The Joker Needs To Go Away For One Necessary Reason

A new trailer for the upcoming Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League game revealed the game’s first DLC will be a playable version of the Joker, and we’re already over it.

Since the game takes place in the Arkham universe, where the Joker has been dead since the events of Batman: Arkham City, this is an alternate universe Clown Prince of Crime. Thanks, we hate it.

Look, no one is saying that the Joker isn’t awesome, but he’s getting overexposed to the point where the character is starting to feel dull and monotonous in a way the Joker should never feel.

He’s in his own movie, he’s in the Snyderverse, and he’s even in The Batman.

He’s the main antagonist of countless animated films, and you can choose him as a fighter in Mortal Kombat. DC fans can agree that the Joker has reached peak saturation.

Not forever, but we as a society need a long enough time without the Joker that we can actually start to miss him.

In the meantime, DC should give some of Batman‘s other rogues their time to shine. It helped that The Batman chose to use The Riddler as the Dark Knight’s main foil. But even then, Matt Reeves couldn’t stop himself from putting the Joker in the movie anyway.

The Joker in Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League is at least more flamboyant and brightly colored than the character has usually been presented in the last 20 years.

It helps when creators remember that there is more than one way to portray the 84-year-old villain.

On the other hand, the trailer shows the Ace of Knaves using an umbrella to get around. An umbrella…why does that seem so familiar?

Oh, that’s right! Umbrellas are one of the Penguin’s trademarks. Why couldn’t the game have given us an alternate-reality Penguin instead?

An old school, waddling, sharp-nosed, monocle-wearing, umbrella-toting Penguin. That would have been great, especially since the only portrayal of the Penguin we’ve seen in over a decade is mob boss/nightclub owner with nary an umbrella in sight.

But no, instead, we got another Joker. If Rockstar wanted to put a jokey, clown-like psychopath in their game, why not choose flash villain The Trickster? Or the Superman rogue, The Prankster? Both are lesser-known villains that Rockstar would have had free reign to modernize and practically make their own.

Or, Rockstar could have just not made their DLC the male equivalent of Harley Quinn, who’s already in the game.

The bottom line is, with enough effort, any villain could become as popular as the Joker. The Joker was once as doofy, and silly as the rest of Batman’s villains. At some point, someone at DC decided, “What if we made him a murderous psycho?” the rest is history.

DC could do that with any D-list villain, they just choose to re-use the Joker over and over again because it’s easier.

In the process, they’re stretching the character so thin he’s becoming limp and ineffectual. Give the guy a rest.

Let him hang up his acid-squirting flower for a while and let someone else take his place.

Just not condiment, man, because there is no way to make that guy cool.