The Joker #6

[cyberghostface]

"Yeah, and now we could do justice to that baby, but at the time, 'Okay, you’ve got a homicidal maniac and he has to be the protagonist 12 times a year.' I was never satisfied with the work I did for that. Given the Comics Code there was just no way to make it work. He had to be Hannibal Lecter in order to be consistent and logical and be The Joker, and he couldn’t be that back then. Now with the freedom comics guys have they could probably make it work.

"In terms of good writing, good plotting, it couldn’t be done. It was the same problem that the movie guys had. When I teach writing I use the movie, 'The Bad Seed' as an example of that; where it was adapted from a Broadway play about this angelic little girl who kills people wantonly any time she doesn’t get her way, and the way the play ended, she’s gonna get away with it. 'Oh, my God, she’s going to grow up!' (chuckle.) In the movie, because of that requirement, the last minute she walks to the end of a dock and lightning strikes her dead. So God takes care of it. God handles what the cops couldn’t, and nothing in the story sets that up. It’s not the writer’s fault; I mean they had to do it that way. So that was the problem with The Joker, you couldn’t be logical and consistent and do that character as a protagonist." -- Denny O'Neil

Comments

[crinos]

Yeah this is what I was talking about in issue one. The Comics code decree leading to Joker, one of the greatest criminal minds in history, being bested by an actor who should really be in the hospital to treat his obvious head injury that makes him think he's Sherlock Holmes.

(Although apparently this is just a thing, IIRC one of the Atomic Skulls had a similar origin: He suffered a head injury when he got his powers and came to believe he was a super villain.)

Also I love how Joker's entire motivation here is "I am a master criminal, its in my nature to fuck with Detectives, Sherlock Holmes may be long dead and not real,but I can still humiliate him by proxy with these crimes."

I mean my read on this is Batman was out with a cold this week and Joker didn't have anything to do and when he doesn't have someone to fight he tends to get weird.

[mazway_75]

I always like the bit of Joker now and then heading to Metropolis or Central City for a change only to realize it's just not as much fun going after someone else besides Batman.

One of my faves is the short-lived "Aztek" series where he shows up in Vanity City as "every year I like to vacation somewhere even worse than Gotham. Last year was Beirut."

[cainofdreaming]

It is kinda poetic, though, isn't it? Joker bested by a madman.

[ozaline]

Also I love how Joker's entire motivation here is "I am a master criminal, its in my nature to fuck with Detectives, Sherlock Holmes may be long dead and not real,but I can still humiliate him by proxy with these crimes."


Which is weird cause DC tends to treat him as a historical figure (whereas Marvel he's a fictional character but inspired by the exploits of Mystique and Destiny... no really).

Also I'm reminded of the Murdok Mysteries character who thinks he's Holmes.

[mazway_75]

I can't stop thinking of Batman hearing of Joker taken down by an actor who thinks he's Sherlock Holmes and actually chuckling at it.

At least Joker knows the guys at Arkham are too terrified of him to razz him on this.

[crinos]

Most of em. I bet Pam likes to bust his chops over it every now and again.

[crimsonmoonmist]

I actually found this to be kind of endearing.
It sorts of feels like a good middle-ground between the hijinks of the silver age and the more serious stuff that came after with a healthy dose of hopeful idealism.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Agreed.

I think maybe ol' Denny there may be a bit too hard on the whole thing, or himself.

[lego_joker]

I'm guessing O'Neil wrote this one as a deliberate riff on the Sherlock book he did for DC just a year prior (basically a super-smushed adaptation of "The Final Problem" and "The Empty House"), but... good lord, even for its time this is silly.

For my money, Joker's Asylum - in concept if not in execution - laid the perfect blueprint for a Joker ongoing. Have him anchor a horror anthology, occasionally performing the tiniest actions to keep the misery rolling.

(My ideal setup would've been for him to get killed off during the next big Event Crossover, only to find himself barred from both Heaven and Hell, and eventually drift into the Dreaming as a brand-new talekeeper. Kind of like an alignment-flipped version of Hal Jordan ascending into the Spectre.)