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#anyway. Joker Knows Bruce Uncomfortably Well: A Small Sampler
distort-opia · 1 year
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I love how both batman and joker pretended to be each other's henchman/ally at some point and both expressed some type of fondness towards the other. batman pretending to be one of red hood's henchmen and joker pretending to be eric border.
Hah, you're right. They both went undercover to deceive the other. Joker pretending to be Eric Border will never cease to be amazing to me though, because... imagine. You're Batman. You've been fighting this guy for almost two decades and he's been pulling some absolutely terrifying shit, but you thought you knew him. You thought you could at least predict how he worked, even if you didn't really understand him. But then the fucker shows himself capable of fooling you so thoroughly you hadn't had the slighest clue it was happening. I am 10000% sure Bruce's trust issues and paranoia got so much worse after this, and let's be real, who could blame him.
But, digression aside, I must mention that Bruce has technically done this more than once! Some of their first encounters contain a lot of disguises, interestingly. Brubaker's Batman: The Man Who Laughs is the most prominent modern Joker introduction arc, but before that there was O'Neill's Images. The stories are similar, with the exception of Bruce being way flirtier and fooling Joker with a disguise for the first and last time ever as far as I know:
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Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #50
Almost immediately after, Batman Confidential: Lovers and Madmen takes place. It's basically the aftermath of Joker being brought into custody after trying to poison the Gotham reservoir. And Bruce, in an attempt to understand how Joker's mind works, disguises himself as Matches Malone and gets himself put in a cell next to him. But Joker clocks him immediately:
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Batman Confidential #24
And then, in Batman: Joker Time, Bruce goes undercover in Joker's gang once more, impersonating an unfunny comedian (who he pays off to stay in a hotel as he does it). If you ask me, the comic paralelling them "putting their face on" together is... something:
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Batman: Joker Time #2
But a truly hilarious thing happens:
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Batman: Joker Time #3
So basically, Joker had been expecting that Batman would pull this move, and asked someone to keep an eye on the people in the gang. And he immediately figured it out, because Bruce-in-disguise-as-Oscar was too funny. Joker didn't even need to see Bruce to identify him.
All in all, Joker kind of wins when it comes to figuring out Bruce's true identity. I'm only counting times in which Bruce or Joker deliberately tried to fool the other, and not... cases like temporary amnesia (e.g., Batman #48 or Going Sane). This is one of the most interesting aspects of Batjokes, and one that certainly is a big drive behind Bruce's obsession with Joker-- the fact he doesn't truly know Joker. Joker himself mocks him about it more than once, but most recently in Endgame:
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Damn, this ended up way longer than expected. But I hope this was a fun answer, Anon!
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