Joker Explains Motive to Stop Batman’s Wedding

The Joker is out to crash his archenemy’s upcoming wedding, and this week’s Batman #49 finally gives us the details why.

After 77 years of having an on-again, off-again relationship, Bruce Wayne finally proposed to Selina Kyle/Catwoman last year, in Batman #24. In a somewhat odd move, it is their superhero personae who will be having a ceremony, which of course has the unintended side effect of making every villain and their mother decide to disrupt the upcoming celebration.

None wants in more than the Joker, of course, who in the first Prelude to the Wedding issue even menaced Ra’s al-Ghul to try and get the necessary information. In Batman #48, he managed to lure the Caped Crusader into the open by attacking some other poor couple’s wedding, and now, in the newer issue, Catwoman comes in to help her fiancé.

This turns out to have been the Joker’s plan all along, because his real plan to cancel the ceremony is to get rid of the bride. By the end of the fight, the pair are both completely exhausted and near death, with the Joker awkwardly trying to keep from bleeding out from his throat as Catwoman lies on the ground with a gunshot wound. And at this point, the two supervillains begin to simply talk.

The conversation is meandering, covering a variety of topics about the Gotham rogues gallery: why does Penguin carry an umbrella? Is the Joker really just pretending to be crazy, like the Riddler believes? Why is Catwoman the only major Batman foe who never laughs? In the end, though, the Joker reveals his real issue with Batman getting married.

“He can’t be happy. And also be Batman,” he says. And, following up on that: without a Batman, there can’t really be a Joker, can there?

He makes some interesting points. Batman has long been about the internal battle between Bruce Wayne’s sense of justice and his own inner darkness―a darkness that marrying Selina both embraces but potentially heals. The Joker, of course, defines himself so much as Batman’s twisted opposite that at times his obsession seems almost romantic; he is clearly terrified of Batman coming to define himself through somebody else.

It remains to be seen how this will play out, but the wedding is scheduled for issue #50, out on July 4.