Warning! Spoilers for Joker #4 ahead!
As an enduring symbol of villainy, The Joker has time and time again proven a difficult adversary to shut away, and the most recent issue of his ongoing series deconstructs exactly why he can never be truly be defeated. Always a capable foil for his chief adversary, Batman, Joker seems to possess a similar, larger-than-life quality to the Bat that provides an existential threat beyond the damage his crime sprees inflict upon the people of Gotham. His brand of chaotic, yet often targeted violence calls into question the very foundation of rational morality a society of law and order is built upon. And, true to his character, this strategy is revealed to be a calculated method of destroying the one thing a hero prizes most: their moral core.
In this new series Joker, written by James Tynion IV with art by Guillem March, the now-former Commissioner James Gordon has embarked on a mission to Belize at the behest of a mysterious operative of the Court of Owls known as Cressida. Gordon finds himself in a firefight against operatives led by Vengeance, daughter of Bane, at Joker’s hideout retreat. During the firefight, Gordon, tasked with killing Joker by Cressida, finds him in his sights, but hesitates. Remembering his torture at the Joker’s hands (depicted in 1985 graphic novel The Killing Joke), he considers how he used to believe in fighting crime on the principle of justice. But as time wound on, Gordon began to notice himself consciously lie to himself in order to act more like the “hypothetical good man” he wished he was. Gradually, he found he could no longer really separate whether he was fighting crime because he believed in the value of justice to overcome evil, or if it had become something he did out of obligation and habit.
At the climax of the Joker #4, the clown has Gordon tied to a chair, and, during one of his trademark psychotic monologues, reveals that this degradation of Gordon’s ethical core was one of his chief goals all along. Deconstructing why a civil servant like Gordon would allow extra-legal assistance like Batman, Joker points to their long-established relationship as proof that laws, and with them concepts of good and evil, never really meant anything to Gordon. He claims that without Gordon’s help, Batman “would’ve had a mental breakdown” years ago from isolation, calling him a hypocrite who looks at the world “like a dumb kid” for believing that his labors in the service of good triumphing over evil mean anything in a world where might makes right. Finally, he accuses Gordon of being a hypocrite “who knows he is one,” echoing Gordon’s earlier thoughts.
In this way, Joker is revealing a targeted psychological deconstruction of how he torments his victims. Joker knows that, even if his surviving victims like Gordon recover from whatever sadistic evils Joker has dealt them, the victim’s own sense of helplessness stemming from their trauma will eventually lead them to regard their own inherent selflessness as no different than a habitual lie they tell themselves for expediency: a fairy tale.
This is a part of the philosophical concept of the “duality of man,” where even a heroic person like Gordon can have two conflicting reasons for committing the same act, in this case Gordon’s heroism vs. Gordon’s duty. As this belief that his heroism is the true motivation diminishes, along with his belief in good and evil, Gordon admits that he has begun thinking of himself as an imposter, someone who doesn’t truly believe in the value of good, but is forced to tell himself and others he does, and act accordingly for the sake of appearances. This seed of doubt in an otherwise sterling ethical mind is one of Joker’s greatest triumphs, and no doubt a twisted victory for the archvillain.
Will Gordon turn away from the path of ruination? Joker #4 is on sale now wherever comic books are sold.