I'm toying with the idea of doing a comprehensive series of entries in my journal about the Joker, and since I don't just want to do some half-assed post that doesn't do one of the greatest villains in all of fiction (comic book or otherwise), so this is going to be a massive undertaking which will likely test the limits of my discipline -- which is obviously dubious at best.
I PM'd Trollheart to ask if he was interested, but due to his workload, he politely declined (which I completely understand, as I made it clear that it would be a massive undertaking, even by his standards), so I'm just going to quote certain parts of my proposal to him. (Purely from my side of the conversation, of course, since PMs as a rule should be kept private, even those without much in the way of personal information.)
Quote:
It would be a long-term, multi-entry project, since there's so much to cover. Doing it historically, like I've been doing with Ivy, would simply not do justice to him, but the amount of effort involved is probably still too massive for one man to undertake.
It would involve multiple features: the evolution of his character; psychological profiles delving into what makes the Joker tick at his very core; essays on his relationship with the Batman -- which would also be somewhat historical, considering how it's evolved and been interpreted over the decades; important events (such as his roles in The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns, the murder of Jason Todd [the second Robin]), the Death of the Family arc, various Joker-centric graphic novels not necessarily in-continuity with the comics; appearances in non-comic mediums (the 60s series, the first Batman movie, Christoper Nolan's The Dark Knight, Batman: The Animated Series and the rest of the DC Animated Universe, the video games, etc; his relationship with Harley Quinn; and probably other things that I'd think of over time.
Like I said, this is gonna be big ****, and I don't want to just start posting stuff without it all being planned out in advance (i.e. at least a rough outline to begin with). This would seriously. For me to be satisfied with it, then it must be a comprehensive, mother****ing book-length project (there's actually a book on the Joker that would probably be an excellent source).
I'll understand perfectly if you just can't commit to something like that -- though this would be something that would be in our "free time", and not a project to undertake all at once to the exclusion of everything else (as it would need to be, otherwise). I don't have any set time table, so I wouldn't be surprised if this would take many, many months before we would be ready to so much as let entry #1 see the light of day. My only goal is to construct something that would make any site dedicated to comic books **** themselves with envy.
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Now, I'm not asking anybody to contribute anything there're not willing to commit to, or dump my workload on them; I'm just asking if anyone is interested in doing whatever they might feel like doing to make this project as excellent as I'm hoping it will be.
If anyone wants to review something, -- be it a comic issue or story arc, graphic novel, movie, TV episode, etc -- do a Skype chat or something to discuss the best topic of conversation ever to be a topic of conversation, write an article of some sort about their feelings and/or interpretations of the Joker, etc, then that would be great, but anything simple, from suggestions for reading material, casual feedback concerning something I'm working on, or just whatever strikes your fancy, then I'd be grateful for that, too.
I won't pressure anyone into anything, just throwing out the invitation if anyone is interested. It would be really cool to do a community collaboration on something this important (yes, important, as in world peace and ending hunger kind of important), so I'm hoping that at least someone might be interested. No guarantees that I'll have the motivation to follow through, obviously, but it would still be fun delving into the Joker to
any extent with my homeboys/gals/whatever WD identifies as ATM.