What's the Joker's objective power level and why is it so inconsistent...

What's the Joker's objective power level and why is it so inconsistent? Sometimes Batman takes him out like he's a joke and sometimes they're evenly matched despite the Joker having none of Batman's training. And then there are the times where even metahumans are afraid of him. Someone please explain this.

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You don't need to be peak human to get a lucky shoot

>Implying The Joker isn't actually another Wayne-tier Billionaire who went mad after his parents died, and couldn't temper his feelings into a spear of rage against crime like the Bats did.
His power is not centered around his physical strength, but rather the cunning in his madness. In that way, it can vary very widely in that regard according to context.

>Power levels
You are what's wrong with fucking comics.

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Because CUHRAYZEE XDDD is a superpower now, I guess. The Joker is fucking retarded.

Even Goku lost to drunken cow kung fu

>His power is not centered around his physical strength
Except for when he's an expert fighter because reasons.

>Except for when he's an expert fighter
Source

>Power level
Fuck off fag.

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Joker being formidable in combat is more of a DCAU thing because it was more action-orientated

In the under the red hood movie.
In batman TAS, he was a chump physically. And it worked well.

This, mainly really The Batman. Then again tho everyone in that show fought like they had been training as long as Batman had, even The Penguin.

>In the under the red hood movie.
You mean the glass of water scene? That wasn't a fight, that's just him being fast and fucking with everyone's expectations.

Does the phrase "Depending on the Writer" mean anything to you?

So he's good with a gun?
Really? Is that one of his abilities? He's way better than the average thug with a gun?

He's not even good. He shot three guys at point blank range. Literally point blank range. They were less than 12 inches away from him. What he is is fast and unpredictable, and that has not varied since the 1940s.

Does the phrase "Shut up, Boco" mean anything to you?

This.

Killing a few mob goons with the element of surprise in an extremely confined room isn't being an "expert fighter", it's the result of them being stupid enough to not give him the water in a dixie cup.

I'm familiar with it.

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Anyone with any amount of practice with a gun would be faster and deadlier. It makes no sense that he could kill them ALL without any of them shooting back even once. I mean, I understand for the purpose of the movie it would be dull if the moment he reached for the gun he would have gotten one in the head and that would have been the end of the film. But I'm guessing the goons he shot must have been pretty awful?

>What he is is fast and unpredictable, and that has not varied since the 1940s.
This.

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>But I'm guessing the goons he shot must have been pretty awful?
They weren't awful, but you already answered your own question. It would be boring. Like everyone else who matters in comic books, Joker has a layer of plot armor. You have to suspend your disbelief. Frankly, it's far more believable than Batman somehow being able to dodge a fucking bullet fired at his head in the climax of the same film. But you don't question that because it's Batman. Same should apply here. You shouldn't question Joker killing 4 guards in a small room just simply because it's Joker.

Dude,
He's the fucking main character, and they're nameless goons. They exist to be killed. Do you complain that Luke Skywalker doesn't get shot by any Stormtroopers in Star Wars too?

>Frankly, it's far more believable than Batman somehow being able to dodge a fucking bullet fired at his head in the climax of the same film

I had forgotten about that part.
I think I forgot a lot of that one, actually. A shame since I kinda liked the DCAU on the whole. But there were some low points as well.

He's got that crazy retard strength. Combine that with being sufficiently pissed off and you've got somebody dangerous.

It's not comic book fantasy logic. Most people who are angry enough and hopped up on adrenaline are going to be capable of doing things they wouldn't normally do. Imagine what it'd be like if you added insanity into the mix.

>wouldn't normally do
Key word is "wouldn't." Not, "couldn't."

>Do you complain that Luke Skywalker doesn't get shot by any Stormtroopers in Star Wars too?
Would Luke be able to beat the Joker? I feel like nobody ever does fanworks for this despite it having such an obvious connection.

I don't think they were low points. I still love Under The Red Hood. Great animated movie in my opinion. But you have to take into account the basic plot armor rules. Joker may be a villain, but he's also one of the main characters. He can and will do ridiculous and impossible things just because of that status. You just have to accept it going in. If you can't do that, then there really isn't anything to discuss. Nobody is going to argue that it's realistic or that it makes sense or that it's even possible. What we are trying to say is that's not inconsistent with the character. Again, , he's fast and he's unpredictable. He will do ridiculous and impossible stuff using those traits, and he has done so for almost a century now. That is his character, that's how he works. And Red Hood does not defy those characteristics whatsoever.

>even The Penguin

That still bothers me to this day. Oswald is supposed to be a man who relies on his tricks and cunning, not a fucking Kill Bill reject.

Metas aren't afraid of the Joker. They're afraid of Batman. Joker has done a ton of bullshit that should have gotten him taken care of years ago, stuff they'd never get away with. But Batman is powerless before the Joker.

And by the transitive property, if Batman is a demon made of fear with magic bat powers (in their superstitious minds), then the Joker must be a 5th dimensional imp from hell.

I think that was his point. Even in a real-world context, an angry crazy person running on adrenaline can do ridiculous shit. Add plot armor for the Joker specifically, and nothing is odd.

>Even in a real-world context, an angry crazy person running on adrenaline can do ridiculous shit
You'd be surprised how overstated and overestimated this is.

I was pissed off because when it was time to make a fighting style for Penguin, instead of making something related to fencing/judo, which were things he actually was capable of in the comics, instead they just made him a ninja like they did with nearly every other character.

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Probably. I've seen people lift cars off of loved ones. Adrenaline is a hell of a natural drug.

See the only thing that bothers me is that he seems to be super-human in his feats, and that seems a bit much. Not that Batman is by any means an exception.

Not to mention making the Kabuki Twins feel redundant.

>Not that Batman is by any means an exception.
That's really what it comes down to, isn't it? Batman may as well be fucking magical on a level greater than Zatanna for all of the shit he pulls. It stands to reason that the character who is widely accepted as his greatest nemesis must be on the same level just so that Batman doesn't look like a stupid joke. But the problem is that we're all more willing to buy the nonsense from Batman than we are from anyone else, so we question it more with the Joker. The Joker IS super-human, but he's less so than Batman, but he still needs to be in order to make Batman look like he's accomplishing something.

It's a Catch-22.

No, you've heard of people who saw a news story about that, not understanding that things like leverage and the full story. The entire car was not lifted. The entire car did not move. While it was impressive, it's not something out of the realm of possibility. The car was not completely lifted off the ground. It shifted enough that they could be moved. Not completely off the ground. it was a shifting of the weight. People always repeat this story because they think adrenaline means you can have super human strength when the case may need it, and the fact of the matter is that simple isn't factual to human biology.

comic characters vary in power drastically depending on who writes them.

I'd say that's a pretty good summation. Though for me, Batman being super-human as well kind of annoys me.
I'm not the op but I kinda feel like there's a case for, "power creep" going on. More and more amazing feats, more fantastic than the last. And that's not a terrible thing, but it's something that seems to stem from a lack of better ideas.

Okay. I didn't think I needed to clarify that the full front-half of a vehicle was not lifted and that it was the quarter on top of someone being shifted to the other three-quarters. I would have figured that was obvious. Still, that kind of shifting isn't fucking possible under normal circumstances. That's good enough for me.

I suppose more to the point, let's look at the OP image. What is unbelievable about a crazy person hopped up on anger and adrenaline strangling someone with far more training and skill? That's really what we're talking about, isn't it?

>Batman may as well be fucking magical on a level greater than Zatanna for all of the shit he pulls. It stands to reason that the character who is widely accepted as his greatest nemesis must be on the same level just so that Batman doesn't look like a stupid joke
The problem here is that this ends up raising a gap between Joker and virtually all of the other existing rogues and this is why nowadays a lot of writers approach Batman with the mindset that Joker is the only threatening rogue worth a damn and the rest is just a bunch of costumed chumps who exist to get their asses kicked while Batman's trying to deal with a bigger villain.
And the end result is that you either have him effortlessly outdo any other Gotham character he comes across (Death Of The Family) or you try to make whatever villain he's going up against an equally over-the-top and edgy Villain Sue (WOJAR)

It makes the Joker an insufferable tumor of a character who has to be actively removed from stories where you don't want him to ruin everything, which explains why, despite being overused as hell in media, he hasn't done anything in the comics in a while. Because DC writers want to hype him up as some kind of Darkseid-tier mega threat who everyone shits their pants at.

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I dont care about these inconsistencies, i miss when the joker was actually funny and a lovable character before he became this too serious edge thing he is now. A well written joker is still among my favorite characters

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Oh I completely agree. Power creep is real and it's frankly annoying. But I'm not a writer and I don't know what can really be done. In my personal opinion, Batman is stupidly overpowered, but not to the level that has yet broken my ability to suspend my disbelief. I can still accept the idea that this is a "peak human" in the context of a comic book universe. As such, I simply apply the same rationale to everyone else directly associated with him - hero and villain. I completely agree that he's too damn powerful and, because of what I said, everyone else is too damn powerful. But I can still accept it, so I really don't complain. I won't justify it, but I'm not yet bothered by it. That simply comes down to personal opinion in my estimation.

Alternate versions don't mean that he's inconsistent

What you're describing is hysterical strength. And there's not only very little science behind it, but a lot of science that points out that such feats are NOT the result of adrenaline, as any release of adrenaline is not only quick acting enough, but does _not_ actually increase physical strength. It increases twitch muscle response. Rather than actual sustained muscle constriction. It also has a detrimental effect to fine motor control. It's great for BUILDING muscle. But muscle isn't built instantly. It's built while you sleep, interestingly enough.

>What is unbelievable about a crazy person hopped up on anger and adrenaline strangling someone with far more training and skill?
Because adrenaline also has some effects that make dexterous or skillful tasks much more difficult. When adrenaline begins pumping, anything that requires any amount of dexterity or anything of fine motor skill suffers far more than it helps physical strength. A good analogy would be like wearing a pair of thick gloves. fine motor control and dexterity suffers greatly.Y our muscles and reaction time can react faster, but not necessarily accurately. However, "tetanic force," or rather, sustained muscle constriction, isn't improved by adrenaline whatsoever.

>That's really what we're talking about, isn't it?
Indeed. It's why calm control over yourself in a fight and being able to do something repeatedly and well trained to COUNTERACT the effects of adrenaline that hampers your ability in a fight.

Just reacting wildly makes you dangerous. Mostly to yourself. Someone flailing about wildly with no training is going to lose to someone trained every time.

Fascinating. Okay, thank you very much for the info. I will do some research on my own to confirm for myself what you've said, but in general this tells me that I'm likely very misinformed on the subject. The specific talk of dexterity makes perfect sense, and it's not something I ever considered. I would have assumed that to be a general constant, but then I remember what it's like doing dexterous tasks when I've been drinking.

Because CUHRAYZEE XDDD is a superpower now, I guess.
Don't know why people have a problem with that, it's true enough in real life, mental patients and people on certain recreational drugs will behave erratically and can beat the shit out of normal people because they're too disoriented to feel the normal body sensations that tell you when you're overexerting yourself. That's where those myths about superhuman PCP users came from. Granted they're myths in the sense that PCP won't actually give you superhuman strength, but PCP can totally make you do crazy erratic shit like punch through a fence or flip over a cop that you wouldn't get anywhere close to doing if you were sober, mostly as a function of dissociation from your sensations.
youtube.com/watch?v=wLZq5GGPxws

Well, in the case of adrenaline, maybe not.

BUUUT, we've seen very interesting effects with performance enhancing drugs as well as recreational drugs like amphetamine and PCP. If Joker was a doper (and he doesn't seem the type that would morally object to it) then that's an entirely different story. I don't THINK he would have access to those kinds of drugs so easily in say, a prison, like in under the red hood. But amphetamine is still used therapeutically, and not out of the realm of possibility for someone to be treated with it in an asylum. Hell, we still use amphetamines to treat ADHD. To argue AGAINST myself, joker could be on a huge cocktail of prescription medication that could possibly make him dangerous. There's a lot of dangerous drugs out there and someone with no morals and any kind of criminal affiliation would have zero difficulty getting them or taking them.

Amphetamines. They've been shown to increase stamina, and physical strength, but reduce reaction time. That and PCP has been shown to really fuck you up. I mean, the video you showed is kind of a case for why police still carry guns and don't just taser anybody that resists. Of course tasers are a different subject entirely and, to sum it up: Tasers kind of suck. If the suspect is too far away, tasers don't work. If ONE of the two contacts prongs flies off (and they're known to be pretty inaccurate at any significant range) and it doesn't impact the suspect's skin, it won't work.
If one of those contacts is stopped by a piece of clothing, zipper, button, or etc? The taser won't work. There's a lot of situations where it can be reasonably expected that a taser just won't work. They hypothetically can go through thin clothing. There's been many reported incidents where tasers got caught in a sweater or a thick jacket and failed. Their ability to penetrate clothing is limited because they're not designed to be able penetrate skin deeply.

>DCAU
Stop this meme.

>objective power level
Here's your problem, user.

No, he is right. Explain Catwoman taking down three Flash, or Batman's whistle harming Superman? Inconsistent POWER levels.

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Ok.
The animated DC movies and cartoon series.

This. Death to weebs.

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I don't know, but I fucking hate it. I don't think think Joker should be strong or a good fighter regardless of drugs, falling in acid, or whatever. He can get in cheap shots and also use things around him along with whatever efficient shit he had ahead of time or finds around him (the former being some shit like bombs he places inside a jack-in-the-box and the latter being something like a crowbar), but part of what makes the Joker work for me is that he isn't some strong guy or have a ton of endurance. It's his literally insane willingness to go to such malicious extremes in spite of that which really sells him. I'm not even talking the heavy stuff like Killing Joke, but just his casual attitude of putting peoples lives in danger just to piss others off and/or get what he wants, and if things don't go well and his hostages don't get saved it's no real loss for him. I don't like him being some super genius either, even by some sort of chance or backwards thinking. Keep him dangerous and twisted. Leave that mental schtick to someone like Riddler.
Conversely, this is why I fucking hate Harley Quinn, because she exemplifies the worst of this power level bullshit, especially with that dumbass hammer she's constantly had in recent years. Making her "actually really smart" is also dumb as well. Even with her origins, there's no good reason for it, given her "intended" character. Fuck Bruce Timm and fuck all of you for supporting this garbage character. I know you're not all to blame and there's others who are more at fault, but I'm still mad.

During he's original appearance during the Golden Age he's literally stated to be the first enemy to match Bruce in a fight, so that was the origial intent. Then it's whatever suits the current story, like all power levels in capeshit ever.

They definitely made Suicide Squad Joker and Harley some kind of special superhuman. If two dozen armed guards still cannot handle unarmed Harley there is more than just crazy happening there