You've probably always believed these misconceptions about Batman's arch-nemesis, but don't be
sad that you've been misled.
Put a smile on that face and learn about a few things you might've been getting wrong
about the Joker all this time.
The Joker commits a lot of bizarre and horrible acts, but to write him off as being "crazy"
might not be accurate, and might even trivialize real-life mental health issues.
He's narcissistic, dangerous, and you certainly don't want to invite this guy to a dinner
party, but in the 1989 graphic novel Arkham Asylum by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean , the
Joker's psychiatrist gives an alternative view of the villain's mental state.
She doesn't believe he could necessarily even be classified as "insane," instead asserting
that he actually has, quote, "some kind of super-sanity," where his brain is constantly
shifting to keep up with the sensory overload of the world around him.
Unable to sort through the chaos, he instead recreates his entire personality based on
his surroundings.
In practice, that's mainly a clever, meta-textual explanation for why the Joker can go from
terrifying stone-cold killer to goofy, gimmicky bank robber to gleeful criminal artist depending
on which story you're reading or movie you're watching.
It does, however, recast the Joker as responsible for his own horrific actions, and explains
that he fully understands the fact that he hurts people.
The only reason he claims to be "insane" is that Arkham Asylum is a whole lot easier to
escape than the electric chair.
2016's Suicide Squad film earned a lot of negative attention, from fans and non-fans
alike, and a great deal of it was directed at the uncomfortably romantic portrayal of
the the relationship between the Joker and Harley Quinn.
The relationship as it exists in the comics is definitely not romantic, no matter how
much Harley Quinn wishes it was.
From the first moments it was introduced, it's been as abusive and toxic as you'd expect
from the Clown Prince of Crime.
The simple fact is that the Joker doesn't care about Harley Quinn, which is part of
what makes Harley's adoration for him so tragic.
He never shows any true romantic interest in her, or, really, anyone but Batman.
Even worse, he not only uses Harley for his own purposes, he's also often physically abusive,
an aspect of their relationship that's only used sparingly in the movie.
"I'm not gonna kill ya, I’m just gonna hurt ya really really bad."
Furthermore, Joker has actively tried to kill Harley on numerous occasions, from trapping
her in a rocket to handing her a bouquet of flowers stuffed with TNT.
Everyone has a different idea about what constitutes romance, but explosions and electro-shocks
probably shouldn't be a part of it.
Since his first appearance in 1940, the Joker has usually been portrayed as a man, but that's
not true for every version of the character.
Check your preconceptions at the door, folks: people of all genders can be criminal murder
clowns these days.
In the 2011 Flashpoint storyline, for example, Barry Allen, the Flash, rewrites history in
an attempt to reverse his own childhood trauma and accidentally causes the whole timeline
to go wrong.
Aquaman and Wonder Woman are fighting a war that's destroyed Western Europe, Superman
doesn't seem to exist, and one of the most shocking results of Barry's timeline tampering
is that Batman isn't Bruce Wayne.
Instead of Thomas and Martha Wayne being shot in Crime Alley, it's their young son Bruce
who dies.
The boy's death rips the Wayne couple apart.
Thomas is so driven to avenge his son's death that he becomes a violent, gun-toting incarnation
of Batman, and Martha, well, she snaps, becoming the Joker.
The Martha Wayne Joker is every bit as sadistic and unhinged as the male version ever was.
This twist also adds a disturbing new wrinkle to the Batman/Joker dynamic, with them being
former lovers turned archenemies.
Then there's Batman: White Knight, a story where the Joker seemingly recovers from his
insanity and attempts to clean up Gotham City by taking over its criminal population and
running for City Council.
When he makes the big change, his sidekick is revealed to actually be a second Harley
Quinn who was far more violent and obsessive than the first, who then takes the identity
of "Neo Joker" to replace him.
Speaking of Harley Quinn, she's grown from a minor character on Batman: The Animated
Series into one of DC's most popular characters.
She's as much a part of Joker's story as Robin is for Batman's, built around her struggle
to break free from an abusive relationship taken to supervillain extremes.
There's one aspect of the character that's not quite new, though: Harley Quinn isn't
the Joker's first sidekick, and she's not the only one he's had by a long shot.
"You... are my number one and I."
Most of these "sidekicks" are little more than one-shot henchmen that are only there
so the Joker isn't talking out loud to himself all the time, but a few have had bigger roles,
like Gagsworth A. Gagsworthy, also known as Gaggy.
He first appeared back in the '60s as a former circus performer who was hired by the Joker
as a sort of comic relief henchman, and he helped out in fights with his glass-shattering
laughter.
For years, he only existed in a single issue of Batman, but returned to comics in the 21st
century as an enemy for Harley Quinn, fueled by his anger at being replaced.
Beyond Gaggy, Harley's other predecessors include Bob the Goon, the leader of the Joker's
matching-jacketed henchmen in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman movie, and, of course, Jackanapes.
In case you don't know, he was a super-intelligent gorilla that the Joker kidnapped form the
zoo and raised as his own son, in a story from 2013.
You might've believed some popular misconceptions about the Joker, but one thing that's always
true is that he has some pretty weird interests.
If you've only read one comic about the Joker, chances are pretty good that it was The Killing
Joke, Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's critically acclaimed 1988 graphic novel that provided
a possible origin for the character and saw him paralyzing Barbara Gordon with a gunshot
to the spine.
One of the big themes in that comic is the Joker's belief that everyone is just one bad
day away from becoming someone like him.
It's the debate at the center of the action, and while Batman might not have gone the murder-clown
route, he definitely went to some strange extremes as a result of his worst day, too.
If you read that story and thought the Joker had a good point, though, there are a few
other DC comics that might serve as a rebuttal.
Actually becoming the Joker requires a few other ingredients.
In 1990, Curtis Base found that one out the hard way.
Base was the star of a story that ran in Batman #450 and 451.
It was the first Joker story after The Killing Joke and A Death in the Family, and featured
Base taking advantage of the fact that everyone thought the Joker was dead by committing some
very ill-advised identity theft.
Eventually, the real Joker returned, but Base decided to complete his transformation by
jumping into the same acid that the original emerged from with his signature look.
Instead, he was dissolved to death in the vat.
Clearly, the Joker has a little more going for him than just an acid bath and a bad day.
It would be very tough to argue that the Joker isn't the most popular Batman villain, and
probably the most popular villain in the entire superhero genre today.
He's in the canon of the all-time great antagonists, and it's nearly impossible to imagine Batman
comics without him.
"Wait'll they get a load of me."
With all that in mind, it's easy to think that the Clown Prince of Crime has maintained
that popularity for his entire existence, but that's not actually the case.
In fact, there was a time when the Joker's stock had fallen so low that there wasn't
a new Joker story in the pages of Batman or Detective Comics for over four years.
Today it's pretty rare for four months to go by without getting some kind of Joker appearance.
As for why, well, the years in question were 1969 to 1973, which coincided with the end
of the Batman TV show.
While the show had been a huge hit, the die-hard comics audience at the time was eager to get
away from campy humor and back to more "serious" adventures.
The Joker, as one of the more outlandish arch-criminals featured on the show, was closely identified
with those goofy adventures.
Of course, there's another reason that has very little to do with the Joker's popularity
among the fans.
At the time, Batman comics were being edited by Julius Schwartz, who had been brought on
to revive the fading titles in 1964, and he just flat-out was not a fan of the character.
That would explain both why his appearances were pretty sporadic in the '60s in general
and allegedly only fueled because he was so popular on the show and why his few appearances
between '69 and '73 happened in titles Schwartz was not editing, like Brave and the Bold and
Justice League of America.
The Joker is a singular character, a one-of-a-kind antagonist whose lightning-in-bottle character
development could never happen.
That holds true in comics, too.
Surely there's no other character who could challenge the Batman like his one true arch-nemesis,
who is destined to battle him in a deadly and eternal test of wills.
"I think you and I are destined to do this forever."
Except that's apparently not how it works.
Obviously, there are different takes on the Joker, including a few knockoffs within the
DC Universe itself.
There are international equivalents like Jarvis Poker, the British Joker, for example, who
served as more of a nuisance than a nemesis for the Knight and Squire, the UK equivalent
of Batman and Robin.
Unfortunately, he was killed by the real, American Joker for the crime of diluting his
brand.
There was also the Alpaca, the Chinese equivalent who had been one of the top students in a
government program to create that country's version of Batman before she went bad.
And, of course, there's also that "super-sanity" explanation that's meant to explain why different
creators often have different takes on how the Joker works while still being the same
guy.
Recently, however, the Justice League creative team of Geoff Johns and Jason Fabok took that
idea to its literal extreme.
When Batman briefly gained access to the entirety of knowledge in the known universe, he asked
what the Joker's "true name" was.
He came away knowing that there are actually three Jokers out there doing clown crimes.
That was in 2016.
In the years since, the whole thing about the Joker actually being three different people
hasn't really been brought up again in the comics.
The company seems to be saving that for Johns and Fabok's upcoming and appropriately titled
series Batman: Three Jokers, but news about its release date and content is few and far
between, aside from the occasional reminder that it'll be released… eventually.
The Joker's clashes with Batman and the other heroes of the DC Universe have made him a
uniquely popular character in his own right, to the point where you might even call him
"beloved" … for certain values of love.
"Hubba hubba hubba..
Money money money who do you trust?
Me?
I’m giving away free money!"
With that in mind, isn't there enough interest in him as a character that he could carry
his own stories without involving the Dark Knight?
It worked for Catwoman, right?
She's had multiple solo runs that have lasted for years.
Well, while there are clearly plenty of people at Warner Bros. who think he's a strong enough
character to star in his own solo film, that hasn't historically been the case.
DC attempted to capitalize on the Joker's resurgence in popularity back in 1975 with
The Joker, a series that followed the Joker as he got into conflicts with other Bat-villains
and occasionally got one over on heroes like Green Arrow and a guy with a brain injury
that made him think he was Sherlock Holmes.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it got the axe after only nine issues, which, incidentally, ended
up with the Joker claiming that he'd always wanted to star in a movie.
Between then and now, there's only been one other attempt at Joker headlining a title
without Batman, a 2008 hardcover graphic novel with a version of the character who was close
to (but not quite) the version that moviegoers had loved in The Dark Knight.
That's it, the sum total of Joker solo stories.
Maybe this time, they'll have better luck.
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