Why doesn’t Batman just kill the Joker

right now with all the multiverse going on, there’s probably at least one batman that already killed people.

But yeah, the original batman doesn’t kill, no matter what.

And… the original Joker is … not that evil… i mean… it’s complicated xD he is a murderer, but I think there are villains worse than him.

The writers of Comics want strong characters fans know the name for, its a marketing stroke of genius, It allows for the marketing of a “known” to fans of it. People love certain “bad guys” and having the known is how to sell, be it the comic books, games, movie are action figures. KNOWN = MONEY. Most know = MORE MONEY.

Kill off a character at the end of a comic instead of having him/her a way back is shooting your finacial cash cow in the foot. Think about it, would you remember Joker or even know about him if Batman killed him in 1940 or even 1960. Probably Not he would just be another in the long line of Murders Batman committed in  the long line of Vigilante Justice making Batman not a Hero but actually a Villian.  Super Heros believed in Truth, JUSTICE and the American Way…. A self appointed vigilante killer, is not exactly that.

Here’s a question: It Batman rounds up the Joker, why doesn’t the office holders kill the Joker? They have had every opportunity. You would think the Army would do it or something. Batman gets the flack. But he is just one guy.

Because as a civilian Batman knows it is not his place to be judge, jury and executioner. To decide who is worth life or death, that is a role for the state. Batman already treads a careful line between hero and vigilante, so he tries to set himself as an example to others. If he kills Joker, then how would he justify to other heroes, aspiring or veteran, not to kill?

Of course, laws are not perfect. In a just society someone like the Joker would’ve gotten the death penalty several times over, so Gotham’s own legal system must be so inept, broken and corrupt to the point that he gets away with “insanity plea” every single time (when in most versions of the story he isn’t insane in the medical sense; Joker knows perfectly well his actions are morally wrong, he’s just doesn’t care. He’s out to prove his worldview is correct). Of course, it speaks volumes just how broken it is that someone feels the need to take matters into their own hands and become a costumed crime-fighter in the first place.

At the end of the day though Batman is a child’s superhero semi-realistic fantasy story and some suspension of disbelief is required for enjoyment. The core values of the story is having the courage to stand up for yourself and others, not an “eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” which I view as another subject matter.

Because he’s too popular. Batman’s rule is just an easy way for the writers to keep recycling his rogues gallery ad nauseam.

But see, this is the kind of moral simplicity that doesn’t realistically compute. I mean, taking out the joker wouldn’t make batman a monster, it would make him a quiet hero who saved the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of people who would have died otherwise. That is the point. How many people has the joker killed over the years because of batman’s stubborn, and often illogical, refusal to take any sort of meaningful action against him, and his ilk of villains.

Gotham doesn’t seem to have the death penalty, barring a couple of exceptional cases. The reason why batman even exists is because Gotham, and all its rules of law, are utterly broken and corrupt. Most of the time old man Gordon is the only honest one in a bureaucracy of thousands, probably tens of thousands. Batman exists to do what Gotham cannot, or will not do, in order to protect its citizens.

Batman is failing to protect the citizens of Gotham by allowing the joker to be judged by the same justice system that has allowed him to escape countless times before. Batman knows that the joker won’t be contained for long, he expects it. Yet he still goes along with the same old dance of catching the joker, joker escapes, kills a bunch of people, and then captures him again. This is why the joker feels like they have a ‘special’ relationship. Again, batman knows that the joker will escape.

I’ll leave those blatant strawmen on the ground, where they belong.

Dude, one of batman’s most famous lines is “I am vengeance, I am the night, I am batman.”. But it doesn’t make batman as bad as the criminal. Hypothetically, let’s say batman does kill the joker, of which he may have done so in tkj. Batman has just saved countless lives. I mean, it’s like saying that if one jew escaped from the chambers and killed hitler, that he would be as bad as the man himself. That is ludicrous.

It won’t make him a monster. People act like if he were to snuff out the joker that batman would lose any sense of himself and become a one stop mindless murderer, which would not be the case. Never mind the many cases where batman has killed before, and kept his sanity. And no, batman is not judge, jury, and executioner, in the sense of someone like dredd, but he exists as someone who has to do what others cannot. How can batman look at the joker, who stands on a mountain of dead bodies, and not make the hard choice.

Even most hardline batman fans will kinda accept that this fact about batman is largely contrived and is really only done so they can keep on selling batman comics with his popular rogues gallery. That are perpetually escaping and mass murdering the innocents of Gotham. This is why most manga heroes kill their enemies. And that doesn’t turn them into people who are quick to kill, and will inevitably turn into ruthless totalitarians. But even they realize that some people are too dangerous to be left in the hands of a largely incompetent, or incapable, justice system. Some of them would rarely do it, but in exceptional cases (joker), they will, because they know the stakes. And with batman stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the stakes, he is condemning many people to die at the sadistic hands of the joker.