No one is shouting for a clownish tamed Joker. A dangerous Joker is hardly an aberration. His continuing existence is a comic genre standard. I just see you picking and choosing what makes something illogical.
I know you have issue with the violence in DC with nary a mention of the same level of violence in Marvel or any other company. I love and support across every company line. I love comics. You seem to post positive Marvel and negative DC like clockwork, and I guess that's cool for you. It's nearing OMG RITE levels at this point.
Bottom line: a dangerous Joker is the popular representation. Perhaps a floppish clown is down the road for you, but please stop pretending that it's some sort of error.
Too late.
Look, I know you've seen this question posed, you must have whether serious or in jest: "why doesn't [blank] just kill the Joker?"
The real gag is that the question people should be asking is, "why are we even asking why [blank] doesn't just kill the Joker?" The answer is that with rare exception, DC's writers have continuously pigeon-holed the Joker into the role of reprehensible inhuman monster, someone completely insane and unquestionably evil, all to demonstrate just how dark and twisted and "real" Batman's world can be, without stopping to realize just how unrealistic and unsustainable that concept truly is.
This is a villain who has gassed hundreds (thousands even!), has slit throats and gashed faces with razor blades, and has shot innocent people for simply getting in his way. This is a villain who shot the police commissioner's daughter in the spine, paralyzing her for life (until reboot), then stripped her naked and took pictures to torment her father. This is a villain who beat a teenaged boy half to death with a crowbar, then blew he and his mother to pieces in a bomb explosion. This is a villain who shot an unarmed woman in the face in a room full of newborn babies, for crying out loud! And those are just the most obvious and well-known examples of the character's infamy!
Any sane, rational person would look at this man and his list of twisted crimes and above all his complete lack of remorse and say, "clinically insane or not, this monster deserves to die." And yet what happens, time and again? Joker gets caught by Batman. A judge declares him criminally insane, and shipped off to Arkham he goes. Joker bides his time, then escapes killing some orderlies in the process. Joker kills some more people with a grand scheme, one more horrific than the last horrific thing he's done. Batman catches him, and the cycle repeats ad nauseum. It's so routine that it's sickening. With all the cops he's killed, with all the people with families he's killed, with all the lives he's ruined in his long career of villainy, you'd think that SOMEONE out there would walk up to this guy while he's in handcuffs or in a cell and put a bullet in his brain. Or an orderly would poison his food. Or one of the other heroes, one with a less strict code against killing reprehensible monsters, would say "I got this" and rip him in half lengthwise. SOMEONE along that chain would have to have taken a look at the laundry list of terrible deeds he's done and have the balls to end it all, and no one with any sense would blame that person or hold them accountable.
Except Batman.
Batman's the worst one of all, without question. Now, I get why Batman himself doesn't give in to his desire to kill the Joker; that whole thing about that fine line he walks between light and darkness, and crossing over that line with the Joker's murder wouldn't just stop at Joker. I'm not saying I agree with it, especially after all of the terrible things DC has had the Joker do in recent years; at this point, nobody's going to bring the hammer down on Batman for offing Joker anymore, and killing someone who deserves it doesn't automatically flip the murder switch. But, I get it... the thing is, Batman not only won't kill the Joker,
he has actually gone out of his way to save Joker's life or prevent others from killing him. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, because DC's writers have painted Joker an irredeemable ghoul, and I don't see how you can look at Batman's actions as anything but enabling. Not wanting to get your hands dirty is one thing, but stopping someone else who has the balls to do what you won't, when no one in their right mind should object? That is true insanity.
And it only continues to get worse. Joker's body count keeps going up with each new writer, nobody in Gotham does anything about it because the writers won't off such an iconic villain, and hypocrisy in Batman's world just keeps on building.
They've dug a hole so deep they can't get out, so they just keep digging.
We should never have gotten to a point where the Joker's continued existence makes a mockery of justice, legal or otherwise.
