I'm Alive!

The inaugural post of Qwiblorg! is devoted to an awesome Batman Animated Series clip that you have to see. It's a flashback sequence that goes on for about 10 min, recounting the death of Joker. Okay, so you may have seen Joker die before, probably more than once, and even that time in real life, but this time it's somehow much more chilling. After all, Dark Knight Returns has Joker die from what is essentially a fistfight. Not particularly inventive or appropriate to the character. In the 80s Batman we have a pretty iconic Joker death scene, but it's still little more than a big fall. The Riddler, or Two-Face, could have died in a simular fashion. The Animated Series writers realized that, if the Joker was to die, it couldn't be by Batman's hand. After all, Batman has had many opportunities to do away with the Clown Prince of Crime before, in the comic books as well as in the Dark Knight, and yet has failed to take advantage of this. The Joker could only really die by accident, as a result of one of his own dark schemes gone wrong. In having a villian essentially self-destruct in the face of the hero's mercy and unwillingness to kill, the writers follow a classic literary trope. That's why this clip, while not perfect, is as close as we, as a species, have gotten to creating the Iconic Joker Death Scene. Oh, and Harley dies too. Whoops.