#3 - Joker
Ladies and gentlemen, I have just committed blasphemy.
B-L-A-S-P-H-E-M-Y
Why, in my ever loving right mind, would I place Joker from the 2004 The Batman series so high on my list? Indeed, some would question why I would praise any part of this show at all. It was, when it came right down to it, a cartoon show meant to capitalize on the success of Batman Begins and the bat-hype that came before The Dark Knight. Sure, it entertained kids well enough. But it couldn’t hold a candle to Batman: The Animated Series, which came out twelve years earlier. The show wasn’t dark enough, Batman didn’t seem tortured enough, and Robin/Batgirl served as nothing more that bad one liner machines who were forced into the plot.
All very legitimate claims. But this Joker was awesome.
The thing is, I think they knew they couldn’t top Batman: The Animated Series. So why try to imitate it? While the earlier show was ground breaking in it’s storytelling and presentation, what The Batman had going for it was the way it re-vamped it’s villains. While Batman and his sidekicks served to fill a status quo, the creators kept the show fresh by re-tooling all the villains so they were completely different artistically and yet held to the basic themes of their original characters. The re-workings were drastic, daring, and some of them didn’t work. I personally didn’t care for how they re-made The Riddler, Killer Croc, or Mr Freeze. But I loved what they did with The Penguin, Bane, and Joker. Especially Joker.
If they didn’t get the reworking of the Joker right, this series wouldn’t have gone past the 2nd season. And to me, they got this Joker very very right. They made him the Joker that could do anything. Sometimes, he wanted to spread laughing gas through Gotham and kill everyone. Other times, he wanted to turn the face of The Statue of Liberty into silly putty. Of course he pulled a bank heist or two. And, in my favorite episode, he held the mayor ransom and broadcasted it as a reality show on the gotham news channel. He was crazy enough to share the motivations of any Joker incarnation that came before him. As a result, this show got a surprisingly diverse set of high quality Joker stories.
Yet there were three episodes in particular that could have only been done with THIS Joker, which goes to show that he was unique in his own way. The first one is where Joker tries to switch places with Batman.
Joker dresses up as Batman, infects The Dark Knight with a venom that overclocks his nervous system (which causes him to laugh at a guy in a wheel chair), and fights Penguin. If you don’t find any kind of joy in that, then you seriously need to analyze yourself as a human being.
Ah yes, the physical strength part of the character. I suppose that had to be addressed eventually. Yes, this Joker is adept at hand to hand combat and modern interpretations of The Joker don’t reflect the character in that light. But, like I said, this is the Joker that was able to do everything, including facing The Dark Knight in a bare knuckle brawl. It helped make this Joker unique and memorable. Besides, it’s not like fist fights on equal footing with Batman had never existed before for Mr J. In fact…
click to see
That’s Batman #1 people. Jury says fist fights are A.O.K.
The second great Joker moment is from The Batman vs Dracula movie (A great movie that admittedly had too many puns, even for me). In it, Joker is bitten by Dracula and becomes a vampire.
Aside from the fact that “…and then the Joker becomes a vampire” had never been written in a Batman script up until that point, there’s even more reasons why this is awesome. Because the script continues it continues with “…and fights batman while he’s robbing a blood bank. He’s defeated when Batman dumps a shelf full of blood on him, causing him to go into a blood drinking frenzy that leaves him open to attack.”
It’s true this cartoon series had a lot of violence censored so that it would still be considered child friendly. Even more so than Batman: The Animated Series. The ending to the “Wrath and Scorn” episode comes to mind, where two people were supposed to be killed by Joker but are instead merely temporarily paralyzed even though that leaves many many plot holes. But that scene, Joker getting showered in blood, made up for all of it 
The third this-joker-exclusive episode involved the origin of Harley Quinn. I thought they way they reworked Harley’s origin for the The Batman was a stroke of pure genius that fitted the show perfectly. Without giving too much away, Harley is a quack TV psychiatrist where her biggest fan and most frequent in-show caller anonymous is really Mr J.
Kevin Michael Richardson also provided a great voice for this character. I’ll admit, I was pretty put off by it at first. But that was just because I was so used to The Joker from my childhood. As the show went on, I realized that he was the perfect voice for the Joker who can do anything. Richardson made the character alternate between a high pitched and extremely low pitched voice, often sliding back and forth between the two within the same sentence. As a result, he could hit you with as much seriousness or as much jest as he needed to. He could pull off the muscular fighter or lively clown in one sound byte. And he could be H-I-L-A-R-I-O-U-S.
I have never actively laughed at any Joker more than this one. Oh I’ve laughed pretty hard at many Jokers. I scared everyone else in the theater when I saw Heath Ledger blow up the hospital in The Dark Knight. And this Joker had a lot of duds written for him. But when this Joker was on, he was ON.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWQxNybCM7Q
Finally, the number one reason I love this incarnation is because of the artistic design. I mean look at it!
It’s PERFECT. It changes so much, provides something new to the character in every right way, suits everything about him, and still keeps the basic core of the character intact.
I’ve only seen this character in one other place outside the show or the tie in comic. There was a European comic in which Joker traveled through Europe looking for the plastic surgeon who put his mouth on the back of his neck. I can’t remember where I read it or where it was from, but it was glorious.