The Batman Fan Art Gives a Better Look At Barry Keoghan as Joker

Warner Bros. and DC Comics’ The Batman has already made its way into homes around the world and fans are still loving it. Robert Pattinson’s Caped Crusader was very different from other versions of the character and had to unravel a deadly mystery set by the Riddler. The film also gave us our first look at this universe’s Joker played by Barry Keoghan. Joker doesn’t have a prominent role in the film, but director Matt Reeves revealed a deleted scene featuring Keoghan as the character and it’s pretty gruesome. We don’t get a really good look at his face, but it’s scarred, and disfigured. Now, one digital artist has created a new design that gives us a clearer look at Joker.

An Instagram artist that goes by the handle @Bobby_Art decided to create a conceptual piece of fan art that imagines a clearer look at Keoghan’s Clown Prince of Crime. The fan art keeps him in his Arkham Asylum uniform with a neck chain. It also details all of the Joker’s scars and deformities. You can check out the fan art below!

The look has quickly been compared to the Death of the Family arc where the Joker’s face is cut off and reattached, further disfiguring the criminal clown left with green hair, bleached white skin, and a permanent rictus grin after falling into a vat of acidic chemicals. Reeves revealed the inspiration for his take on the Joker: a homage to the mutilated mouth of Conrad Veidt’s Gwynplaine in The Man Who Laughs, the 1928 silent film that influenced the DC Comics character. 

“He can never stop smiling. And it made Mike [Marino] and I think about — I was talking about The Elephant Man because I love David Lynch. And I was like, ‘Well, maybe there’s something here where it’s not something where he fell in a vat of chemicals or it’s not the [Christopher] Nolan thing where he has these scars and we don’t know where they came from,” Reeves explained. “What if this is something that he’s been touched by from birth and that he has a congenital disease that refuses to let him stop smiling? And he’s had this very dark reaction to it, and he’s had to spend a life of people looking at him in a certain way and he knows how to get into your head.’”

Directed by Matt Reves, The Batman stars Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne/Batman, Zoë Kravitz as Selina Kyle/Catwoman, Paul Dano as Edward Nashton/the Riddler, Jeffrey Wright as GCPD’s James Gordon, John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, Peter Sarsgaard as Gotham D.A. Gil Colson, Jayme Lawson as mayoral candidate Bella Reál, Andy Serkis as Alfred, and Colin Farrell as Oswald “Penguin” Cobblepot. The film is streaming on HBO Max now.

What do you think about the concept? Let us know your thoughts either in the comments section or by hitting our writer @NateBrail up on Twitter!