Batman and Joker’s Relationship Is Intimately Added Up By A Bane Meme

Batman and Joker's feud is decades old in DC Comics, but a Bane meme from the Nolan Batman trio sums up their relationship impeccably. 

 

 Batman and Joker’s Relationship Is Intimately Added Up By A Bane Meme 

The relationship between Batman and the Joker in DC Comics is one of pop culture's most high profile conflicts. Explored in dozens of comics, pictures, and videotape games, scores of generators have offered their own explanations for the Dark Knight's decades-old feud with the Clown Prince of Crime. As it turns out, one iconic line from Bane in the Christopher Nolan film, The Dark Knight Rises, puts Batman and the Joker's relationship into perfect clarity. 

In the first scene of The Dark Knight Rises, the villain Bane utters the line, "No bone watched who I was until I put on the mask. "While the line has gained a new life of its own as a meme, it speaks to the Batman's condition in his relationship with Joker, explored in the" Death of the Family" plot centered around Batman# 13-17 from DC's New 52 period. Written by Scott Snyder with art from Greg Capullo, Jock, and Jonathan Glapion," Death of the Family" depicted the Joker's attempts to use Batman's love for his family against him, citing his espoused children as a point of weakness. By wreaking annihilation on the Bat-Family, Joker sought to remind Batman of a simpler time when it was just the two of them, duking it out in Gotham City. The story depended upon a astounding disclosure that Joker may have discovered Batman's secret identity, and by extension the rest of the Bat-Family's, which Bruce constantly denied the possibility of. 

At the bow's conclusion in Batman# 17, Bruce tells Alfred that beforehand on in his career as Batman, he made a visit to Arkham Asylum under the guise of philanthropy, where he directly verified his identity as Batman to Joker. To his surprise, Joker goggled impassively at both Bruce and the card he held against the glass of the cell. Bruce says," It was also that I knew – knew that he did not watch who I was beneath the mask, and he no way would. Knew that he was unable of indeed broaching the subject of Bruce Wayne. It would ruin his fun."

Joker's response to Bruce Wayne's admission that he was Batman proves that like Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, no bone watched about Bruce Wayne until he put on the mask. For someone like Joker, whose humanity is so far removed, seeing Batman as a man in a suit is not a point of interest. Joker is more invested in seeing his foe as another costumed persona, whose real identity is just as shadowy as his own. This speaks to another Batman theme apparent in Snyder's New 52 run, where Batman worked as an" idea" in Gotham City, as opposed to a physical person. 

In this sense, Joker's conduct reveal the extent to which his own identity as a villain is constructed around his opposition to ideological numbers like Batman. Without Batman, or any other extreme antipode, the Joker is pointless, as his geste in his cell at Arkham attestations. This farther advances what has made Joker such an inscrutable villain for decades, whose humanity, or warrant thereof, has been a massive point of contention. Snyder's jotting shows that the Joker truly is not a man, but a archconservative force unable of being moved by mortal commerce. What his factual identity is is negligible. This veritably idea speaks to the morality behind Bane's mask line from The Dark Knight Rises, and the philosophical core of Batman and Joker's relationship.