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Old 10-08-2010, 02:29 PM   #45
Happy Jack
Dickensian Archetype
 
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Join Date: Jan 2008
Location: The Depths
Posts: 5,219
Default Re: The Joker's background?

Joker's one of the few villains I can think of that truly benefits from having an anti-backstory. He's such an over-the-top, theatrical character that it's always a bit hard to swallow that he was ever a relatively average mob enforcer/crook/comedian/whatever. When you remove all of that (or at least make it very vague) it liberates him in a sense, to be less of an identifiable man and more of an anarchic counterbalance. Plus it plants for firmly in opposition to Batman, who of course has a very detailed and rich origin.

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This should be agony
I should be a mass of aching muscle
Broken, spent, unable to move
And were I an older man, I surely would
But I'm a man of thirty, of twenty again
The rain on my chest is a baptism
I'm born again


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