I used to wonder about it. Of all the many varieties of nutty, why didn't somebody somewhere put on a cape and start playing Batman?

Then, seemingly just in the past few years, they came out of the woodwork. Were they always there, and only now news?

"All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That's how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once, am I right? I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed. Why else would you dress up as a flying rat?

You had a bad day, and it drove you as crazy as everybody else... Only you won't admit it! You have to keep pretending that life makes sense, that there's some point to all this struggling!

"God you make me want to puke!

"I mean, what is it with you? What made you what you are? Girlfriend killed by the mob, maybe? Brother carved up by some mugger? Something like that, I bet. Something like that..."

- The Joker, talking to Batman. From Alan Moore's "The Killing Joke."