My Joker Rant: Why DC's Current Take is Probably the Worst Way You Could Come At The Character.

    When the Joker first appeared in 'Batman' #1 (1940), he was a master criminal, committing "impossible" crimes and challenging the police to stop him. In the first story, he was motivated primarily by a desire to prove his intellectual superiority. Secondarily, he's after jewels (while all the crimes are murders, the primary goal of the crime is theft, with the role of the murder being more about the fact that the police cannot stop him). The only times he's driven to murder for its own sake is out of revenge for a bruised ego, once to target a local mobster who publicly calls him out, and once to target Batman for putting him in prison.

From the Joker's First Appearance in 'Batman' #1 (1940)

    Later, as Batman's adventures began to lean away from their early, pulp-fueled 'weird menace' roots, the character would grow more broad, transforming into the Clown Prince of Crime, a criminal who committed crimes based around humour, comedy, or general clown or circus themes. It's this version of the character, most popular in the 50's and 60's, who inspired the Caesar Romero version from the 1960's television series.

From 'The Joker's Utility Belt', Batman #73 (1952)

    In 'Batman' #251, Denny O'Neill and Neal Adams presented 'The Joker's Five-Way Revenge', which reinvented the character after  four year absence. In this story, it is revealed that the Joker has escaped from a State Hospital for the Criminally Insane (this would be identified as 'Arkham Asylum' a mere seven issues later). Believing that one of his five ex-henchmen was responsible for his incarceration, he targets them one-by-one in a variety of ways. 

From the first page, it's obvious that O'Neill and Adams have something different in store

    Indulge me in a tangent here. The henchmen in this story are a pretty diverse lot. The first victim, Philly Jack Barton is a nondescript guy in his 30s. The second, Packy White is a former light heavyweight boxer who talks in stereotypical henchman patois - "I got a lotta pals in th' slammer", etc. He's got receding white hair, with a mess of loose strands at the top, possibly in his 50s. Third is Alby, who's a gangster type with thick brown hair that's starting to thin at the temples. He's carrying a little extra weight, so maybe 40's. Next is Bigger Melvin. Melvin's the youngest of the four, with long hair. He's young, agile and athletic. 20's. Last is Bing Hooley, a forger who's in an old folks' home. 60s? Now given the spread of ages and different styles, maybe what the authors are doing, intentionally or otherwise, is symbolically clearing the slate. 

    When this story was written, it was obvious that the creators were looking to shed the campy image of Caesar Romero and the silly stories of the post-war 40's, 50's and 60's, taking the character back to his roots in the early 40s. Thus, it seems appropriate that the oldest henchman, Bing Hooley, be the only one who survives, while the others are effectively "wiped out". 
    Unfortunately, neither Denny O'Neill or Neal Adams are still with us to confirm or deny, but it's an interesting thought. Anyway, back to what I was sayin'.  

    Most people consider the Joker in this story to be the 'Modern' version of the character. I have to admit, while I don't have the weird reflexive shame about the 60's tv series and actually love Romero's portrayal of the Clown Prince of Crime (not to mention the 50's Dick Sprang version), the Joker of the 1970's is my favourite... and I don't think that he has that much in common with later versions. 

    The thing about O'Neill's Joker is that, like his 1940s counterpart, while he kills people, he's not "a killer". The murder in and of itself isn't his primary motivation. Even in 'Five Way Revenge', which is a series of assassinations, he's chiefly motivated by revenge against the member of his gang who betrayed him (or by the chance to wipe his past clean, if you take my theory on board). 

    If it were just driven to kill for killing's sake, he could simply have shot Hooley instead of abducting him and dragging him all the way across the city to feed him to a shark. At one point, he even has Batman at his mercy but because it was a result of dumb luck, instead of the climax of a grand chess game, he refuses to kill him. And that spirit, the spirit of the theatrical, of performance, is at the heart of my favourite Joker stories.

    For mine, the best way to interpret the character as a kind of criminal performance artist first and a criminal mastermind second. In 'The Laughing Fish' (Detective Comics #475/476, 1978), his primary goal is freaking out the general public, and his secondary goal is extortion. He commits murder only when his plan to extort money is foiled by a series of bureaucrats. In 'Dreadful Birthday, Dear Joker' (Batman #321, 1980), he invites all of Gotham to witness as he executes all of his enemies in one fell swoop. There's murder there, but the main goal is the spectacle. Later, in 'Last Laugh' (Batman #353, 1982), he steals demolition charges so he can carve a mountain into the likeness of his own face.

    Also, in the five issues listed here ('Batman' #251, 321, 353, and 'Detective Comics' #475 & 476) the Joker's body count is nine people, almost half of which were killed in 'Batman' #251. The other five are the two bureaucrats who stand in his way in 'The Laughing Fish', and three henchmen killed for utterly arbitrary reasons - one forgets to laugh at his witticism in Batman #321, one ignores his entrance and continues a game of dice in #353 and one speaks up at the wrong moment in 'Tec #475. This isn't the Joker as mass-murderer. He doesn't just do it any time he feels like it. Like Roger Rabbit, he can only do it, "when it's funny".

    The above paragraph also represents why the whole, "After the Joker's killed so many people, isn't every murder on Batman's hands for refusing to just kill him and remove him as a threat permanently" hot take is a comparatively recent thing. Until recently, the Joker wasn't a mass murderering spree killer with a bodycount in the hundreds.

    And so we come to the current DC incarnation. Part Hannibal Lecter style serial killer, part 80's franchise-style slasher and part unstoppable, omnicompetant force of nature with infinite resources who's always a hundred moves ahead and covered in fifty layers of invincible plot armour. This, for mine, is the dullest, laziest, most pedestrian and least interesting possible interpretation of the character. It's an evolutionary dead-end and, without course-correction, can only get worse.

    First of all, modern writers are obsessed with the Joker being scary. The archetypal 'scary clown'. The problem is, as a society, we've moved so far on from the funny, harmless, jolly image of a clown, that the scary clown doesn't work as a contrast anymore. The reason why the scary clown works is it's a harmless, friendly thing that's been made threatening, but now that all clowns are threatening... it's just passe.
    Also, being scary is Jonathan (Scarecrow) Crane's schtick. If your "big idea" is to turn the Batman's nemesis into a half-baked carbon copy of one of his lesser foes... it's not that hot an idea. Just like turning him into a cheap version of Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger... you're trapped in a cycle of ever-diminishing returns where by the time you get to the 3rd, 4th or 5th appearance, you're already trying to decide whether your best bet to spice the character up again is to go '...in 3-D', '...in Space', or 'Meets Abbot and Costello'.

    As for the whole Hannibal Lecter-style serial killer in unassailable plot armour? Congratulations, you've now removed the main appeal of the character... unpredictability. Instead of wondering what new, wild scheme the Joker will have up his sleeve this time, we basically know he's going to show up, murder a host of people including a beloved supporting cast member (something that was old when we did it THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO in 'Death of the Family' (1988) and hasn't got any fresher since we've re-hashed it a dozen times since) and then... what?

How can work that's trying so hard to be edgy look so lazy?

    You've got maybe half a dozen options from here. Batman kills Joker. Joker kills Batman. Both of these stories end in the universal balance (and DC's IP lawyers) insisting that one needs the other and we have to engineer some dumb plot twist to bring them back to life. They switch places (White Knight), become the same person (The Batman Who Laughs, anyone?), or, the most likely option, they just keep going through the same motions as always only this time, the Joker's torn off Bat-Mite's face and stapled it to his butt and works it like a ventriloquist's dummy. But again, we're back to diminishing returns as each "shocking" development is less shocking than the last. It's all just so much fan-fic.

    And I understand why we're here. It's HARD grinding out 20 pages of story in 20 days forever without feeling like you're retreading old ground and sometimes, it's easier to just go bigger. But bigger's how we got here. Bigger. Scarier. More Gruesome. More Extreme. More Shocking. Higher Bodycount. You'll never guess who he kills THIS time!    

    Bigger isn't better. Better is better. And if you can't come up with Better (I understand. Like I say. Better is HARD), then maybe the character just needs to go bye-bye again until someone figures out what Better means. And honestly, I think the performance art meets criminal mastermind angle is a much easier way to think up new and interesting than spoopy murder clown. WooOoOOooo...

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