They could try putting him in a real prison instead of that sieve that is Arkham as a first step. Really, he’s just a crazy guy. Throw him in maximum security block of Rahway for the rest of his life and it will be alright.

He’s killed enough kids that the other inmates would probably do the job for you, anyway.

I think some relative of a Joker victim should do it at one of his trials. A bullet to the brain [as I'm sure he'll be wearing a bulletproof vest].

However the death of the Joker would leave behind a more evil legacy…more psycho- and sociopaths trying to claim his mantle and m.o.

It would be more believable if Batman pulled the right strings and put the Joker within the sights of a character that does kill villains (I don’t know who DC’s version of The Punisher is but someone like that).

Then Batman can have some moral distance to his action but the job is still done. Then the Joker comes back due to some, I don’t know, DNA-time travel thing.

The flaw in the question is “and he can’t be contained”, which is an assumption that Batman has no reason to make. From our standpoint, we know the Joker will always escape, because we know he’s a recurring archvillain. But from Batman’s standpoint, there’s no reason why he couldn’t be contained by building an improved prison.

Or, looking at it from another standpoint, you can morally justify ANYTHING if you arbitrarily declare that none of the alternatives will work, but it doesn’t make for a very interesting moral dilemma.

I think there is a big difference in killing a character in combat/self-defense and killing a character in cold-blood or murder. That’s a line that a hero shouldn’t cross.

What annoys the hell out of me is when a hero goes out of his way to save a villain. There is one thing to be pro-active but I don’t think there is anything morally-wrong about letting someone die.

:::However the death of the Joker would leave behind a more evil legacy…more psycho- and sociopaths trying to claim his mantle and m.o.

This could lead to a multitude of story opportunities if only DC had the courage to take such a step.

And if Batman accidentally killed the Joker, imagine his renewed dedication to not killing.

I guess the better question is: is there any reason to keep the Joker alive? Never mind that he’s escaped Arkham and every prison he’s ever been put into, every time he gets out, he kills a whole lot of people. As KSBrennan pointed out, his death toll has to be somewhere in the thousands. Death by Joker has to have a higher mortality rate in Gotham than cancer.

The problem is, you can’t even rehabilitate him. The moment you get him to have something resembling a human conscience, he’s going to kill himself immediately. There’s no making him a productive member of society.

As a sidenote, for those reasons, I thought Magog’s killing of the Joker setting off the plot was the weakest part of Kingdom Come. I mean, it’s the JOKER. I could’ve seen it if it were, I dunno, Two-Face even. But the Joker’s a walking, talking genocide. If a cop had shot him in the face as he was making his getaway, he wouldn’t even be charged with anything.

Other burning questions:

Should the Punisher get mental help?

Should Reed Richards cure the Thing?

Should Spider-Man marry a super-mod–oh, wait.

“Should Batman kill the Joker” is a question with a faulty premise. Like the questions above, it ignores what Batman stories *are*, and subverts the basic premises/fictive worlds of the characters. What “should” happen in the “real world” doesn’t apply, because Batman comics–an unending series featuring characters rendered effectively immortal by their marketability–are nothing like the real world. The moral dilemmas bear almost no resemblance to anything we can relate to.

Paul O’Brien, above is the only person so far on the thread to approach this correctly. The assumptions we make as readers aren’t shared by the characters. And continuity simply doesn’t hold up; to read a Joker story, just imagine that he and Batman have some kind of long history while ignoring the impossible body counts and Arkham escapes.

As far as capital punishment, I live in Vermont, which has no death penalty, yet the federal government has been known to step in and seek the death penalty on federal charges. It’s safe to assume the Joker’s murderousness has crossed state lines.

It’s safer not to think about this stuff.

I don’t think anyone doesn’t believe killing the Joker would be completely justifiable, but do you really want to off Batman’s greatest foe? There are just some characters you cannot kill off without the comic universe suffering because of it.

As half of these vengeance-porn posts demonstrate, this is less about what Batman or Gordon should do, and more about what a bunch of comics fans would like to do. Probably to their moms or the red haired girl in 10th grade who thought she was so cool but she wasn’t.

Which is why I hate this question so much.

Cole Moore Odell - What the hell are you talking about?

Sorry, just read your second post. Now I understand.

(backs away slowly)

“Probably to their moms or the red haired girl in 10th grade who thought she was so cool but she wasn’t.”

Talking hypothetically about what fictional characters should or shouldn’t do is a lot different than saying comic fans — real people — want to kill their moms.

As I’ve said before, don’t make it personal.

Your daughter crippled, the memory and psychological scarring of having been tortured and humiliated and having your wife murdered in front of your eyes, all by the same person. Sure, that’s a real happy ending.

I disagree with you that I have no idea what kind of fiction I’m reading. It is escapist heroic fantasy adventure, but it is operating in a darker world than many, because for good or for ill, the creators and editors working on the Batman books have opted for gruesome real world violence on many occasions.

Gordon has been given a great deal of development and change over the years and he is a great character. I believe it makes perfect sense for him to have ended the Joker’s life in that storyline. That’s not me living out what you refer to as my “revenge fantasy”, that’s me expressing my opinion on a logical direction for a character to take, rather than a rule that has been established by the marketing department of a comic book company.

As I said before, I get that they will never kill the Joker, but considering the world they have created around Batman and Joker, that of brutal (albeit heightened and melodramatic) realism, it simply makes no sense that the Joker has never been executed.

JK, I admit I was being hyperbolic and sarcastic, but my point remains: that this pointless question, which seems to come up over and over again, often results in people detailing the various explicitly violent ways they’d have Batman (or someone) kill the Joker, or outsource the killing of the Joker, etc. That comes from somewhere. If you take just a small step back it’s hard not to be appalled at how sadistic some comics have become, and the ridiculous hypotheticals they raise. It’s not just comics; people who fantasize about getting revenge are often nursing conscious or subconscious grudges–against authority figures, scary others, whatever. What you call personal I call self-evident.

The only thing dumber than asking “Should Batman kill the Joker” is, well, half of the comics that inspire the question. It’s not a question to take seriously, at least not on its surface.

Cole Moore Odell - You’re my hero.

Cole Moore Odell, as much as you would like to think so, I am holding no deep-seated psychological hatred or desire to kill anyone. (Except the garbage man. I’d like to throw him in the back of his truck and pull the compactor lever for always leaving my empty trash can in my driveway. This is a joke, by the way - just making sure before it gets pounced on)

As to my describing how Gordon would kill the Joker, that was, again, from the story. Gordon had his gun to the Joker’s head, Batman convinced him not to kill him, so he shot both his kneecaps instead.

In a nutshell, my counterpoint to your argument against this kind of speculation is this: Any fiction that asks us not to question or analyze the decisions made by its characters is irrelevant.

Of course, many would argue that superhero adventure fantasy is, indeed, irrelevant, but that’s a different discussion.

“My solution: if there are certain things your character would not do, then don’t make a habit of putting them in situations where, by any reasonable measure, they really ought to do those things. All you’re doing is training a spotlight on the cracks in the foundation, and that’s not way to sell a house–especially in this market.”

For once, we completely agree.

Lawrence, this is precisely the corner many superhero comics have painted themselves into. They’re forced to ratchet up the ultra-violence to maintain the interest of jaded, aging readers, but at the same time they’re beholden to character bibles that dictate certain standards of conduct–whether from mere tradition, vestiges of basic decency as enforced bythe Comics Code, or so as not to jeopardize birthday party paper plate sales.

What should the industry do about it? I don’t know. But I do think Batman should kill the Joker.

With kindness!

Hold it, everyone. A friend of mine has solved the entire problem. He has written me to say that his two-year-old daughter is willing to kill the Joker, as she understands that he is “very bad and is the Clown Prince of Crime.” She can do this just as soon as she gets out of pre-school this afternoon.

Somebody should tell Chris Weston.

To Jason Seaver-why kill him only to bring him back? Once he’s back then you face the same conundrum, why won’t anyone kill him? If you don’t want to get rid of a character, then the character should not be killed.

To Lawrence-Batman wasn’t always as righteous as he is now. Originally the Batman would kill criminals, going so far as to even carry a gun. While I definitely prefer the non-lethal Batman there is no Bat legacy that forbids justifiable homicide. Though I guess since he’s been against killing longer than he was pro-killing, then it’s definitely become part of the Bat mantra.

I misunderstood what you initially said then. I thought you were leaving the possibility that it could be the very same Joker, we just didn’t know for certain and that people would speculate if it’s the real deal or not. I must admit, I am intrigued by the idea of the Joker coming back and people wondering if it was the same one, but never getting any clues to who it really is. I’m just kind of exhausted of killing characters with the intent to bring them back.

Sorry, Cole, I just realized I missed your exclusion of me from the people that wish for violence for violence’s sake, and I appreciate that.

I also agree that there is most certainly an audience with that kind of hang up. Hell, I enjoy a little over-the-top violence myself on occasion, that just happens to not be the case here.

No, Sluggo, I really was trying to back off the throttle. I’d let you babysit my kitten. To be blunt: I apologize.

And I like your last line about Batman making bad guys wish they were dead.

(So please don’t kill me.)

(That’s a joke.)

In my experience, just when I think I’m ready to never read another Joker story, I come across something great like “Soft Targets” in Gotham Central, or Paul Dini’s Christmas story where Robin is trapped in the Joker’s cab. Even if the Joker is broken as a character, and throws the whole conceit of Batman’s world into question (both are kind of fitting, in a way) he’s still capable of carrying fantastic individual stories.

Didn’t Batman kill him in that episode where he messed around with the Joker’s sleeping pills and he didn’t wake up, so that…

Oh wait….Nevermind.

That’s the point tho-It’s a story, not real life. The Joker is part of the tapestry of telling a batman story-even if you make Batman a killer, willing to off the Joker, another would take that place. So it’s probably easier that he doesn’t kill Joker, rather than just having to come up with a new joker every few months.

Sadly (and thankfully), in real life, people don’t come back-and no one necessarily takes thier place.

“Does anyone remember The Killing Joke?”

You’re funny.

I’m waiting for the big event comic marketing scheme in a few years called Joker: Death Penalty, written and drawn by Chris Weston.

serious i would not kill the joker cuz i think and i don’t know why but he is like HOT!!!!!!!!!!

How about we bring back capital punishment in Gotham, Next time Batman bags Joker we stick him on Death Row, The Trick is to find some way of putting him to death that he cant somehow get out of.