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

[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.