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In the late 1970s, writer named Steve Englehart had the Joker arbitrarily push a henchman to his death in an issue of Detective Comics. (Englehart was most ably abetted in this by penciller Marshall Rogers–sadly no longer with us-and inker Terry Austin.) This was a shocking moment, reminding readers of the Batman comics books, after many years of comparatively benign Joker buffoonery, that this villain could actually be a true homicidal maniac.
In many ways, Englehart's Batman stories of this period were the true catalyst for what we saw on the screen in Tim Burton's Batman films and in "Batman Begins", as well as being pretty much part and parcel of what Frank Miller worked with to come up with his justly celebrated graphic novel "The Dark Knight Returns". While there were attempts to give Batman more of an edge in the early 1970s (including the invention of Ras Al Ghul), it was Englehart's version that really got readers to sit up and gasp, "Wow! You can actually do this? More, more, more!!!"
