Since he made his debut in Batman #1, the Joker has been the Dark Knight’s deadliest
arch-nemesis.
As the years went on, however, his crimes went beyond thematic robberies and into brutal
murders, including clubbing Robin to death with a crowbar.
That raises a question that’s hard to ignore: why doesn’t Batman just kill him?
“Come on, hit me!
Hit me!”
It’s pretty clear after all these decades that putting a permanent end to the Joker
would solve at least half of Gotham City’s problems, which makes it difficult for plenty
of readers to suspend their disbelief.
If you really want to know the actual, definitive answer, though, we’ve got it.
You just might not like it.
That's because the answer exists entirely in our world, where Batman is a fictional
character designed to appear in movies, TV shows, and at least four comic books every
month, forever,:
If Batman kills the Joker, we can't have any more Joker stories.
He is, in very blunt and realistic terms, too popular to die.
And he's been that way since the beginning.
From the first day that Jerry Robinson drew him on the page, the contrast of the smiling
murderer and the scowling, spooky hero made him Batman’s perfect arch-enemy.
Even by the dawn of the Silver Age, when Batman became a much brighter, more superheroic character,
the Joker remained one of the most prominent villains.
All of which is to say that Joker stories sell.
They sell a lot, and on top of that, he's an interesting character that creators like
to make comics about as much as fans like to read them..
Unfortunately, Batman’s real-world inability to kill the Joker has to be justified in the
story, and that justification has become exponentially more difficult over time.
It’s very easy to understand why Batman keeps taking the Joker back to Arkham Asylum
when he's robbing banks and committing gimmick crimes, even if there's an occasional murder
thrown in to keep him scary.
After all, no one ever asks why Batman doesn't just drag the Riddler out back and shoot him.
By the time we got to the '80s, though, as Batman himself was redefined for a new era,
the Joker was forced to become every bit as unstoppable, just on the other side.
This was when he truly became Batman's opposite, and if Batman was going to be the greatest
hero in the world, the Joker had to be the absolute worst villain.
Before the decade was out, the Joker went from being an occasionally murderous arch-villain
to the psychopath who shot and assaulted Barbara Gordon, tortured her father, killed Robin,
and tried to murder the entire United Nations.
In fact, all that happened in one year.
By the end of the '90s, the Joker was leaving a body count in the double digits at minimum
every time he showed up, and was pretty consistently characterized as an irredeemable monster.
When Jason Todd, the former Robin that the Joker crowbarred to death, came back to life
in 2005, he raised exactly these questions, forcing Batman to provide an in-story reason
for why he can't ever kill his oldest, deadliest enemy.
In that story, Batman told Jason that if he ever killed the Joker, he'd be unable to stop
himself from killing every other criminal who got in his way, and Jason, like plenty
of readers, found that argument to be incredibly frustrating.
Can the world’s greatest detective really not tell the difference between a guy who
turned an entire city into smiling zombies and led a death parade through the streets,
from, like...
Kite-Man?
Really?
When you get right down to it, though, Batman’s attitude toward killing the Joker actually
has an internal logic and consistency.
It’s not actually about the Joker.
It’s about Batman himself.
While casual fans might attribute Batman’s famous code against killing to the interference
of the comics code, it actually dates back to 1941, predating the code by 13 years.
Either way, it became a fundamental truth about the character, reinforcing the idea
that Batman has his roots in reacting to someone taking a life - two lives, if you want to
be technical about it.
That's the tragedy that he defines himself in opposition to, and the thing that he's
always trying to prevent: death.
He's a crimefighter, and while he might fight bank robbers when they're around, the taking
of a life is the opposite of who he is.
Besides, don't forget that Batman lives in a world where ghosts are 100 percent real.
If you thought the Joker was trouble when he was living, you absolutely do not want
to know what happens once he shows up in the afterlife.