Another day, another box of stolen pens. Also, another blog post!
With this blog now up and rolling again, YOU can definitely expect The Mast's 30 Days of Comicdom to be continuing with alarming regularity. That's right, not regular regularity. Alarming regularity.
I had a massive subject to tackle, but I'm saving that for something else. It also pertains to one of the two delicious pieces of news I claimed I had.
So treat your eyes like bananas and keep 'em peeled.
The Mast's 30 Days of Comicdom (Day 15): What Is Your Favourite Rivalry?
This was going to go one of three ways, but again, the more I analysed it, the more I realised that the closest tie-breakers often end with a massive winner.
Without further ado, my favourite comic book rivalry is...
Batman & The Joker.
Batman and The Joker have a rivalry so massive that it's known by folks who don't even read comic books.
I'm willing to bet that if you went outside and asked someone who Batman's most famous villain is, they'd tell you it's The Joker. Whether it comes down to the movies or the comics, everybody knows about these two, or at least that the rivalry exists.
The truth is, it deserves its fame.
Superman and Batman both share the same rule; no killing. However, Batman would scare the living shit out of me, day or night, if he approached me with the intention of intimidating me. Superman, to me, isn't scary. Batman is someone that even Superman, a man who is a god for all intents and purposes, is slightly brown-pants afraid of.
Take this into account when remembering that The Joker is not, in the very smallest way conceivable, scared of Batman.
The Joker wouldn't want Batman off his back if he could. Of course, over the years, he's had schemes to kill Batman, but he doesn't want that. As stated in the movie, he simply finds Batman to be too much fun. What balls do you have to have, or lack of mental faculties at least, to use Batman as some kind of experiment?
Even when The Joker murdered Jason Todd, then Robin, by battering him with a crowbar (This happened in the CLASSIC story, A Death in the Family. Read it now if you never have), Batman refused to kill him. It's this element of incorruptibility that The Joker finds fascinating, I think. He loves the idea that Batman would rather live with the torment of his existence than know he was the cause of him being dead.
The definitive take on The Joker was arguably given in The Killing Joke by Alan Moore. A story in which The Joker and Batman get down to having one of their most revealing conversations. Batman goes to see The Joker in Arkham Asylum and says, in so many words, "Look, pal. I don't wanna be at this with you forever, because one of us will end up dead. I really don't want that."
He reaches out and wants to end the feud (Best I can remember).
Somewhere in the comic, The Joker rather candidly details one of the reasons for doing what he's doing:
"All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once. Am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed. Why else would you dress up like a flying rat?"
The Joker makes an amazing argument toward the idea that Batman is honestly just as mental as the people he faces. It's an idea Alan Moore would introduce as far back as Watchmen, really. If Batman did exist, you wouldn't necessarily think he's cool, right? You'd think that he's a fucking lunatic for dressing up like a bat and administering street justice to the world's criminals, whether the results worked or not.
Granted, Batman's no murderer, but he clearly has issues to do that in the first place. Who wouldn't? The whole point is that The Joker nails it. In many ways, The Joker and Batman need each other. At the very least, Batman has needed The Joker to find out things about himself that he couldn't have known otherwise.
They're just locked in an eternal struggle with neither willing to give up.
I'm of the belief that Batman would be eternally justified in killing The Joker, but The Joker has psychologically convinced him that it'd prove him right. It wouldn't, really, but he's convinced him of that I think. If he did, we'd not have the legendary rivalry and feud that we have today (Well, not TODAY, because Dick Grayson is currently Batman, but you get the point).
For all these reasons, this is my favourite rivalry.
Coming close were Wolverine/Sabretooth, Daredevil/Bullseye, Spider-Man/Osborn and Spawn/Everyone he fights, Reed Richards/Dr. Doom, Superman/Luthor etc. I decided to go with this one, though.
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That's it for today. I'm off to the movies, so I will return tomorrow with yet another installment.
Thanks for reading, yo.
Until next time, peace.
-The Mast
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