The Scariest Joker We've EVER Gotten...
The Joker Comics (& Classic Movie Villains) That Will Inspire Batman: Caped Crusader Season 2
What makes Batman: Caped Crusader work so much for me ultimately is that it's as much a tribute to the Dark Knight's Golden Age as it is a recalibration of that era, taking into account compelling historicisms and genre influences from the first decade of Batman stories. It's Bruce Timm's gorgeous 75th Anniversary short stripped back and unvarnished, and a firm declaration that the Dark Knight's mythos doesn't have to be drawn in just one way.
For the Joker, the decision to root the character in expressionistic influences - to contrast the silent with the fundamentally loud nature of superhero storytelling - is dynamite, but arguably just as exciting is that the show seems to have extrapolated a different meaning for the character by interrogating the imagery of his first comic book appearance.
Bob Kane's pencils in Batman #1 aren't particularly dynamic, but instead eke out an uncanny horror from their stillness. That very lack of motion, the monoexpressive nature of Joker's face, is what has manifested Caped Crusader's new Clown Prince, who from the very beginning was depicted as a ruthless killer light on banter and high on cruelty - a medieval marauder who tortured Gotham's elite. From the brief snippet seen of Joker in the trailer, it looks like we'll be getting some kind of twist on that first appearance, which was memorably retold as Batman: The Man Who Laughs by Ed Brubaker and Doug Mahnke in 2005.
Where Caped Crusader will be taking more modern cues from, however, is in the relationship between Batman and Joker. Whereas the Clown Prince was depicted as a theatrical, scheming murderer who was inconvenienced by Batman in his first appearance, the Joker today is very much wedded to the Dark Knight, to the point where their relationship is almost seen as symbiotic. (As Mark Hamill's Joker famously quipped in Batman: The Animated Series, "without Batman, crime has no punchline.")
Going off the trailer for season two, it looks as though this Joker will be similarly fixated on Batman, doing what he does so that he can "awaken" the Bat, only this time executed with a methodical, patient cadence. That lends this Clown Prince a different kind of menace, evoking more the scheming hands of expressionistic villains like Dr Caligari or Mabuse, and less the anarchic trickster established in DC canon. Those figures are also echoed in the ending tease of season one, where Joker, cast in shadow, calmly and ruthlessly refines his toxin on a captive audience.
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