http://cache.io9.com/assets/base/img/thumbs140x140/io9.com.png http://io9.com/tag/the joker http://io9.com/tag/the joker

In 1966, famed pulp artist Norman Saunders — who illustrated the 1962 Mars Attacks cards — produced a series of magical paintings for Topps' Batman trading card line. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5880564&view=rss&microfeed=true

Aw it's a wittle baby Joker! Don't you just want to pinch its cheeks and coo "why so serious?" at his creepy smeared lips? Let's hope this adorable Joker Doll inspires the internet masses to clamor for a Dark Knight Rises Baby Doll line. It can't be any worse than Baby Voldemort! More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5871127&view=rss&microfeed=true

In the wake of the Spider-Man musical's total disaster, somehow the Batman Live Arena Tour has gotten a free pass. But just check out these photos. Nothing good can come of a stage show with Schumacher undertones. Or can it? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5791351&view=rss&microfeed=true

We're loving Courtney Crumrin writer/artist Ted Naifeh's fresh new take on Batman. Especially his redesigns of some of the greatest Batman comic covers from Detective Comics. Plus his redesigns of Batgirl, the Joker, and other iconic characters. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5650743&view=rss&microfeed=true

The Dark Knight's director is finally setting the record straight on a few Batman rumors. And while it's no major surprise that the Joker won't be recast for a third film, we're sad about what else didn't make the cut. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5555743&view=rss&microfeed=true

The brand new teaser trailer for videogame Batman: Arkham Asylum 2 shows that Gotham City has gone to the dogs since the first game. Where's the Caped Crusader when you need him? Click through to see for yourself. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5425305&view=rss&microfeed=true

Death really isn't the end in science fiction... It just depends on whether or not it can be written around later. Here are some of our favorite NotDeaths that prove that the Grim Reaper should really up his game. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5394392&view=rss&microfeed=true

Whether you're looking for superpowered pets, non-moving motion comics, classic tales retold or spelunking adventure the way you want it, there's only one place to look this week: Your local comic book store. Why, yes: These are comics we crave. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5364561&view=rss&microfeed=true

A new clip from creepy Batman video game, Batman: Arkham Asylum, debuts the latest baddie for the bat: Bane the chronic Venom juicer. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5214240&view=rss&microfeed=true

This week's Batman: The Brave and The Bold offered parallel worlds, evil dopplegangers and sane Jokers. No wonder this imaginative, colorful cartoon is quickly becoming the best Friday night show that isn't Battlestar Galactica. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5161827&view=rss&microfeed=true

Sometimes it's as if merchandisers have never seen the movie they're cashing in on. For example, the makers of The Dark Knight Joker Combination Ski Mask and Beanie. Way to memorialize Heath Ledger, guys. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5148756&view=rss&microfeed=true

It was the movie of last year, and at the center of The Dark Knight was Heath Ledger's compelling Joker. But... who really invented the worryingly sane Clown Prince of Crime? Maybe not Chris Nolan. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5125613&view=rss&microfeed=true

Warner Bros has confirmed that they are going to be campaigning for Heath Ledger to be nominated for, and to win, a posthumous Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Dark Knight - becoming on the seventh actor to be nominated for an Oscar after their death - but some are complaining that his Joker was so good that it deserves to be more than just a "supporting" role. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5065552&view=rss&microfeed=true

The movie may still be breaking records in theaters, but does that mean that it's too early to start a marketing campaign for The Dark Knight's DVD and BluRay release in December? Apparently not, as many Twitter users discovered on Friday afternoon, when a familiar face asked to befriend them. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5049401&view=rss&microfeed=true

Why are people still so crazed over Heath Ledger's Joker after a month in theaters? Maybe because he's the first villain we've seen in ages who didn't kind of lick. The problem of villain suckage is endemic in heroic narratives, where villains get redeemed, become sympathetic, or lose their menace too easily. We've got a 7-point diagnosis for villain anemia, plus a "unified theory" of how to make villains awesome, and why they matter. Spoilers for recent movies, and upcoming TV, below. We already talked about the problems of saggy villains back in February, particularly with reference to the show Heroes, which has only gotten more and more worrying since then. The show's next chapter is called "Villains," but the producers and stars keep saying, over and over, that it's really about "confronting the villain inside our heroes." Dude, the true villain is within. Right there, under your navel. Really. Just stare a bit harder, and you'll see it. Not to mention the persistent reports that we'll be seeing the "softer side of Sylar" this season. I love Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, but it's similarly villain-deprived. There's one bad Terminator chasing our friends, and he's spent hours and hours searching for John Connor and getting easily thrown off the scent. We need less of Cromartie wandering into boys' locker rooms, and more scenes like the one where he trashes 100 FBI agents. I'm hoping the addition of Shirley Manson as a human villain will give T:SCC a nice extra bit of oomph in the villain department, replacing the standard Eastern-European gangsters who have been the show's human baddies so far. And think about this summer's other big action movies: they almost all had weak villains. Iron Man? Jeff Bridges was great, but he was more like Tony Stark's corrupt older bro for most of the movie, and then he suddenly developed a sense of menace towards the end. Wanted? Morgan Freeman was Obi-Wan for most of the film, until suddenly it turned out he wasn't really doing the magic loom's will. Incredible Hulk? Tim Roth was like the Wile E. Coyote who keeps chasing the Hulk's Road-Runner, until he finally gets eaten by his own Acme Hulk-busting gizmos. None of those villains had a plan, a clue, an idea, a vision. They were just there to provide a big climactic fight for the end of each movie. At least we didn't have any Spider-Man 3-style villain clusterfucks this year. How villains lose their shit: 1) They get redeemed. Like Sylar, supposedly. Or, I suspect, like Ben on Lost, who's already becoming a much more sympathetic character. (Although he still has the immoral psycho edge, as when he's willing to kill everyone on the freighter to get revenge on Keamy.) The ultimate example of a redeemed villain who loses his mystique is Darth Vader, whose redemption at the end of Return Of The Jedi presaged his whoah-TMI over-explanation in the prequels, which brings us to... 2) Too much information. Even Doctor Who's archetypal nasty, the Master, isn't immune. He went around killing and wreaking havoc for 30 years without any explanation other than "he's a sick fuck." But "he's a sick fuck" wasn't enough for writer Russell T. Davies, who had to give the Master an origin story that explained how he became evil. It was the weakest point of an otherwise great story. Sometimes, knowing why the villain is a psycho isn't the point. The best part of TDK's Joker is the fact that he keeps telling different origin stories, all of them completely fishy. 3) They become analogs of real-life nasties. It's just way too easy to make your villain just like Bill Gates, or Dick Cheney, or Hillary Clinton, or Ahmadinejad or whoever. (I almost wrote "Hillary Klingon," which I would pay to see.) In a few rare cases, it can make villains creepier — as in the plethora of Margaret Thatcher monsters coming out of England in the 1980s — but most of the time, it's just a cheap shortcut. 4) We see too much of their world. James Callis, who plays Gaius Baltar, said recently that he thought bleak space-opera Battlestar Galactica made a mistake by letting us inside the Cylons' Baseships and showing us their internecine bickering and weird internal decor sense. We stopped thinking of them as the implacable masterminds of human genocide, and started thinking of them more as The Real World: Baseship. 5) Too many defeats. This is one of the things that went wrong with the Borg. (The other one being the ridiculous "Borg Queen" which I think comes under the heading of "seeing too much of their world.") When we first meet the Borg, they're so unbeatable, Captain Picard basically has to beg Q to get the Enterprise away from them. And then the good guys defeat the Borg once, against tremendous odds. After that, every victory gets easier and easier, until finally Captain Janeway is reducing the entire Borg collective to rubble with a few well-placed kicks. 6) Too many victories. This is why I'm somewhat startled that the movie version of the Joker has so much power: he's a dillweed in the comics. The comic-book Joker is a victim of his own success. Where do you go after you've killed Robin and destroyed Batgirl in the same year? Away, that's where. The Joker should have been retired in the comics after "A Death In The Family" and "The Killing Joke," and in fact he did disappear for a year or two. But it was too tempting to keep bringing him back, and he's stuck being a has-been villain who can never top his best (worst) year, which was 20 years ago now. I've read hundreds of Joker comics published since 1988, and none has left much of an impression. 7) The villain that's a reflection of the hero. This is really where Iron Man and Incredible Hulk fail. (Someone emailed us about this a few months ago, and I'm afraid I can't remember who now.) You have a guy in super-powered metal armor? Who should he fight, if not another guy in super-powered metal armor that's a knock-off of his own? A big green guy? Let's create another big green guy from his blood and make them fight. A unified theory of villainy: We need good villains, for the health of our society. Good villains make great stories. A truly chilling villain makes the hero seem more important because the stakes are important, and the hero's actions matter. More than that, a really good escapist narrative deals with our personal and social anxieties at a right angle, letting us fantasize about being able to crush them with big metal ray-blast-shooting fists. In real life, we're making endless compromises with the forces that want to mangle us into bone origami. But in our science fictional daydreams, those forces are actually too evil to compromise with. And as a result the heroes we identify with have no choice but to fight to their last breaths. You can't dicker with a giant robot that wants to destroy the world, you just can't. We need that outlet in our heroic stories. Also, one of the biggest factors in debasing our national discourse is the fact that our leaders and pundits persist in trying to turn arguments into good vs. evil, when they're usually more like shades of gray. It actually doesn't help that our escapist fantasies, which should be about good vs. evil, take on that shades-of-gray ambiguity. If Sylar's really not such a bad guy, then maybe John McCain — who really isn't a bad guy, just someone you may disagree with — is more like Sylar than we thought. See how this works? More nuance in our fictional battles actually facilitates less nuance in our real-life disputes. The best villains are political, but only at the level of allegory. See above, about not making Dick Cheney your movie's villain. A good villain has some kind of political message, but it's subtler and woven into the storyline's subtext. It's not so much, A=B, and much more a subversive undercurrent. Look at Terry Gilliam's Brazil: Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan don't turn up in that movie at all, but the vision of a repressive, shallow society (which is the film's real villain) is threaded through with critiques of the materialism and militarism of the Reagan and Thatcher regimes. Kill all the writers. (Except me, please. Kthx.) Actors are the best friend of villains, and writers are often their worst enemy. I've lost count of how many interviews I've read with actors where they said something about how much fun it is to play a really nasty villain. They love to be monstrous — sometimes a bit too much, in a few cases I can think of. Writers, meanwhile, are always trying to be clever. Sometimes by committing one of the sins we mentioned above, redeeming or explaining their villains with too much shading and fancy detail work. But sometimes, they fall into the trap of being too post-modern, with the ironic "spin" on villainy that takes away a lot of the menace. Say what you like about Joss Whedon: his villains almost always have real darkness and threat, even when they're being funny or cute. (Possible exception: the nerd trio in Buffy season six.) Okay, so maybe you need writers. But they need to be fitted with one of those collar thingies that doesn't let them turn their heads, so they can think in a straight line and create villains who are unrelenting and cruel. The kind of ruthless monster who would put writers in a no-head-turning collar in the first place. Just a thought. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5039185&view=rss&microfeed=true

Click to viewAs soon as Christopher Nolan decided to put the Joker in a nurse's uniform in The Dark Knight, the countdown to this image had started. But the artist behind it, Ponderosa, doesn't just focus on Joker/Two-Face slash. She's also done similar portraits of the stars of Supernatural, Iron Man, and... somewhat disconcertingly, Simon and River from Firefly. Under the jump, however, more Dark Knight images, one of which is NSFW. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5037898&view=rss&microfeed=true

Click to viewIt's taken four weeks, but it's finally happened - Fans of The Dark Knight have started to take some of the Joker's methods into the real world, and are paying the price. But, considering what was actually done in the Joker's name, the price being paid may be far too high. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5037573&view=rss&microfeed=true

We tried our best to bring you the highs, lows and news from last week's Comic-Con, but there was one essential part of the experience that we've kept from you... until now. Under the jump, some of the best costumes from the show, courtesy of Maximum PC's "Ultimate Geek Gallery." More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5031789&view=rss&microfeed=true

This just in: Everyone who works on the Batman books these days loves the Joker. And it's a good thing they do, considering that Friday's No Rest For The Dark Knight panel was headlined not by current Bat-writers Grant Morrison, Paul Dini or Brian Azzarello, but by Joker co-creator Jerry Robinson. Also: What does "RIP" stand for in Batman RIP? Grant Morrison reveals all, under the jump. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5029345&view=rss&microfeed=true

What Bat-menace will grace the big screen in the next Batman movie to come after Dark Knight? Gary Oldman, who plays good cop Jim Gordon, and director Christopher Nolan spilled the beans in an interview. But Nolan also hinted he may not be around to complete his Bat-trilogy. Also, they addressed the tricky issue of recasting the Joker, played in The Dark Knight by the late Heath Ledger. Click through for details. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5020650&view=rss&microfeed=true

Don't get me wrong; I know that Batman is as much about the gadgets as he is the whole parents-getting-killed-so-he-fights-crime thing. But the last two posters to be released promoting The Dark Knight have both focused much more on the Batcycle than they have the caped crusader; all you can see is his head, on both posters. Holy guano, Batfans; why are Warner Bros hiding the dark knight? More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5020468&view=rss&microfeed=true

This is hardly a banner week for comic stores, and no, that’s not a pun to tie in with the upcoming Incredible Hulk movie. While there may be lots of new books coming out, it’s fairly light on ones that’ll grab your attention unless you’re looking to read up on this summer's big movie heroes before hitting the theaters. If that's your plan, though, then you can expect a Hulk-themed look at family and gender issues, the best of The Dark Knight's bad guys, and a hero with a red right hand, waiting for you under the jump. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5014760&view=rss&microfeed=true

Here's a cameraphone copy of the Batman: The Dark Knight trailer which showed in New York yesterday and then popped up on YouTube. I joined the Clown Gang in New York for a rendezvous, which led to a trailer screening. Blink and you'll miss the first appearance of a major new Bat-villain. Minor spoilers ahead. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=384998&view=rss&microfeed=true