- Warning: major spoilers for Batman: Dark Age
The confrontation between Batman and Joker is legendary, one of the most iconic in the world of superheroes. It has had many nuances over the years, but it is almost always built on the same foundation: the Dark Knight does not kill the Joker because he has a moral code and because he (almost always) believes in his redemption, and the villain simply It would have no reason to exist without the vigilante. It’s a vicious cycle that has given us incredible stories for decades.
Batman: Dark Age #6 has broken this cycle in a very interesting way. This is the final chapter of this story set in the 1960s. After spending several decades within the plot, an elderly Bruce Wayne remembers how Nightwing died. He explains that it was during a confrontation against the Joker.
The scene is certainly cruel on the part of its creators. Nightwing and Joker fall from a large burning building into the void. “Like my mother used to tell me: if the house is on fire and you can only save one thing… save one life. And that’s what I did. Only…” Batman says as he calls to Dick from the edge. The flames blind him. Batman rushes to grab his partner’s hand, but grabs Joker instead by mistake.
“…I saved the wrong person,” he continues in the vignettes we share. “I appreciate the gesture, I really do,” the Joker says. The wheel would continue turning in any other story, but not in this one: he changes and stops being a villain after spending a season in prison. “It made me want to live,” the Joker adds in another vignette. This outcome is extremely strange, although it is certainly not the first time the Joker has shown his human side. Too bad the price was Dick’s life.
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