A Smidge of Joker's Origin Story, And I talk Character Interpretations

[espanolbot]

Only a small section here, due to the original stories back in the 40s being only 12 pages long, but I'm kind of trying to make a point.










The original story of the Joker's plan of basically poisoning prominent businesspeople and announcing it publically first to make them as scared as possible, has been redone at least twice. One time in the 90s and another more recently by Ed Brubaker, in a story that I'll be posting after I'm done with Black Lightning Year One.

The interesting thing is that people complain when the Joker doesn't use clown gimmicks or has "murder superpowers" when really, they're a more consistant part of the character from his inception.

People seem to get hung up on the idea that he's trying to tell a Cosmic Joke in the same way that they buy into his lies in the Dark Knight that he's actually a "servant of Chaos", which are valid interpretations, but like with Batman there are so many ways you can handle the character that saying any one way is right or wrong can get a bit tedious. Every version has it's postives, even that kungfu juggalo one from 'the Batman' cartoon.



Heck, even Paul Dini, considered by many to be one of the, if not THE, co-creator of the definative version of the Joker from the past twenty years aknowledges that spreading fear and terrorising people is a huge part of the character.


Kind of a shame that they're not bringing him back for the Arkham City sequel, really.

My point? People have been bashing Scott Snyder's interpretation of the Joker sight unseen, based on a misdrawn, pixellated cover and an uncoloured panel, without actually seeing what the Joker does or behaves within the story. Scott Snyder covers some of the complaints here. Snyder has repeatedly shown himself to be one of the better Batman writers of recent years, and I think that we should at least give him the benefit of a doubt until we can actually read the story he's put together, ye ken?

Comments

[whoha]

Asking people to be civil and reasonable on the internet is like asking a dog not to lick itself in the groin.

[espanolbot]

True, people here are normally more reasonable though unless it's actually deserved. For example,

[icon_uk]

Courtesy is certainly to be hoped for. I confess I'm not a huge Scott Snyder fan the way I know others are, but I hope I'll give the man his due as a gifted creator (There are many I feel that way about and I hope I've always been polite about it).

To be honest I haven't seen that much in the way of bashing of Snyder (I think I've seen more bashing of Benes than Snyder), though I have seen a lot of discussion (positive and negative) about the Joker's apparent new look, which is all we have to go on at the moment and therefore seems a valid area for discussion.

The Joker's personality has, I would say, always been open to much wider interpretation than his visual. Cold blooded serial killer as in his introduction, playful prankster a la 1950's or "murder god" of the 90's, the circus clown look has been consistent (however one personally feels about clowns as a source of humour or terror on the whole).

Apart from the rictus smile in many takes on him (though even then that was usually flexible to allow for some other facial expressions, look at the first ever face shot of him that you posted above), he could always be a guy in makeup, and that's now gone for what appears to be a pseudo-Leatherface look. That's going to rile/intrigue people and based on DC's marketing of the DCnU, it strikes me is intended to.

As I've said, it's possible that the belted on "face-mask" is a bluff and there is something yet to be revealed and truly uniquely terrifying underneath, but if that IS the final look for the Joker it seems a very odd choice to have made.

I think this perhaps goes down to what IIRC Boris Karloff once described as the difference between horror films and terror films; A horror film shows scenes that horrify you (natch) and make you feel sick to your stomach. A terror film, sometimes without showing any gore at all, makes you scared to go upstairs in the dark by yourself afterwards.

I'm rarely a fan of horror films (With a couple of exceptions), but I LOVE terror films and this new Joker looks more "horror" than his old look, which had a much stronger "terror" element to it.

Previously the Joker outlining a plan would look like a demented circus clown describing something genuinely hideous, that's an interesting tonal contrast. The new look Joker doing the same thing would look like a monster with a stitched-on severed face describing something hideous... that's not a lot of contrast at all, and that makes a big difference.

But hey, different strokes for different folks and all, maybe this will be a Joker I end up loving, maybe it's one I will end up loathing. As you say, we'll see when we see what the writers do with him.

[espanolbot]

From what what Snyder said in the statement behind the link he seems to say that the reason why the Joker is like this is due to it being the certain staus quo, and if he hadn't had his face peeled off he wouldn't look like this now.

Maybe it'll be fixed later, we'll have to wait and see.

[icon_uk]

Ah right, missed the link, thanks.

[jaybee3]

Reading between the lines (and I might be off) I would say that the Joker having no face or whatever was not in Snyder's plans at all. But after Daniel did what he did in Detective, Snyder decided to roll with the punches.

[icon_uk]

"When life gives you faceless Joker, make faceless Joker-ade"?

Hmm, as axioms go, it needs work.

[arbre_rieur]

When it comes to changes to the status quo, I think we as fans should always keep in mind the example of Ed Brubaker's Winter Soldier stuff during his CAPTAIN AMERICA run. Revealing that Bucky -- who fans used to frequently joke was, along with Jason Todd, one of the only two superheroes for whom dead was actually dead -- was alive and a brainwashed cyborg assassin badass *sounds* like the most ill-conceived, creatively bankrupt idea, well, ever. But look how that turned out.

I think, too often, we judge a story more on whether or not it's something we'd do than on whether it works or not in its own right.

[arbre_rieur]

Also, too often, we treat any changes a writer makes as some kind of mission statement, some attempt to turn the characters towards the writer's platonic ideal of them. "Scott Snyder thinks this is how the Joker OUGHT to be." But changes can also be for the sake of a specific story, or to serve the demands of a specific context.

[icon_uk]

Though, for contrast, look at how the Jason Todd was returned. He has his fans now, now doubt and gawdblessem, but the actual resurrection remains a serious clusterfuck of a story, involving such delights as one-way motion sensors and Superboy Prime punching the walls of reality

[mrstatham]

I have to say that throughout this stuff with the Joker's face in the recent week, it's more DC marketing that I've been annoyed by. I don't think Benes is a particularly good artist, and I don't think that cover's particularly good - lord knows I am sick of seeing the prone, unconscious superhero with a villain leering over them - but he isn't the problem. DC marketing IS.

How simple would it have been to blank out the Joker until.. I don't know, a week until the book's about to be released? Or after Batman #14 is out? It's not rocket science.

But I'm still not massively encouraged by what seems to be the current take on Joker, which is still just a murderous clown with little imagination behind him; I know - and espanolbot has pointed this out - that being little more than a horrid-looking murderer is part of the thing in the Joker's first incarnation, but.. I don't know. Is it too much to ask for something like the BTAS take on the Joker being something they could transplant into the current books? That one could be violent and horrible, but still funny. And I haven't found the comic Joker funny in years.

[kurenai_tenka]

Regarding the interview... I was under the impression (from another recent interview) that the face removal was something Daniel and Snyder came up with together... but from this it sounds more like it was all Daniel's idea and this is just Snyder's follow-up?

As for the story itself, I'm sure Snyder's story will be fantastic, it's everyone else's that I'm worried about. XP

[mrstatham]

The story's gone back and forth a few times, now. Some say Snyder came up with it and Daniel executed it in his first issue, but Snyder is on record as having talked with Daniel, Daniel was going to remove the Joker's face anyway, and Snyder wanted to use it after his Court of Owls story was done.

But.. Yeah. I agree with you. Snyder's story should be good, but having looked at stuff like the solicits for Simone's Batgirl tie-ins, Simone's telling us that Barbara and the Joker WILL meet, but it won't go the way Joker's expecting. Which means he's going to get his ass kicked. And that.. To me, it's like, why? Doesn't that dilute or even invalidate the level of Joker's threat in Snyder's main story?

[espanolbot]

Yes. Yes it does.

[kurenai_tenka]

Hmm, I find it more believable that it was Daniel's idea, to be quite honest. But as you say, the facts have gone a bit back and forth.

And yes, I agree with you entirely. Plus, not only does it devalue Snyder's story, it also devalues his importance to Babs' story as a whole. When these kind of things are thrown into the plot like that, you can guarantee it won't be receiving the importance that it really should, if that makes sense.

[mrstatham]

Well, Snyder himself actively admits that Daniel came up with it, wasn't going to do anything with it, and capitalised on this. Daniel confirmed that. It was the fans who - the very second Snyder confirmed he was doing a Joker story - decided that Snyder had seemingly come up with the idea of 'faceless' Joker, and that it was genius. Which.. Well, granted Daniel wasn't the best Batman writer, but he wasn't that bad compared to some. And was really quite unfair.

And yes, I don't particularly like Simone's story or the Batgirl book, but a confrontation with the Joker would've been better outside this mini-event DC have foisted on the writers. I still maintain Simone should've thrown Barbara up against Joker in her first story, and sent the Joker off to lick his wounds before he comes back in Batman. That would've been a much more triumphant story, to me, than the ham-fisted and occasionally insulting attempts at writing a PTSD-suffering Barbara, frankly.

[kurenai_tenka]

Ah really? Perhaps I've confused fan comments with genuine quotes then. Personally I find the Jokers face removal being thought up by Daniel to be very believable, though the idea that he wrote it with no intention of follow-up seems ridiculous even for him. Maybe that's why some co-operation from the outset seemed likely? But yes, if people genuinely love the idea (and aren't just trying to big up Snyder by saying so), then sympathies to Daniel.


There's more than one character for which that is true (heck, near all of them to some degree), which is what makes the crossover so... cheapening. Almost sacrificing individual character development for a gimmick (well actually, no 'almost' about it). I've not been reading Batgirl at all (and I'm still not on board with her de-Oracling), but as you say, it deserves to be more personal for her than this.

[lucean]

I didn't realize that Simone had said something like that and, yeah, I agree with you that if it goes down like that it would be foolish, in my opinion. They can't have Joker be the Big Bad of the Batmythos and then have a secondary character be victorious against him in a major storyline about him.

[icon_uk]

It would be very odd to make such a drastic change to one of their most easily identifiable and (sorry, that word again) iconic, characters without at least some creative discussion and editorial input/awareness. Usually DC are being accused of micromanagement, not letting things like that slip under the radar.

[kurenai_tenka]

Oh yeah, I'm sure there's been discussion and agreement on the matter, just debatable as to who proposed/brainstormed it to begin with.

That said, the fiasco with the Batgirl cover really makes me wonder just how much attention editorial is paying to these kind of things.

[espanolbot]

Sometimes I get the impression Editorial only operates by making sure that their own edicts are carried out, but not really caring what else happens beyond that.

"Want to introduce Artemis Crock from the Young Justice cartoon in Teen Titans, only to violently kill her off by the end of the issue? Sure! Wait, and you want to include or reference Cass Cain or Stephanie Brown in your new Bat Family crossover? Not a chance in Hell, get out of my office before I Chuck Dixon you!"

[kurenai_tenka]

*Snerk* Well editorial said YES Artemis NO Steph/Cass... they clearly weren't any more specific beyond that. ;)

It's really naff that they don't pay attention during crossovers like this though, surely that'd be the most imperative time for the editors to be doing so.

[sadoeuphemist]

But the Court of Owls sucked, tho.

To elaborate, the Court was ostensibly supposed to challenge Batman's confidence in his control of Gotham. But Batman's supposed overconfidence had little bearing on the story, and the Court was largely a creepy-looking nonentity. If they secretly controlled Gotham all these years, what were they trying to do with it? Who knows? You're just supposed to be intimidated by this society that controls everything, when their influence was so benign that no one noticed they existed. Their main activities seem to be a) making Talons b) sending Talons to kill people. So it turns out the solution to this mysterious scary Court is for Batman to get in his robot suit and start beating up all these zombie ninjas.

So when I hear all this hype about how the Joker's going to be super terrifying and menacing and the greatest villain of all time, it just sounds tedious as hell. Who cares about how powerful the characters are? It's a comic book. I can create a villain who has secretly controlled the world for millions of years and will murder and rape and torture his way through all the heroes and their loved ones and so on so forth. It still won't make for an interesting story.

[espanolbot]

I think that the Court's actions were to possess Gotham as they saw themselves as the landed aristocracy of the city, and subtly tweaked things occasionally to ensure that their power and wealth remains high or increases.

For example, sending Talons after social reformers, whistleblowers and the like who might stop them from just bribing the cops and judges to get away from paying homeless people to fight each other for some rich guy's amusement.

Batman then defeated them by defeating their assassins, effectively removing the teeth from the organisation, so that he can start picking them off one at a time like the arrogant rich snobs that they are.

Of course, this is just my opinion, just as your opinion that "Court of Sucks sucked" is one. You might not agree with mine, just don't think that people automatically agree with your's.

[sadoeuphemist]

But how did that explore the themes of the story? Batman didn't believe in the Court of Owls; your interpretation suggests that Batman was somewhat in denial of his own aristocracy and privilege. And this is certainly an interesting theme to explore in Batman, but it's not one that was explored by the story. You don't overcome your own privilege by getting into your million dollar robot suit.

This is what I meant when I said who cares how powerful the characters are. These aren't real people. They don't have economic or material concerns. Joker's not a big threat because he might spray Batman with acid and Batman might die. He's a big threat because he represents the arbitrary cruelty of the universe that Batman struggles against. If the Court represents aristocracy and snobbery, why doesn't Batman believe in them? Why does the ultimate enemy turn out to be Bruce's forgotten, resentful, less privileged (possible) brother?

[espanolbot]

Bruce didn't believe in them because there wasn't any evidence that they existed until they deliberately starting leaving clues for him to discover, because normally the idea that a cabal of rich people are out there playing with people's lives is the kind of paranoid delusion that's so common that it's almost cliche.

And the battlesuit was only or the physical part of the conflict, with the rest of it being taken care of when he started actively interfering in their interests, particularly in the most recent storyline where he's shown to be taking a more active role in improving the poorer part of the city.

[sadoeuphemist]

Again, I'm talking about how the themes play into the story, and you're answering my questions as if Bruce Wayne is an actual person who actually exists. Also, the Black Glove was a cabal of rich people playing with peoples' lives; Batman lives in a comic book.

[an_idol_mind]

I've got no idea if Snyder's Joker will be any good or not, but even his early homicidal maniac years are a far cry from the way DC has handled the Joker in recent years. Even the early years had a certain degree of style to them. By comparison, recent years have seen him do such shit as scratching babies with rusty nails for the hell of it.

That's not to mention the ungodly stupid manner in which a lot of people act around the Joker, such as the story where a guy apparently didn't know that his tuna sandwich contained broken light bulbs. Or the way he has the uncanny ability to turn minor injuries into instant death, like killing somebody by making them trip on a banana peel.

Prejudging a story without knowing anything about it is a bit foolish, but DC has spent the last fifteen or so years telling terrible Joker stories. As a company, they haven't exactly inspired much in the way of confidence when it comes to this character.

[mrstatham]

With the banana peel, if you're referring to Doctor Hurt's fate, then it isn't the peel that killed him.

[sadoeuphemist]

Also: that was hilarious.

[mrstatham]

It was. It really was. But I never bought into the supposed threat that Hurt represented, unfortunately. To me, it was the same problem that I have with Knightfall, who is supposedly going to be Batgirl's arch nemesis, according to Simone.

I felt that Morrison told and didn't show how much of a threat Hurt was. He seemed to just come up out of nowhere, and whilst I know a lot of it was explained, I just never entirely bought into how quickly the guy managed to subjugate the entire city, twice. As such, I found Morrison's intentions of him being a huge villain, one for the ages, to be quite ironic. I was more impressed by Pyg.

[sadoeuphemist]

I don't think he intended him to be a villain for the ages? Because, as you just said, he was defeated by slipping on a banana peel. Hurt always seemed like a generic figurehead to me. Batman RIP was about Batman's mental breakdown due to a lifetime of pushing himself to the limit. Hurt just existed to give Batman someone to punch at the end.

[mrstatham]

I don't think Morrison would have brought Hurt back for a second story if he didn't consider him interesting or a great villain. But he always just felt so underwhelming, to me. Even in RIP, I was more interested in the Club of Villains he had arranged than him.

And I never got the idea RIP was about Batman's mental breakdown. To me, it was always the idea that 'no, Batman really does plan for everything' combined with the idea of breaking him down and taking away just a little of the bat-dickery that had been so prominent. RIP was about examining why Bruce Wayne is so necessary to Batman - because the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh is a fucking psycho, that's why.

Hurt might've just been 'a guy to punch' in RIP, but I just.. I didn't like the narrative Morrison generated for him. The whole joke to me was that he was 'just that guy from the background panel of Robin Dies At Dawn'. That he could be a guy who went nuts after finding out Batman's secrets or whatever. Bringing in the stuff about his being an actual Wayne ancestor just.. I didn't buy it.

[icon_uk]

Sadly, I found the Club of Villains to be even more of a nonentity than Hurt was. For all their hype (We are world class geniuses at EEEVIILLL), their entire success list in all of RIP was, it would seem, beating up Alfred, and kidnapping Nightwing (off panel) to get him out of the story, because anyone NOT undergoing a psychological breakdown, and possessing Batman level physical skills, would go through them down like a hot knife through butter, ending the story five issues too soon.

[mrstatham]

To be fair, I said I found them more interesting than Hurt, not that they were effective in any way. I just thought they were interesting concepts - moreso than Hurt himself. Especially El Sombrero and Scorpiana, who have been fleshed out a little more, since.

And they didn't even beat up Alfred, did they? That was just a bunch of Le Bossu's mooks, from what I remember. So.. Yeah. Not high on the success list. But still fun concepts. It's just a shame Morrison's throwaway concepts are more memorable than his big villains, at times.

[icon_uk]

Oh, the CONCEPT was terrific, international bad guys for the international Batmen, but as you say the execution was painful.

[mrstatham]

I do find that to be a problem with a lot of Morrison things, really. Great ideas, poor execution. Final Crisis is maybe the absolute epitome of that, but I absolutely love parts of it.

[sadoeuphemist]

The Club of Villains were the assembled nemeses of a bunch of knock-off Batmen, I don't think they were intended to be particularly terrifying. It doesn't matter if Batman could have easily beaten them normally, because they story they starred in had Batman going through a psychological breakdown.

[sadoeuphemist]

And again, he brought him back for a second story to have him slip on a banana peel and break his neck, so. Morrison even referred to the story as "RIP as farce" in an interview. The fact that Hurt really was the devil/Thomas Wayne/Darkseid turns out to not matter, because he still lost and still blew his big chance and still got brought low by a banana peel.

[auggie18]

There was a story in which the Joker was on trial and he killed a DA by making her slip on a banana peel onto a table. This was despite the fact that he was in a straightjacket and being watched by two dudes who probably should've noticed him magically making a banana peel be on the ground.

[mrstatham]

Seriously? I can't even pull out the old 'comics!' thing for that, it's that stupid.

[an_idol_mind]

Actually, I was thinking of Dead to Rights, which has him kill multiple people in very contrived ways. It's admittedly out of continuity, but it's consistent with DC's trend of giving the Joker ridiculous powers when it comes to killing folks.

[mrstatham]

Yeah. The weird thing is, I don't mind outlandish methods of killing. If the Joker is going to kill, I WANT them to be outlandish, really. But then there's a point where it just goes beyond outlandish and just becomes plain stupid, really. Like babies and rusty nails, which.. God. How dumb?

[auggie18]

One of my least favorite Joker moments was in a Birds of Prey storyline. He attempts to join a secret council thing, but they reject him because they're all scared of him. The council member who is the least scared of him attempts to shoot the Joker from about five feet away, empties a clip, and misses. Five feet away. An entire clip. Then the Joker shoots him.

If they just had the Joker draw first, that'd be cool. But having a ton of bullets magically miss? Oy.

[grazzt]

I don't like Joker spreading arbitrary fear. I always thought he used the clown motif (and his insanity) as the opposite of Batman's bat motif. While Batman needs to take on a scary motif to strike fear in criminals and disguise the fact he's simply human, Joker needs the clown to keep people from realizing just how complete a monster he is and shooting him outright. He's the king of having his opponents underestimate him, and he uses that to his advantage at every opportunity.

You can see it in all the best Joker stories. "The Laughing Fish" has his motivation and methods being so absurd you can hardly believe what he's doing. "Five-Way Revenge" has the thugs he targets being more scared of Batman than Joker, with fatal results for most of them. "Mask of the Phantasm" has Hamill brilliantly going from smarmy and pathetic to genuinely menacing, depending on whether he needs the person to actually talk to him or whether he's about to start actually having fun. "The Dark Knight" has Batman decide to go after the Chinese money launderer instead of the Joker because he's "just one man". "Rock of Ages" ends with Joker in possession of ultimate power because the Injustice Gang and Justice League were too focused on beating each other up to realize the clown had taken the titular artifact. "Emperor Joker" is a similar case.

Leave fear to the Scarecrow. Joker should focus on misdirection, dark comedy, and over-the-top set pieces, and letting his opponents do most of the work for him.

[sadoeuphemist]

This seems to be misrepresenting a bunch of the stories? Like, in the Laughing Fish, Joker threatens to kill a patent official for a totally absurd reason, but Batman and the police take the threat completely seriously and protect the guy in his house. Then the Joker kills him anyway. In Mask of the Phantasm Sal Valestra turns to the Joker in desperation, because he believes the Joker is the only one capable enough to kill the Phantasm. In the Dark Knight and Rock of Ages and so on, people don't underestimate the Joker because he looks funny, they underestimate him because he's just one man, and they're too busy focusing on fighting crime syndicates and superhumans and so on.

Plus this relies on everyone in Gotham having no long-term memory, and constantly underestimating him even though they have previously witnessed him murder a bunch of people.

[grazzt]

This seems to be misrepresenting a bunch of the stories? Like, in the Laughing Fish, Joker threatens to kill a patent official for a totally absurd reason, but Batman and the police take the threat completely seriously and protect the guy in his house. Then the Joker kills him anyway. In Mask of the Phantasm Sal Valestra turns to the Joker in desperation, because he believes the Joker is the only one capable enough to kill the Phantasm. In the Dark Knight and Rock of Ages and so on, people don't underestimate the Joker because he looks funny, they underestimate him because he's just one man, and they're too busy focusing on fighting crime syndicates and superhumans and so on.

Laughing Fish: Warning the mark in this case (and others, like in his origin story above) is part of the misdirection, though. It causes the person he's chosen to kill to find conventional protection, only for that protection to be completely useless because Joker has out-thought them, and in some cases to actually contribute to the mark's demise. It's still working through misdirection.

Mask of the Phantasm: Sal might think Joker is competent enough to take on Batman, but he doesn't respect Joker enough to a) bring a bodyguard; b) appeal to his sense of fun rather than cash; and c) not lay hands on him. No wonder he ends up as a corpse, huh? Same thing with Arthur Reeves: he seems angrier at the Joker for risking his image during half their time together, although admittedly he's properly terrified the other half of the time.

Rock of Ages et al: That's the point, though. He doesn't want to be the scariest man in the room. That's Batman. Batman is the guy who intimidates even his allies. Joker soothes his allies with silly banter. Batman makes punks fear the night. Joker makes other superheroes and policemen wonder why Batman can't take care of one clown. Making him the guy other criminals tell stories about to scare each other is counterproductive to him.

Plus this relies on everyone in Gotham having no long-term memory, and constantly underestimating him even though they have previously witnessed him murder a bunch of people.

Misdirection and the clown theme helps there, too. You can't predict the way Joker is going to kill you, because it's going to be out of left-field or so overdone as to seem impossible. He should be too outrageous to be properly scary, like Freddy Krueger.

[icon_uk]

I think the Joker is nicely summarised by the line in "Underworld Unleashed", when the Trickster is viewing Neron's council of evil, and see who one of the members is "Oh god, not him. The one man you don't EVER want to be in the same room as. When supervillains want to scare each other, they tell Joker stories".

The Joker isn't feared because he sets out to scare, that IS the Scarecrows schtick, he's feared because what he does to amuse himself is something people would find truly horrifying. The fact it scares people is sort of a side-effect, but one he could live without.

And that's why the Joker being a mass killer just seems so... unimaginative. The Joker should be able to terrify because of what he did to the person he DIDN'T kill, because it wouldn't have been amusing to do so.

[an_idol_mind]

I think one of the things that typically makes the Joker so frightening is that you don't know what he's going to do. Maybe he's going to slam a pie in your face. Maybe he's going to kill you and use your corpse as a marionette. You have no way of knowing what he's got planned, and it's very possible even he doesn't know what exactly he's going to do until he does it.

I think DC has got into a rut when it comes to the Joker because they don't play with his creativity and unpredictability all that much anymore. It always seems to be about doing something even more iconically brutal than what he did in The Killing Joke or Death in the Family. And the thing is that the stuff he did there was so shocking because it went beyond what even the Joker would typically do.

Less is more. Scaling the Joker back some, having him do stuff like a robbery instead of a murder spree, would do wonders for the character. Then the really nasty stuff becomes something really shocking. Right now, having him wearing his hacked off face isn't as frightening as it should be because the Joker is always doing shock value stuff like that. He's like a teenager that keeps trying to shock his parents by misbehaving in an over the top way - eventually, his antics become mere background noise.

[sadoeuphemist]

None of that has anything to do with the clown theme anymore. You're saying the Joker is too unpredictable for anyone to stop by conventional means even though they take him seriously. That's a function of Joker's intellect/psychology, not of his appearance to others. He could be completely unpredictable with his face burned off while wearing a hockey mask.

You're going to canon to insist that Joker's not scary, while ignoring the canon that outright says yes, Joker is very very scary, villains tell scary stories about him, everyone's scared of him when he walks in a room.

[grazzt]

I don't think it's straying too far from the clown theme. Comedy is all about misdirection, after all, and the way he showcases the uselessness of conventional authority is one of the traditional jobs of the fool. Don't think of the clown literally, think of it as an archetype.

And I'm not saying he's not scary, but when he's done properly he uses silliness and absurdity to counterbalance the scary, the way Batman uses fear and intimidation to counterbalance the fact that he's a pretty decent guy. I said last post that Joker is like Freddy Krueger, but what I really meant was that he shouldn't be Jason Vorhees. You want quality, not quantity, in your Joker kills. Creativity, not simply a giant body count.

[lucean]

I am in agreement with you that we should wait to see how the story pans out before passing judgement. Personally I'm really looking forward to Snider's big Joker story, although my annoyance will be immense if they have Joker job to secondary characters in their own comics as part of this event. (See the Gail Simone part).

I also very much agree with you're point about there being several versions of the Joker, as to me that is one of the key points which has made the character, similarly to Batman, survive for so long. There are so many ways to tell a story with the character, so many different ways to approach him, while staying completely true to the character. It is a great feature of the character and should be celebrated and honored, which is why I always feel weird reading people explain why the Joker was badly written because he didn't fit in to some explicit version of the character. I am not saying the Joker can't be badly written, I can think of some versions where the character was really awful, but there's difference in being badly written and not matching some argued definition of the character.

And finally I would actually personally argue that Chuck Dixon was a more important writer for the Joker than Paul Dini, but I realize that that is a matter of taste. Personally I feel that Dixon is often uncredited in making the Joker a psychological threat, somebody who could get in to people's heads. But I hope we are in agreement in hoping that Snyder's story will be so awesome that we mention him as one of the definitive writers in years to come.

[icon_uk]

I'm genuinely curious, can you suggest Dixon Joker stories you'd recommend?

I don't recall any that stuck in my memory the some of the ones by Steve Englehart, Alan Grant or Dini did, but I could be overlooking some.

[lucean]

I guess I am also genuinly curious about what Grant Joker stories you would recommend, but if I recall correctly, our opinions on Grant as a Batman writers were kind of diverging.

As for my answer, of the top of my head Devil's Advocate and the superb Joker story in the Aftershock stories, although if I can remember correctly, you disliked both of them. I also like the Joker sections in Joker's Last Laugh, even if the story itself has problems.

However, overall I think that what Dixon brought to Joker is the sense that he is someone who hurts people on a deep level, continuing in that sense from the Joker in The Killing Joke. Before that Joker was malicious, certainly, and unpredictable, but in a sense he always to me felt like a criminal more in the traditional sense. There really wasn't a psychological level there, no mental threat, just someone who was chaotic. In that sense I must admit I find it ironic that you commonly refer to the Joker reference from Piper about Joker scaring other villains, as that Joker version really came in to being in the nineties.

[icon_uk]

Heh, my case is not helped by me looking up the first story I was thinking of and discovering that it wasn't actually Alan Grant it was Marv Wolfman (The two parter where the Joker, recovering from the injuries he received at the end of "A Death In the Family" loses his sense of humour, and is genuinely baffled by the actions of a Joker copycat).. sigh, the perils of advancing age...

I confess I do prefer the Joker to be versatile, so he can be a criminal in the traditional sense too, a few heists here and there, a themed deathtrap or two for a passing sidekick (which won't work of course), robbing a bank (Heaven forbid!), but the "Scare other villain" bit works for me because it's so vague, it doesn't necessarily involve killing (which is all the 90's onward one seems to do) but much more... creative activities.

[big_daddy_d]

I personally have no problem with the new Joker. If anything it reminds me of Grant Morrison's version where Joker seems to be someone whose always reinventing himself.

[icon_uk]

Can you identify any way in which the post-Morrison-metamorphosis story Joker was different from the pre-Morrison-metamorphosis Joker, because I certainly can't.

[aeka]

I trust that Snyder will undoubtedly write a great Joker story and get the characterisation down to a T. What I'm not digging is the Leatherface look that they're going for as it doesn't really scream 'Joker' to me, but that could also be me being squeamish too, I guess.

[eyz]

'nuff said!
I'll wait and see to judge it~

(though from the looks of most of the New 52, I fear it might be just flashy with no substance behind it...you know...for mainstream appeal... *Animal Man excluded...or not that much excluded, I still prefer his pre-New 52 stories somehow..*)

[zechs80]

God I love that scene above from Dini's Tec. Such a good run. If only DC could treat it like Morrison's run or Snyder's. It soo needed the same love those two got.