10 Problems With The Joker Nobody Wants To Admit
2. He Isn't Even The Best Bat Villain
One of Batman's greatest strengths, rather ironically, is his rogues gallery. He really is a character who's made by his villains, a hero who is defined by those he fights against. It just so happens that he has a particularly brilliant set of villains, from Mr Freeze to Victor Zsaz to Bane and all points in between (well, nearly all points) (not Orca) (shudder).
With the stunning diversity and vast cornucopia of brilliant ideas which populate Batman's seemingly endless roster of adversaries, it seems almost lazy to rely on The Joker all the time. Especially when he proves to be one of the more inflexible villains who nonetheless is an almost constant.
He's inconsistent, but he always tends to return to the one point. He's almost always deployed as Batman's greatest enemy, and often referred to as such by the Dark Knight himself. But The Joker is...kind of boring. You know he's never going to get killed off, because he's The Joker.
He's never going to change all that much, because he's The Joker. His plans will always come to naught, because he's The Joker. Not a whole lot of room for drama in there, save for the time he killed a Robin and crippled a Batgirl. Both of those turned out to be temporary. The guy doesn't have much of a lasting effect on anything.
But Ra's Al Ghul... now there's a villain.