his true calling (the life of crime) by bestowing on him inordinate and unearned wealth. When that wealth evaporates he must again adapt, this time by returning to crime while also abandoning his
usual style of robbery. Psychologically, this is quite sound: Dini doesn't cause the Joker to act uncharacteristically (it's not like he suddenly starts going to church); he merely gives him an extraordinary opportunity and lets him react in a plausible manner. And the
Joker reacts plausibly again when circumstances change: To avoid exposure and humiliation in the eyes of his fellow rogues, he must humiliate himself in his own eyes by forgoing his trademark schtick.
In short: Dini doesn't betray the Joker; the Joker betrays himself through a series of foolish choices. He's just like Tetch in this regard. Both lose sight of who they really are, and both think they can escape a certain predicament, but they only end
up destroying themselves. The difference is that Tetch starts off as a real, recognizable human being, so that his fall (however bizarre in consequence) reminds us of our own fragility. But the Joker is entirely a creature of a cartoon universe, and his fall is only a departure
from that starting point, so it only reminds us of how artificial that universe is. That is why this (and similar) psychodramas feel so artificial, manipulative, and exploitive. It also probably explains why they are so disliked in many quarters.
Nonetheless, in these episodes Dini remains true to his psychological focus, for even at their most stringently absurd they prove that character is the gravity well that shapes the universe, and character development the logic that guides the story. Because Harley
is fundamentally a comic character, her presence will always bend the rules like rubber, and when her presence is central she will pull down the walls of the universe in cosmic, comic calamity. And when an unrealistic character like the Joker violates his own rules, he will make
nonsense of himself and everything he touches.
So how should we appreciate and approach Dini? Certainly not on bended knee: One can accept everything I've said above, and still dislike certain tendencies. And it's true that he often fails to live up to his standards. But I think he still
deserves great respect, as a writer whose love for and dexterity with the genre make him at home in both its shallows and its depths, and who thus affords us the greatest possible range of perspectives on it.
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