[MakubeX2]

It kinda sadden me that more than a year after TDK aired, there has been no plan revealed so far to develop the Joker from a cunning trickster mocking type of villian to a truly psychopathic muderous clown in the animation. Which I believe the mainstream audience is more than ready for after Ledger's now classic performance.

I can understand that there are concern over how it will affect the minds of younger viewers. But there are ways to mask some of the more controvesial elements as shown below from a recent Joker-centric comic with explanation lifted from another forum :-

Just to recap: a thug named Jonny Frost drives Harley and the Joker to a bank, because the Joker has no funds. The Joker gets out of the car and heads into the bank. A few minutes later, he walks back, with a duffel bag full of cash and a photo of the bank president's daughter.

My original interpretation of the scene was that the Joker used the picture to threaten the bank president, who handed over the cash, for fear of this mad man killing his child. But that doesn't really jive with the dialogue and seems a bit...random.

So my current theory: The Joker decided to have a little "fun" with the bank president and made him masturbate all over a picture of his own daughter.

It's sick and twisted, but in line with this interpretation of the Joker (doing sick and nasty things that he thinks is funny, but nobody else necessarily would - look at the rape scene later on, for example. A more tame example of his sexual humor would be the "rabbit" joke earlier in the book).

Now let me show you why I think this is what happened. This is the first close-up of the photograph:



As you can see, there's a prominent blood stain. But what I missed (and didn't catch until many months later) are the white droplets on the photograph as well. You can see the largest is on the bottom-left corner. There's another by the girl's knee, and one final smaller one at the bottom of the photograph, by her thigh.

The Joker also holds the photograph in his fingers like it's disgusting or delicate.

Here's the next frame:



As you can see, the big white gob in the bottom left corner has turned red. But the white droplets by the knee and thigh remain, and a new white droplet has appeared by the girl's armpit.

Finally, in the next frame, Jonny Frost holds the picture, shocked. Most interesting is the way he holds it in his fingers - like the Joker (but even more so), he doesn't want to be touching it.

I believe these white droplets are semen, and that the Joker played his own, sick twisted joke - made the bank president masturbate, not only at the whim of a crazy psycho who could very likely kill you, but also all over a picture of his child (I don't know how he could do it under that kind of pressure, but I guess it was that or his life!)

This then explains the way Jonny holds the picture, disgustingly, like it's a jizz rag (is there a better term for it? I apologize if my terminology is a bit gross - I'm not posting this for shock value or anything). If it was just blood on the picture, that'd be kind of gross, but I don't think this kind of physical response would be justified for just blood - these are violent criminals, blood isn't going to be enough to shock them. It takes something even more revolting to really make them feel icky.

This also goes in line with the next couple of lines of dialogue:

"Birds and bees, honey?" (an obvious sexual reference)

"I dig driving people, Jonny" (the Joker "drove" the Bank Manager)



Of course, this begs the question - what's with the blood?

One might assume that the white spots were just missed by the artist, and that they should've been filled in with red. But I don't think the artists would make a mistake like that (especially given the supporting evidence in dialog that this is supposed to be sexual imagery). Additionally, the white droplets are shaded, indicating that the inker consciously made them white, rather than forgetting to fill in with red.

Furthermore, the Joker states that "The alarm wasn't tripped, and nobody died." I get the feeling that the Joker didn't mutilate anyone (at least, not the Bank President - that would "spoil" the joke). Rather, I think the blood is there precisely so that you'd miss the semen spots without a very close reading and analysis.

In other words, I think the blood is a red herring (no pun intended), meant to let the true nature of the scene slip by the editors at DC. This isn't a Vertigo comic, and the cover doesn't indicate that the book is for "mature readers" (though I think it should) - so I think there's no way the editors at DC would let this kind of thing slip by knowingly. But the blood is such a distraction that it's incredibly easy to believe they'd miss the white spots (I know I did, and I'm willing to bet most others did as well).

(To be honest, I'm not even sure a Vertigo comic would've been allowed to include this - this is probably the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in a comic)

Anyway, that's my theory and supporting evidence. I checked the internet to see if anyone else had come up with this (or an alternative theory), but didn't really find anything. I'm curious as to what you think - does the evidence support the theory? Do you believe it?

If not, what really happened?