Mark Hamill: Greatest.Joker.EVER.

If you frequent, or even glance at Kotaku.com, you've probably already noticed the announcement from just over a week ago that Mark Hamill - Skywalker himself - will be reprising his role as the voice of the Joker in Batman: Arkham Asylum. As soon as I read the article in Game Informer last month, that hinted very strongly at his presence in the game - I awaited the coming announcement with my fingers crossed and talking about the Joker non-stop.

Okay, since this is my first blog entry here, I should probably take a step back and explain. I am a big Mark Hamill fan. You see, when I was a kid I used to watch Batman: The Animated Series (hereafter referred to as Batman: TAS) and Spiderman on FOX and I also had subscription to FOX Kids Magazine (it was free), and it was through this publication that I learned the face behind the voices of two of my favorite villains (the Joker and Hobgoblin) . The article included a picture of him as Luke Skywalker, but seeing as how I really wasn't in to Star Wars, that didn't really matter to me. So Mark Hamill was the first voice actor that I ever bothered to keep track of - he was really the only one I knew of for a very long time. As I grew older, I got more and more interested in the voice acting thing. It started out as just doing funny voices at first, but then I got to thinking about how much I would actually like to voice animated characters. So I became very passionate about voice acting, I started to realize that I would recognize very different voices from the same actor. I started to learn more about the profession, and decided to start taking acting classes and doing stagework. Looking back I can see that this all stemmed from my admiration of a guy named Mark Hamill. Today, I still watch cartoons where his voice plays a major role (Fire Lord Ozai in Avatar, Senator Stampingston/Mr. Selatcia in Metalocalypse). Somewhat renown voice actor Billy West (you may know him as the Red M&M or, if you're old enough, Ren & Stimpy) credits Mel Blanc as his major influence for becoming a voice actor, I suppose Mark Hamill serves the same role for me (although I haven't actually done any voice acting yet).

So Mark Hamill was the Joker of the 90s, filling nearly an entire decade that followed the film portrayal by Jack Nicholson and preceding the animated portrayal by Kevin Michael Richardson and second film portrayal by Heath Ledger. The man has had that much time to establish himself as THE Joker, so for the people, like me, who grew up watching Batman: TAS it's pretty difficult to picture or hear, for that matter, anyone else in that role. What is also awesome is Paul Dini - the man who helped write, edit, and produce Batman: TAS - is writing for Batman: Arkham Asylum.

P.S. As far as I know, Mark Hamill has NO online presence other than an "official" fan site. That is why you will find no links below to such a place. Also, the link titled "SWEEPSTAKES!" will take you to a registration page for a GameStop contest to get your face in Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Links related to this post: Kotaku article, Billy West's website, Paul Dini's blog, SWEEPSTAKES!