So I was going to add my next art piece, but now that it has been confirmed that Joaquin Phoenix has signed on to play the Joker, I wanted go on a tangent and tell you how I came up with casting Joaquin Phoenix as the maniacal clown in my old blog about three years earlier. At the time, other people were thinking of Adrien Brody, and William Dafoe as the Joker, and transforming them into their interpretations of the dark clown prince in their art, but I came up with Joaquin Phoenix first! So I wanted to say, I saw him first! Oooanh! Okay tantrum over. Back to the story: in 2015, a friend of mine and I were working on a Batman story but with an American Muslim tinge to it. We had decided to present a story where Gotham fell into chaos after the supposed death of Batman from the Christopher Nolan series. We actually started work on it at the end of 2013. But actual artwork and details were finished around August of 2016. ( On a side note, I guess I lied, I did do art prior to the first downtown digital art I posted here on my blog. But it wasn’t for the sake of art, it was more so for the blog my friend and I were working on.)
We actually had someone else in mind to play the Joker. Here I present our original Joker, the “Egyptian Jon Stewart” Bassem Youssef. He had the specifics we were looking for and the picture seemed like it matched the story arc for season 3 (we only ended up finishing season 1 due to lack of time, and unfortunately lack of interest from viewers.)
Regardless, we just didn’t feel he was the right fit, because he was missing the star power. Then around 2015, we saw “The Master” with Joaquin Phoenix, and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. We saw Joaquin’s performance and said this is it! This is the real Joker, and scrapped Youssef, and started our work on transforming Joaquin Phoenix into the Joker. We didn’t have to try too hard, Joaquin’s photos from the movie were available and they effortlessly fit our story’s narrative.
In our view, this pose from Phoenix considerably matched the Joker’s pose in the notorious cover art pic from “Batman: the Killing Joke.” We kept the scarred smile from the “Dark Knight” Joker, and added 3 more scars on the forehead as Batman had fired his forearm ninja gauntlets into the Joker’s face in the movie.
Here is the featured image we added to the article in that blog news site. 
We also did a fairly lengthy recording of the Joker done by me in my terrible impersonation of Heath Ledger’s version. It took place before Bane in the “Dark Knight Rises” where commissioner Gordon interrogated the clown prince about dead bodies being found in the sewers of Gotham.
For the youtube recording, we further added filters to the picture above to present Joker’s notable colors of purple and green.
So I am also going to shamelessly promote my old blog here, “Gotham Gazette presents ‘ The Fall of Gotham'” Here is that article from 2016: The Fall of Gotham.
If you get a chance, please listen to the recording in that article, and if I can be even more shameless here, please feel free to see all 12 articles we wrote for the 1st season. A brief synopsis: After Bane failed in destroying Gotham, the US invaded “Al Jazair” to fight terrorism, as Bane allegedly operated from there. Due to the war, a lot of refugees seek asylum into the US, including Gotham. Corrupt politicians blame the refugees and frame them for terrorist attacks. Motivated by fear, Gothamites end up electing facists. Surprisingly this was written before Trump was elected. That’s the story of season 1 in a nutshell.
If you have endured this article, here is a reward for you my dear friend: an embarrassing pic of me as the Joker for a terrible short film my friends and I made back in 2008. Yeah if it isn’t obvious by now, I was obsessed with that dark prince of anarchy. Wow… it’s been 10 years.
The Imaginarum of Mr. Kharnassus 