#God. will Batman 48 ever cease to haunt me

[distort-opia]

You are one of the people who have the best character interpretation, so I would like to ask a question regarding N52's final issue. Joker delays his transformation to his actual self by saying, "not yet." Why do you think he wanted to stay longer? Bruce already returned being Batman, but (amnesic?) Joker seemed to want to be on hiatus. Is it because he enjoyed the human side?

Thank you so much! I'm happy you're enjoying my interpretation of these complex characters.

There's no doubt amnesiac Joker wants to stay human longer, and away from his real self. It's directly spelled out in Batman (2011) #48, when he asks Bruce not to become Batman again, and the reason for it is mentioned there too, more or less:

"At rest." In one word, that's the reason they both wanted to stay longer: peace. The unattainable dream that haunts Batman and Joker's characters relentlessly, because it's something they both had, but lost in such a traumatic way it made them incapable of having it again.

I'll go in more detail as to why he wants to delay his return as Joker under the cut, because I ended up citing comic panels and making this long again -- but also because there'll be heavy discussion of depression and suicidality, so. If that is something that triggers you, please take care.

Sigh. So the thing about Joker is... that he's deeply suicidal, and always has been.

Snyder's origin for him in Batman: Zero Year -- Secret City has the original Red Hood letting himself fall into the acid vat, refusing Bruce's outstretched hand, grinning as he falls:

Then, this is how Bruce recalls it in Endgame:

So. This is how Bruce remembers it going down, as shown in both of these comics. However, in Death of the Family, when Joker records himself talking out of the Red Hood helmet as Harley is parading as him, he says this:

"Where you knocked me off this very catwalk and bathed me in fire and burned away my false skin."

Interesting, isn't it? Joker doesn't remember it as him choosing to fall, he remembers it as Batman tipping him over. And the pattern continues with Endgame. In DotF, Joker gets so terrified by Bruce's bluff of knowing his identity he jumps off a cliff himself:

And yet, this is what he says in Endgame:

"You dropped me off a cliff!" It keeps happening, and I love the parallel Snyder made here-- not only the perpetual thread of a Joker always falling and a Batman who's unable to save him (even in Flashpoint), but the way they both remember the fall in entirely different ways. (Tbh, I think neither of these versions are the truth, and that it's much more impactful if we as readers don't know the truth either. This way, it's all about what Bruce and Joker need to believe. But that's a meta post for another day.) Bruce thinks Red Hood chose to fall, but Joker thinks Bruce pushed him towards his death, every time.

It's because he needs to believe that. The identity of Joker that he's forged for himself after the fall into the acid (and after the trauma that came before it) fulfills many functions, but a crucial one is just... keeping him alive. The same way Batman and The Vow is a way Bruce has come up with to stave off his own suicidal tendencies (something explicitly stated in Tom King's Batman: I Am Suicide). Joker can't believe that he tried to kill himself both times he fell, and that Batman tried to save him; he has to believe Batman did it on purpose. If he believes Batman had a hand in his creation, made him, that means Joker has a purpose. As long as that purpose is Batman, he cannot die. This is how he fights to stay alive... by throwing himself against the wall that is Batman's no-killing rule. It's all so goddamn tragic, I swear to fucking God. Joker genuinely wants to die, but by believing only Batman deserves to kill him, and by doing everything in his power to make him go dark and break his rule, he's keeping himself alive. Batman is, paradoxically, both his preferred method of suicide and his reason for living. (I’m fine. This is fine.)

However, amnesiac Joker doesn't have this to rely on! He's wiped clean of the memories that made him Joker, the decisions he's made to get there. And as a slate wiped clean, he's shown to still be craving death -- still fighting what is unavoidably depression. Without Batman, in the initial months, his life as a normal person felt meaningless, so he nearly kills himself... But then, he finds a way to survive. He finds this island of peace with the bench and the lake, this sliver of hope. He goes to that bench and puts the gun in his mouth and doesn't fire, and that's how he manages to stay alive, and content, and happy with his normal job and normal apartment. 'I have the power to leave everything behind at any moment, but there are things here to live for.'

And here's where my main point comes in: amnesiac Joker is so desperate to preserve this, because his original Joker identity is incapable of this by design. Joker, as we know him, is incapable of being truly happy, the exact same way Batman is. Amnesiac Joker and Bruce are parallels and inversions of each other in this story, like they are in everything else; Bruce is driven to become Batman again, while Joker is the one fighting against it. Alfred is so desperate to preserve Bruce as he is, keep him away from being Batman, because as Bruce Wayne he has a chance at happiness. And Joker doesn't have an Alfred to spell it out, but it's the same thing for him. Without Joker, he has a shot at genuine peace. But Batman and Joker are too deeply intertwined for Joker not to come back if Batman did, and that's ultimately why amnesiac Joker asks Bruce not to become Batman again. Their peace, and their torment, are inextricably linked.

But... you know what moment haunts me most in Batman #48? Fuck it, if I started ranting about this, might as well get it all out of my system.

Bruce turns back. When the explosion goes off, he starts running towards Jules and the people in danger, but then he stops and looks back at Joker... but there's no one there. Joker is gone. There's no one near the bench. And when he goes off running again, his face is in shadow, as if to symbolize a return to Batman.

Insert me going 'Snyder!! What does it mean?? What does it all mean??'. What would've happened if the explosion didn't go off? Was Joker actually intending to kill himself? Was it because he sensed Bruce would become Batman again no matter what he did, and would rather die while still having this fleeting happiness than go back to being Joker? If so, why didn't he kill himself any of the times after? Was Bruce's presence while he did it, in any capacity, something he needed? And if so, why? Did he need Bruce there to try and stop him from killing himself, or did he need him there because he didn't want to die alone? Is this a parallel to the end of Endgame, in which it was Joker desperately trying to stay alive while Bruce doomed them both to death? Is this a reversal of it, with Joker trying to stay human this time while Bruce is slipping back into Batman?

And why, why did Joker run away? The implication in those panels is that Bruce hesitated. What if Joker had still been there when he looked back? If Joker had insisted, or went with Bruce to the location of the explosion, if he had stayed... would that have made a difference?

God, this is why I would have loved more insight into amnesiac Joker's head! In the issue you're referring to, #51, we're shown both visually and textually that he's fighting becoming Joker again, and all this after the events of #48 transpired. Leaving aside him saying "Not yet," in DotF and Endgame, Snyder has used flies as a way to signal Joker's influence or presence. And in these panels we can see amnesiac Joker crushing the flies that keep coming at him, symbolically keeping his real identity at bay:

This does indicate a certain degree of self-awareness, at least an unconscious knowledge of who he used to be, and I need to freaking know why he ran away that time, and how he reacted to Batman returning, how he managed to stay this person instead of becoming Joker again. For that matter, we are also never told how that happened! Snyder intended to have a comic explaining what transpired after the events of Batman (2011) #48 and #51, but that comic unfortunately never came to be. Between these, which have an amnesiac Joker with no bleached skin or disfiguration, and Dark Days: The Forge and Dark Days: The Casting, there's nothing yet in canon to explain how he became the classical Joker again. We know how Batman regained his memories, but not Joker, and it bugs me immensely. In The Casting Joker says that even when he was not himself, he felt the call (of Barbatos, essentially, since both Bruce and Joker have been revived by dionesium, one of the Nth metals) -- so did he just spontaneously freaking get white skin, a grin and green hair at some point? Or did he intentionally throw himself in a vat of acid again once the memories came back? How did Joker end up imprisoned in the Batcave then, how did Bruce drag him there and why did he actually need him? Also, why did the dionesium pool restore Joker to life at the end of DotF but kept his physical Joker-like traits, but post-Endgame it healed him entirely of everything, restored him to pre-Joker appearance? Snyder!! I need answers!!

[deep breath] Anyway! I'm sorry anon, this went off the rails more than a little. Any in-depth talk of Snyder's stuff tends to send me spiralling. But I hope you still enjoyed some of my rambling!