Luckily, we had a show like Batman: The Animated Series, which wasn't afraid to show us Joker plots that were more about finding the right notary and less about blowing up Gotham. In the episode "The Laughing Fish," the Joker's big project is ... copyrighting something? That's literally it. No fiery reckoning. No breaking Gotham's spirit through forcing them to make terrible choices. The Joker just wants his residuals. And while it doesn't really work out in "The Laughing Fish," it shows that the Joker is just as interested in getting a check every month as he is in driving Batman insane.
Or look at "Joker's Wild," in which a billionaire creates a casino that's Joker-themed, and when Joker gets word of it, he plans to just take over and run it from behind the scenes. Does the Joker even know how to fill out a balance sheet? Does he know how to list his assets? That's gonna take a lot of time away from his normal routine of carving smiles into people's faces and inventing killer whoopee cushions. It's a ploy that will result in nothing but a manageable steady cash flow. That is the most boring outcome in the history of Batman. It's like making an X-Men comic wherein Professor X tries to organize a PTA.
Batman: The Animated Series was a fantastic show, and it managed to turn all of Joker's bland financial escapades into thrilling adventure TV. But even still, it's weird to watch something like "Joker's Millions," in which the Joker is broke, gets a massive inheritance from a deceased rival mob boss, and then it's revealed that most of the fortune was counterfeit and now the IRS is on Joker's trail. So maybe we were wrong in focusing most of our attention on the explode-y stuff. I think Batman can probably take it easy for a bit; the IRS is Gotham's true silent guardian.
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