DC’s Villains: The Joker
After writing a lot about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I thought of changing things up a bit and switch to DC Universe. The DC Universe is rich with villains whose reasons for being antagonists to the heroes are not as obvious as one would expect. They aren’t just out there to take over the world but they have other deeper and sometimes, sinister reasons for doing so.
And what other bad guy is there with such reasons other than the Joker. There are, for sure, other villains in the DC Universe who have, what might appear as inexplicable reasons for being evil, and the Joker is no exception.
The Joker is probably one of the most popular comic book character in the DC Comics and possibly, in the world of comics.
Known as the Crown Prince of Crime, (other titles are: the Ace of Knaves, the Jester of Genocide and the Harlequin of Hate) and Batman’s greatest enemy, the Joker has had a big impact in pop culture, from live-action and animated films to video games and other TV Series such as Batman: The Animated Series, Young Justice and Gotham.
The Joker is one of those characters whose sadistic sense of humor and enigmatic origin, identity and reasons as to what he does makes us fans scared of him, as I’ll explain later.
So who is the Joker, what are his abilities and what are his motives? I’ll explain all this, starting with a brief history of how he came to be into the world of comics.
The Joker is a supervillain, who came to be in mainstream comic books back in the 1940s and was created by Bill Finger, Bob Kane (the creator of the Batman) and Jerry Robinson.
The character was an inspiration by an actor named Conrad Veidt who was known for his creepy grinning visage in a film known as The Man Who Laughs (which was later a title to another DC Comic book featuring the Joker).
Jerry Robinson did a sketch of a joker-playing card and the character’s concept.
At first, he wanted a super-villain who would test Batman, not the typical gangster who Batman would easily defeat and one that’s diabolically sinister but clownish.
Think of this like the Sherlock vs Moriaty kind of relationship; Sherlock the sleuth detective (like Batman, the World’s Greatest Detective) vs Moriaty, the Napoleon of Crime (like Joker, the maniac).
Interestingly, the Joker was to be killed off in his second appearance in Batman #1 after been stabbed in the heart.
Bill Finger wanted to the Joker to die because he thought recurring villains would make Batman look as a tactless character. But this was overruled by an editor named Whitney Elisworth who hastily drew a panel that was added to the comic book, showing that the Joker was alive.
The Joker’s origin story is a complete mystery, although the generally accepted origin one is that he was a criminal formerly known as the Red Hood who got into a confrontation with Batman in a chemical factory and in the process, the Red Hood falls into the acidic chemical plant that disfigures his skin, turning him into the Joker.
In the iconic graphic novel, The Killing Joke by Alan Moore, the origin took a rather dramatic and dark tone.
It’s about an unnamed former lab assistant (of the chemical factory that he later confronts Batman), a failed comedian and a husband struggling to make a living to support his pregnant wife who later dies in an accident at home. Desperate, he helps mobsters in a robbery in the factory and he’s given the Red Hood helmet.
Things go wrong and Batman confronts the Red Hood, who jumps into the chemical waste that bleaches his skin and he goes insane. But later in this graphic novel, the Joker states that his past is vague and hazy to himself:
As for his real name, it’s also a mystery although in the Batman: The Animated Series and Batman 1989 movie he’s known as Jack Napier.
The Joker doesn’t have superhuman abilities, but he’s a highly intelligent criminal mastermind and a completely unpredictable villain. He commits sadistic crimes with a variety of goofey-thematic props such as:
· A deck of razor-tipped cards
· His flower in his lapel that sprays acid
· A lethal joy buzzer he puts on hand, that conducts millions of volts of electricity to kill the victim
· And the most iconic one, the Joker venom. This is a liquid or gaseous toxin he created that sends the victim into uncontrollable laughter, resulting to a coma or death. This later leaves the victim with a pained rictus grin.
He’s an expert chemist, skilled in melee combat (a noisy riotous fight), unpredictable and incredibly dangerous, considering his well-planned heinous plans.
An example is in the Dark Knight, where using his ‘supernatural’ charisma and planning, he announced on television that he would blow up a Hospital. The GCPD (Gotham City Police Department) didn’t know which one he’ll obliterate but the Joker had planned way ahead on the one he’ll blow up, and he did.
In short, the Joker is chaos-personified.
Here’s where things get interesting. We all know that one line in the Dark Knight movie, when the Joker, disguised as a nurse tells face-scarred Harvey Dent:
But other than just being an agent of chaos willing to disrupt the established order, just for the sake of it, I think his sadistic acts have deeper motives.
The Joker has shocked the world of comic readers through some of the horrifying things he has done such as beating up Jason Todd, the boy-wonder Robin with a crowbar and killing him in Death in the Family, shooting Barbara Gordon, Commissioner Gordon’s daughter, in her waist, paralyzing her permanently in The Killing Joke and curving out his face and stitching it back to his deformed face (which is beyond insane and sick) in the New 52, Death of the Family.
All these, among other insane acts show that the Joker embraces meaningless and violence.
To some extent, the Joker is willing to prove that it only takes one bad day to drive a sane person to what he is. And that’s his first motive….
This is the complete opposite of Batman. Bruce Wayne witnessed the death of his parents at a tender age, which is traumatizing, and his reaction to this event that destroys his sense of meaning, is to fight crime as the masked vigilante.
While as for the Joker, whom we don’t know what drove him to what he is, embraces meaningless and violence. These two characters are opposing forces.
When these two collide, Batman tries to convince the Joker to accept conventional morality while the Joker seduces him to abandon it and make him to live in a world without rules.
At the end of the Killing Joke graphic novel, there’s a slightly sympathetic scene where Batman tries to convince the Joker, saying that he’s willing to rehabilitate him and that they don’t have to kill each other. The Joker turns down Batman’s helping hand, saying that it’s too late for him to change.
Then we come to his second motive….
To explain this is an example from the third act in the Dark Knight, when the Joker pressures the citizens of Gotham and the criminals who are in two separate boats loaded with explosives (without their knowledge), to choose among themselves who to blow up. It’s either the innocent citizens of Gotham blow up the criminals, or the criminals kill the citizens or the Joker blows up both boats.
The main intention was to have them abandon their moral code to do something they wouldn’t do, therefore corrupting their understanding of good. This is what Batman strives to fight, that’s, and I think, that’s why Batman doesn’t run over the Joker with his Batmobile and kill him.
If he did, the Joker would have won the argument. But the Joker did win this by corrupting Harvey Dent, who was portrayed as Gotham’s white knight.
He tells Harvey to abandon the establish order and that chaos is fair. This leads to Harvey Dent leaving his decisions of whether to abandon the moral code, (to kill or not to kill) with the flip of a coin, leaving such choices to chance, which he sees as fair.
The Joker sees that social morality is flimsy, that we are not as good as we pretend to be, and that no one is far from abandoning social morality, like himself. This can be connected to the way he uses Joker venom to terrorize people. Those victim to his venom laugh to death with a rictus grin, like himself.
The Joker isn’t mentally ill, as that would be the first thing any sane human being would perceive. His motives involve breaking people’s spirit on what’s good. And probably, he sees society in a completely different way that we can’t directly understand.
The fact that he takes pleasure from hurting people and watching the world burn, his enigmatic backstory and identity and his unpredictability behind his motives make him a very scary villain.
After all, in the real world, we get scared of things or people we don’t fully understand, like the Joker.
And that’s all about the Clown Prince of Crime. Hope you enjoyed it, clap and drop a comment on what other DC villain you would like me to write about.
Cheers!!!
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