Many of you have noticed I don't usually cover too much Marvel/DC here--not a whole lot of superhero stuff. So today, I'll honor a bit of that with a covering of three DC graphic novels, two of which are focused prominently on their most mutable and arguably most enduring villain--The Joker. (And the third still has him as a prominent player.)
I picked up all three of these in a relatively small window of time, and was fascinated particularly at how Joker himself was portrayed--he's very, very different in each one, yet still quite himself, if that makes sense. They're more like different interpretations of the character. (The vastly differing art styles for each also helps.) So! Here's how today is going to work: a condensed plot synopsis, and then an additional section for talking about Joker within that book's context.
Hang on, despite my best efforts this could still be a long one. That said, let's begin.
Oh, and to cover my usual "content rating" portion under one sentence, I'd say all of these would garner an R. This is not the wacky Adam West TV Joker, these are all turns at the scarier, more serious Joker. He's crazy, he's frightening, people are killed, et cetera.
The Killing Joke, by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland
The Book: The Killing Joke is really two intertwining stories--one happening in the present, the other told in the past through flashbacks as the present happens. The flashbacks are what are usually most remembered about this story--Alan Moore (most known these days for his graphic novel-influence giants Watchmen and V for Vendetta) presents a possibility for the Joker's origin, and one that has remained the most commonly referenced since its introduction. It's played off quite well--he even still refrains from giving the man who became Joker an actual name, and the Joker himself admits it might still not be how it actually happens, keeping his identity still technically shrouded and ensuring he stays more of a living concept. ("Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another...if I'm going to have a past, I'd prefer it to be multiple choice!") This concept of Joker as an unreliable storyteller will grow expanded on in one of the other books that will be covered--watch for it. From this recollection, however real or false, Joker comes to a hypothesis--that all it takes to make a sane man mad is a single incredibly bad day. He intends to prove this by putting poor Commissioner Gordon through the worst day he's ever had, in an attempt to break him. If he does this, he feels he'll be proving a point--a point many incarnations of Joker love to prove: if he's crazy at all, society at large is mere inches behind.The Joker: Visually, this version of the Joker is the closest to the "classic" Joker, the one we see most commonly depicted--frozen grin, white skin, long chin, a flair for purple suits. As far as the elements of Joker's own persona, this one definitely pulls up his "clown" aspect most strongly. A circus theme runs prominently throughout--most of Gordon's torture session takes place at an abandoned carnival, and Joker takes to doling it out with a lot of elaborate showmanship. At one point, he even sings a cheery little song about how terrible life is. But more intriguing, though, is that this version of The Joker may not be entirely crazy--simply because he is fully aware that he is. (Although, in a headache-inducing loop, the fact that he recognizes that and continues on his way anyway might mean he just exhibits some sort of double insanity.) He acknowledges at several points throughout that he's crazy, and at one point, in a very rare somber moment, Batman even genuinely asks him if he wants psychiatric help. Joker considers, but ultimately refuses, claiming himself as too far gone. This moment, on its own merits alone, would have made this the closest of these three to a sympathetic Joker if he hadn't spent the last hundred pages mostly doing terrible things. (The "close to sympathetic" label still might stick for some, though, considering the tragic origin story.) His remarkable perception also extends to Batman--this was the first major known example of Joker pointing out that Batman's not exactly a stable guy himself, what with his reaction to his parents' deaths being to run around in a bat costume and punch people and his origin being a mirror of Joker's possible one ("You had a bad day too, once, am I right? Why else would you dress up as a flying rat?").
Joker, by Brian Azarello and Lee Bormejo
The Book: Joker's been released from Arkham Asylum. No one knows why. But released he is. This incarnation of Joker is more like a crazy, terrifying mob boss...and in his absense, he's very unhappy with the people he left to run his operations. A young man named Johnny Frost (likely a reference to Joe Chill, the usual given name of Bruce's parents' murderer) is hired as Joker's chauffuer and odd job assistant, and we see the book through his eyes. With Johnny's narration, then, Joker is essentially the story of a couple weeks in the life of Joker through a henchmen's-eye-view. Brian Azarello's best known for his work on 100 Bullets, a sort of crime-noir series, and that influence definitely trickles down into here--for the better, too. Johnny's shift in mood over the course of the story is a logical one--initial excitement to be working for such a powerful and feared figure, followed slowly into uncertainty and ultimately fear as he comes to realize just how crazy his boss really is.The Joker: Visually, this Joker will be instantly familiar to anyone who's seen Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. Aiming, like Nolan was, for a more believable, realistic world, this version of Joker has the Glasgow-Smile scars Heath Ledger also sported, rather than a simple frozen grin, and dresses more akin to him too--mussed hair, rumpled suits. Joker's humor here is actually fairly rare--he comes across more as dangerously eccentric in that department. However, the similarities to the Joker Ledger famously portrayed end mostly at the appearance--this Joker is not an "agent of chaos" out to simply cause panic and disorder. The Joker here is, as described earlier, basically a crazy mob boss with an inflated sense of entitlement. He believes Gotham City rightfully his to do whatever he wants with. This also makes his connection to Batman less thematic and more resentful, more of a relationship between a bratty (homicidal, gun-toting) child and a very stern parent. The Batman-Joker relationship here is also interesting in another dimension: while many incarnations of Joker have been not very frightened of, or even altogether defiant towards, Batman, Azarello's version is actually paranoid about him (at one point, just thinking about him makes him uncomfortable enough that he feels the need to get out of his car and fire some shots randomly into the space around him). Batman appears to be the one thing this Joker actually does fear. To play off of this further, Batman is rarely if ever mentioned by name (one whole conversation about him just calls him "him") and doesn't even show up physically until the last few pages, during which he's portrayed as more of a hulking black mass than a person. Joker himself is shown showcasing a lot more emotion than is typical, as well--in one scene he even cries.For the most part, what I got out of this particular portrayal was trying to get a sense of a more "minimalistic" Joker, a less overtly and garishly crazy one and more of a sociopath with a lot of bullets and a lot of backers, an emotionally unstable king on a crime throne he won through brute fear.
Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean
The Book: There's a rule with Grant Morrison. If he wrote it, it's gonna be weird. This is no exception. This book also involves the Joker far less directly than the other two, but he is the catalyst that sets the events of it in motion, and parts of his portrayal have almost certainly been influenced by The Killing Joke. (Oh, and this book also was the kernel of the story for the recent and very well-recieved Batman video game, Arkham Asylum.) This story begins with Batman and Commissioner Gordon recieving a classic call of distress down at the police station--the inmates of Arkham Asylum, led by Joker, have orchestrated a forced evacuation of the majority of the personnel, leaving the inmates to run free throughout the building. They have, however, left a few staff behind, keeping them as hostages for leverage--Joker wants so very much for Batman to pay him a visit. Not wanting any death on his hands, Batman has no choice but to comply, and upon his arrival is put through an extremely trippy sort of funhouse the worst of his rogues' gallery have set up for him--one that will challenge his sanity, force him to confront the fear he usually turns on others, and in a strange, symbolic way, unintentional on their part, to force him to ask if Batman himself is not in some way a direct contributor to the madness of his enemies, perhaps even an avatar of it. We also get some insight into the troubled history of Jeremiah Arkham, the Asylum's founder, who infamously went mad himself slowly throughout his life.
The Joker: In terms of appearance, this is most definitely the least human Joker, though many of the characters in this book, Batman included, are warped to sort of caricatured abstractions to preserve the nightmarish-drug-trip feel. He's a hideous deformed clown-monster with an impossibly huge grin. His relationship to Batman, at least in terms of fear, is also the complete opposite of that seen in Joker. Arkham Asylum's Joker openly mocks Batman, not fearing him at all. As for his insanity, it's not seen particularly overtly (mostly, he's just very malicious) though there is an interesting theory put forth that is an extrapolation of his "multiple-choice past" musings from Killing Joke. One of his psychologists reasons that perhaps The Joker is not insane, but exhibiting a new type of sanity brought forward to adapt to an increasingly fast-paced world--wherein he actually "reinvents" himself with each passing day, as a harmless (if scary) clown one day and a serial killer the next. It's an interesting take, to be sure, and for that reason it's a shame it wasn't really explored in this book (just mentioned), although the Dr. Wolper character from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns would later touch on it a bit more. This is Joker, most prominently, in his direct antagonist facet. He serves here to have almost singular purpose in aggravating Batman, both through simple taunts (he makes a few scathing remarks in particular involving Robin) and through, as the Asylum funhouse trip suggests, showing that his efforts as Batman may actually be making things worse, not better.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Holden Out.
PS. I'm going to add an afterword and summation to this at a later point.
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