Warning! Preview pages ahead for Batman: Dark Patterns #7!A new look into Batman's past has also given fans a new way of looking at his greatest enemy, the the Joker has evolved into a symbol of chaos that opposes the order Bruce Wayne fights for.

With recent depictions, the Joker is less of a supervillain and more of a force of nature, but one that constantly reinvents itself while Batman consistently fights for law and order. Now a new story is for Joker’s relationship with his iconic, bat-themed nemesis?

The Joker is a Living Pareidolia Phenomenon

A Clever New Spin on Batman's Iconic Foe

In a preview for Batman: Dark Patterns #7 by Dan Watters, Hayden Sherman, Tríona Farrell, and Frank Cvetkovic, it's evening in Gotham City and Bruce is in Wayne Manor preparing for the night. He’s in the study, tending to his wounds, unbinding his bandages and plunging them into icy cold water. As he treats himself, he contemplates the pattern he’s beginning to notice about the city he’s sworn to protect. Despite the usual chaos it goes through, fires have started to get Batman’s attention.

Batman notes that fires aren’t uncommon in the city, of course, due to Gotham’s dense population, cold weather, and crime rate. But the fires have gotten worse, more consistent. Not to mention, fires have been associated with his previous two cases. Bruce starts to wonder if these fires are targeted at him, like a fever when a body is trying to get rid of a disease. Batman continues discarding his bandages onto the floor, which are all stained heavily with the Dark Knight’s blood in odd and disturbing patterns.

Batman keeps himself grounded by reminding himself of pareidolia, the name for how people perceive patterns in strange or unusual places. As Batman discusses the phenomenon, one of Batman’s bandages is shown, displaying an eerie, grinning smile made out of blood. While Batman its there’s an evolutionary advantage to pareidolia, it’s also led to the creation of myth and legend and that, as a detective, he has to be able to see past the phenomenon and not be fooled by trick patterns. But as he looks out onto the city, he discovers another fire has lit up the Gotham sky.

The Joker Has Changed Wildly Throughout DC Comics' History

The Villain's Only Real Constant is Change

Anyone who has seriously looked at the Joker’s history knows that he’s changed more than most villains ever have. When the Clown Prince of Crime first hit the comic book scene, he was presented as a stone-cold serial killer who left a string of bodies with twisted, disturbing grins in his wake. Though not originally intended to become Batman’s archenemy, the Joker was a hit among readers, and he reappeared quite a bit throughout the Golden Age. But the Joker would go through his first major change thanks to the Comics Code Authority.

Joker’s shifting personality has been explained in-canon as a form of ‘super-sanity’...

During the Silver Age, the Joker was heavily altered to be more of a comical prankster than a serious threat. He still challenged Batman, of course, but it would be decades until he ever went back to his old ways. Thankfully enough, that day came in the Bronze Age when the Joker returned to his more violent and wicked ways. But as grim as it was seeing the Joker become a killer again, he’d find ways to reinvent himself for the worse with the arrival of the Modern, or Dark Age.

Joker's return to his more killer ways can be seen in Batman #251.

As bad as he was, the Joker’s crimes got a lot more personal and nothing was off-limits for Joker during the Modern Age. He beat and exploded Jason Todd. He shot and violated Barbara Gordon. He’d even direct violence towards himself, allowing his own face to be cut off so he could wear it like a mask. Joker’s shifting personality has been explained in-canon as a form of ‘super-sanity’, allowing him to shift and adopt any kind of persona he wants, making the Joker the most unpredictable villain Batman has ever faced off against.

Pareidolia Posits the Joker is Something From Within Humanity

Batman's Greatest Enemy is Part of a Larger Pattern

This isn’t the first time a DC book has discussed Batman’s iconic enemy as part of something bigger, presenting the Joker as a cipher connected to the darkest parts of the human condition. But it’s interesting that the preview opts for pareidolia, a phenomenon dealing with patterns that aren’t actually there. Batman is, after all, the World’s Greatest Detective, and he makes it his mission to find out the truth, especially in the case of something that seems to defy all logic or reason.

Interestingly enough, the preview hints that despite Batman doing his best to see past the pattern, sometimes what one is witnessing is the truth. Just as the fires aren’t random coincidences and are seemingly all tied together, the Joker isn’t just some frightful smile that appears as part of a trick of the light. That being said, the smiles that do pop-up serve as a haunting reminder that the worst parts of the Joker are something inherently tied to the world that Batman inhabits.

Just as there’s a little bit of evil nearly everywhere one looks in the world around them, so too is there a little bit of the Joker in every corner of Batman’s world. The smiles that show up like this aren’t just odd phenomena, they’re very real reminders that there’s a very real evil in the Dark Knight’s life. Even when he’s not physically around, the Joker is constantly haunting Batman’s life and these disturbing little reminders prove it.

Batman: Dark Patterns #7 is available on June 11th from DC Comics.