BATMAN #1 - "The Joker"
The Joker got off to a strong start with not one but two stories in the very first issue of Batman. No clown, he, but a psychopathic thief and serial killer from the very beginning whose murders were nothing short of inventive. The "Joker" playing card is introduced as his symbol. I first read this in "treasury edition" format was I was ten years old.
1st murder: Henry Claridge for the Claridge diamond. The Joker announced on the radio that the murder would happen at midnight. Despite a cordon of police, Claridge dropped dead at the stroke of midnight, his face distorted into a ghastly grin. Actually, the diamond had been stolen the night before and Claridge injected with a dose of "Joker venom" which was timed to act in exactly 24 hours.
2nd murder: Jay Wilde for the Ronker's ruby. Also announced in advance over the radio, this time the Joker hid inside a suit of armor, knocked out the police guards with a non-lethal version of Joker venom in gas form, and killed Wilde with a blow dart.
3rd murder: Brute Nelson, a rival crime boss. Joker walked into an obvious trap and simply shot him, but Batman was stalking the place as well. The Joker defeats Batman in hand-to-hand combat and escapes.
4th murder: Judge Drake for revenge. This time the Joker disguises himself as the chief of police and kills the judge while playing cards. Batman and Robin have the judge's house staked out, Robin in front and Batman in back, but the Joker leaves from the front and Robin follows him to his hideout. Batman trails Robin, confronts the Joker and is again defeated.
5th murder (thwarted): Otto Drexel for the Cleopatra necklace. Batman is the to meet him when he attempts to break into Drexel's penthouse. Joker empties his gun into Batman's bullet-proof vest, then jumps to an adjoining construction site where Robin is waiting. Robin kicks Joker off the scaffolding, but Batman catches him, knocks him out and turns him over to the police. In his cell, the Joker already plots his escape.
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"GOING SANE" - (Legends of the Dark Knight #65-68)
This is a continuity implant, narrated in turns by internal monologues by Batman and the Joker. It takes place early in Batman's career as Batman narrates: "Twice I've faced him -- and twice h's 'died'." I believe that is a reference to The Killing Joke (flashback sequences) and "Images" (Legends of the Dark Knight #50). The Joker returns by staging a parade and setting off a bomb. The Gotham Gazette headline reads "The Joker's Back! Four Die, Seventeen Injured in 'Circus' Attack," bringing his death toll up to 82. Joker kidnaps Councilwoman Elizabeth Kenner and gets word to Batman where he's holding her upstate. Unfortunately, Batman walks right into the Joker's...
Deathtrap: A simple bomb. the bomb explodes, apparently killing him. Joker kicks the "corpse" a couple of times, then dumps it into a nearby river. (It's February.) Downstream, a boy and girl find the Batman, determine he's still alive, and run to Dr. Eagles for help. Meanwhile, with his raison d'être removed, Joker sets about going straight: "Tomorrow I'll get up early, start pouding the pavement: I just know I'll find a job right away. but before I do, maybe I'd better see if Doctor Epstein's still in. I've got to do something about this skin condition."
Three weeks pass. Batman is nowhere to be found. Captain Gordon illuminates the Bat-signal, and Alfred shuffles around the empty Wayne Manor. Meanwhile, the Joker, with now normal-looking skin tone, has adopted the identity of "Joseph Kerr." He is plagued by dreams, but otherwise seems to have completely supressed his villainous identity. Even the font of his internal monologue has changed. He strikes up an acquaintence with a woman in his building, Rebecca Brown, they begin to fall in love, and a new internal monologue is added to replace Batman's.
More time passes. Still no word of Batman. The bloated corpse of noted plastic surgeon Dr. Elias Bruckner is recovered from Gotham Bay and identified. Councilwoman Kenner puts political pressure on Captain Gordon to find the Joker. Joseph and Rebecca have moved in together. They are both homebodies, watching old comedy movies and listening to recording of radio comedians. One night they are playing cards and Joseph has one of his "epsiodes," crumpling one of the cards in his hand. He drops it to the table and it slowly uncrumples as he and Rebecca talk, revealing the deck's joker, providing visual as well as verbal foreshadowing. Joseph's facade begins to crack. He proposes to Rebecca and she accepts. Alfred wanders the Batcave in his bathrobe when Batman suddenl;y reappears: "I'm back."
FLASHBACK: Batman is under the care of Dr. Lynn Eagles in her home. His left femur had been shattered ans one of his ribs was protruding from his chest. She doesn't seem overly concerned about who he is, calls him "Lazarus." Time passes. she nurses him back to health. (Why he never bothered to call Alfred to let him know he was alive is not addressed.) Eventually he learns that she was a rape victim. Before she recovered from that, she was the victim of an attempted mugging, but it was thwarted by the Batman. she doesn't come right out and say it, but it's pretty obvious she has known who he is all along. When he recovers enough to return to gotham City, he tracks the Joker down through old-fashioned detective work. He learns from the building superintendent that Joseph Kerr and Rebecca Brown have left town for Pennsylvania to be married. Now Batman begins to doubt that Josephe Kerr is really the Joker after all, but actually a plant to distract him.
Part four begins in medias res with a stand-off between Batman and the Joker, who is holding Councilwoman Kenner hostage. He's wearing a jet-pack which he got somewhere and flies off with her, with Batman in pursuit. Then the story flashes back to Joseph and Rebecca at a bed & breakfast in Pennsylvania. they take a walk in the rain when their path is blocked by a swiftly flowing stream. Joseph walks off in search of a footbridge and finds a newspaper which proclaims that the Batman has returned. With Batman back, Joseph feels his Joker persona returning. He slips on the bank and falls into the water, but it is the Joker who emerges.
Back in the present, Joker lands with Kenner aboard a "Joker boat" and Batman pursues on a sort of jet-ski. Looking back, the Joker recalls emerging from the water, but his life as "Joseph Kerr" is quickly fading from his mind. Batman catches up. The Joker takes off, with the Batman hamging on, but the jet-pack fails and they both fall in the water. Joker is in danger of drowning, but the Batman saves his life (of course). Rebecca eventually comes to terms with the fact that Joseph is missing and presumed dead, but holds out hope that he will return to her some day. Dr. Eagles receives a dozen roses... from the Batman. and Batman himself stands secure in his sanity.
Overall, this was a pretty good "writerly" story, although parts of it don't really hold up to close scrutiny (such as the nature of Joker's skin color). I've never read this story before, but one thing I noticed is that #67-68 have price stickers from my current LCS, which means I bought them more recently than #65-66. It all comes back to me now. Back in 1994, after "Knightfall" and "Knightquest" and "Knightsend" (not to mention "Zero Hour"), I was suffering from "crosover fatigue." I was also in periodic "cut-back mode" and decided to drop all of the Bat-titles (except one), including Legends of the Dark Knight right in the middle of a storyline (even through Joker is my favorite Batman villain). Then, a couple of years ago, I was going through a "Joe Staton" phase and filled in the two issues I was missing, but my purpose colled before I got around to reading "Going Sane."
Death toll: 82
SHADOW OF THE BAT #37-38:
Part One: "The King of Comedy"
Joker kidnaps eight people, apparently at random. Batman eventually deduces that they were all once member of the Gotham U. Comedy Club.
Part Two: "Tears of a Clown"
All of the Joker's abductees once panned him during his days as a stand-up comedian (as shown in the flashback sequences of The Killing Joke).
Death toll: Throughout the course of this story Joker kills three people, and antecedant action reveals that he has killed four others, bring his official confirmed death toll up to 89.
DEVIL'S ADVOCATE
"THE JOKER is about to be executed for a crime he may not have committed. Only the BATMAN can possibly save him... but shoud he?"
By this time (1996) I had already stopped buying all "Bat-titles" except Batman, but I bought this OGN because Joker is my favorite bat-villain. I remember that I liked it at time, but I have never reread it in the 30 years since... until today. Here's the deal: the U.S. Postal service has issued a set of stamps commemorating "The Great Comedians"... and Joker is not one of them. Nine victims drop dead of Joker venom poisoning after licking the stamps, and Batman soon apprehends the Joker. But the Joker professes to know nothing about these killings.
"Devil's Advocate" is a really good courtroom procedural and a really good mystery, but the main point it the question posed above: If the Joker is innocent, should Batman save him? Commissioner Gordon thinks fate has finally caught up with him, saying to Batman, "I always throught you cared more for justice than the law." Robin's stance on why Batman is trying to clear the Joker's name is: "You have your reasons. The same ones that bring you out here every night." the argument that convinced me, however, is Batman's own: that if the Joker is found guilty of these murders, the real killer gets away. The Joker is not being at all cooperative. His plan is simply to convince a jury that he is "not guilty by reason of insanity," but when that ploy doesn't work, he is led to the electric chair for the second time in the character's history.
I don't think it's a spoiler to point out that the Joker isn't put to death in this story. but Batman's last words to the Joker are: "When you're sitting here alone... in the middle of thenight... unsleeping in the dark, remember... every breath you take you owe to me." This is one of the Batman's most decisive wins over the Joker, and I don't know why this story isn't as well-thought of as The Killing Joke.
In 1995, after Knightfall and Knightquest and Knightsend, I was suffering from "crossover fatigue" and was this close to dropping all the Batman titles. Then DC released four gimmick covers I really liked (Batman #515, Shadow of the Bat #35, Detective Comics #682 and Robin #14), all on embossed cardstock covers which depicted the Dark Knight on increasingly lightening covers. Immediately after that came the inappropriately-named "Prodigal." Yes, it was yet another crossover, but it dealt with Dick Grayson taking over the "Mantle of the Bat," a direction I had been pulling for for quite some time. If I didn't buy it, I would have been a hypocrite.
By the time "Prodigal" was over, Doug Moench & Kelley Jones were the creative team on Batman, and if Steve Englehart & Marshall Rogers were the "definitive" Batman team of the '70s, then Moench & Jones were of the '90s. This run featured classic villains such as Joker, Two Face, Penguin and Mr. Freeze, as well as guest appearances by the spectre, Deadman and the Demon, plus it introduced some new characters as well. At this point I did drop all the other Bat-titles but continued to buy Batman for the duration of the Moench/Jones run. Unfortunately, it also had it's share of crossovers. Here's how the "crossover situation stood at the time...
BAT-TITLE CROSSOVERS:
LINE-WIDE CROSSOVERS:
In addition, Batman was looped into two "Bat-title" crossovers, "Contagion" and "Legacy." This may sound odd to you, but even though I had dropped all other Bat-titles by this time, I did buy the crossovers, reasoning that if I ever changed my mind and decided to read them after all, it would be much easy to have bought them up front rather than to try to collect them as backissues. So far that has not happened, but I do have all of these...
CONTAGION:
LEGACY:
Shortly after this, Moench & Jones' run came to an end just as the Bat-tiles were fixin' to launch into yet another crossover, "No Man's Land." That is the point at which I decided to drop all of the Bat-titles for good. It has now been 28 years and I have not bought a Bat-title regularly in all that time. I've sampled them from time-to-time (Batman and Detective during the "One Year Later" sequence comes to mind), but once I drop a title a rarely return. All of this brings me up to...
"MAJOR ARCANA" - Batman #544-546
The Joker kills two guards while escaping from Arkham this time, bringing his death toll up to 91. His new interest is demonalogy, and just as Roderick Burgess once accidentally captured Dream while trying to capture Death, the Joker accidentally captures Etrigan while trying to capture Satan. Prom,ising to free the Demon from the "fleshy mire" of Jason Blood, the Joker and Etrigan strike an uneasy alliance. This is one of the few post-Crisis "Demon" stories I can recommend.
Death toll: 91
I have one more "Joker" story to cover before I close this thread.
This is the post I have been working towards for the past five months.
"THE DEMON LAUGHS" - Legends of the Dark Knight #142-145
The Joker gets tangled up in a scheme with Ra's al Ghul.
Death toll: I had a little bet with myself whether or not the Joker would have amassed 100 murders by the time of this story. I part one, three people "onscreen" (as it were), and almost certainly another one "offscreen." Talia says a dozen of her father's men. I don't think she's prone to hyperbole, so if we take that figure literally, he's up to ≈16 in part one alone. In part two he kills one, and in part three, seven. Also in part three, three additional corpses are shown, but they may have been three of the ones he killed in part one. that's 11 confirmed, 27 possible. I'm going to say a conservative estimmate is 20. But even the 11 confirmed puts him over the 100 mark, and that's not even including the 20-something murders he committed in the Golden Age. (Pluis I may have missed one or two along the way.)
Setting aside for a moment the times Batman has saved the Joker's life, in this story he dips him in the Lazarus Pit! Before I continue, let me say I misremembered some aspects of this story. For one thing, I thought the Joker was dead. He's not, but he was mortally wounded (shot eight times in the chest and abdomen). Batman didn't kill him, but he would have had to do to be rid of him forever was simply let him die. But I had also forgotten that the story was structured in such a way that the Batman had to revive him in order to stop Ra's al Ghul from wiping out 95% of the Earth's population (IOW, writer's fiat).
Here's where it gets interesting. Generally when someone is dipped in the Pit, he emerges in a state of advanced psychosis. But the Joker was already insane. Instead of driving him more mad, it made him sane. The sanity was only temporary, but he had to spend a good part of the story knowing everything he had done. (I would have liked for him to remain sane as a suitable punishment.) At the end of the story, Batman leaves him with one final thought: "The Demon always returns. And he never forgets a debt. You know you're not safe in here. Something to think about... on those long, lonely evenings."
Death toll: 102 confirmed, but I'm going to say 111 (including Golden Age, 123/132).
The "Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told" discussion will not be continued... Its new and thrilling successor will be posted soon! LOOK FOR IT!
Thank you -- JoEJ
Never say never !
Since "closing" this discussion I have thought of five (possibly eight) other "Joker" stories I want to cover, starting with...
LAST LAUGH:
Back in 2001 I was still suffering from the same case of "crossover fatigue" which drove me from the "Bat-titles" in the first place. Nevertheless, I did buy the first issue of the Last Laugh mini-series as a "placeholder" to remind myself of its existence if I should ever change my mind (that, and for the great Brian Bolland cover), even though I had no intention of reading it then, or perhaps ever. It was a six-issue mini-series with multiple crossovers. The only crossover issues I bought and read at the time were those of series I was already reading. None of the ones I read were memorable, but I'd read the mini-series now if given the opportunity. Unfortunately, the tpb is hard to find and the individual issues cost more on the backissue market than I am willling to spend.
Issue #1 is all set-up. The Joker is leading a prison riot in Slabside Penitentiary while Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon are out on a date. By the end of the issue, Joker has concocted a potion which has changed all of the other inmates, many of them meta-humans, into replicas of himself. Shilo Norman is chief of security at Slabside. Blue Beetle and Black Canary also appear.
...I'd read the mini-series now if given the opportunity.
I have been given the opportunity (or rather, I took it). the min-series is pretty much exacly what a expected: a loose framework upon which to hang a plethora of inconsequential crossovers. (I didn't read any of the crossovers and don't feel as if I missed anything.) For the record, they are...
Frankly, I'm surprised DC hasn't compiled an "omnibus" edition... at least not yet.
The cover of #6 is worth it, but the series ends on a down note and, unfortunately, the cover is reflective of the contents.
DARK DETECTIVE:
This is Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers' sequel to their own classic run in Detective Comics and reintroduces Silver St. Cloud. Marshall Rogers was involved in a previous storyline that reintroduced Silver St. Cloud ("Siege," Legends of the Dark Knight #132-136), but that one was written bt Archie Goodwin. I had it in my mind that Dark Detective and "Siege" were incompatable, but having just read them both back-to-back I can assure you that they are not. If anyone is interested, the optimal way to read them is in the Legend of the Dark Knight - Marshall Rogers HC, which includes all three "Silver St. Cloud" stories, the origin of the golden Age Batman, and some other choice material as well.
"THE CLOWN AT MIDNIGHT" - Batman #663
I dropped all of the Bat-titles back in 1995 except the Moench/Jones run of Batman. I would come back for short periods of time such as the "One Year Later" series of stories in 2006. Another run I came back for was the Grant Morrison/Andy Kubert run. Consequently, I was onhand for "The Clown at Midnight," but I just wasn't in the mood to read a "Batman" prose story at the time. (To be fait, I did read the first chapter, but it just didn't appeal to me.) It has taken me nearly 20 years, but I am finally in the mood to read it.
First of all, this is a story that could really be told only in prose; it's more moody than plot-heavy, relying primarily on long descriptive passages rather than action or dialogue. It starts with the Joker killing off his former henchmen. One thing it adds to the mythos is the notion that the Joker's persona changes from time-to-time, that he has no real personality, only a series of "superpersonas" (a concept to which I will return a couple of posts from now). The story doesn't "end" so much as it simply stops. YMMV
I remember that reading this one was a struggle. These were the days of designers putting lots of text over patterned backgrounds (not only in comics, but in hobbyist magazines for D&D and Magic: The Gathering), and while I've read this twice since publication, at neither time did it seem worth the effort. I might think differently if the text was presented clearly, but a moody, viscious Joker story is never going to a high priority for me, so maybe not.
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