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Erin Anna Leach
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Joined: 21 February 2006
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Posted: 29 March 2013 at 7:35am | IP Logged | 1  

Like I've said, I prefer the version of the Joker who is only playing at being "crazy".

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I have always thought Joker was Crazy like a fox, not insane but had a lot of cunning and intellegence. I wonder if the crazy label got thrown on him because he does kill people? Did they start to put Joker in the same shoe box as serial killers? Everyone knows that all serial killers are bat shit crazy, right?
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Stephen Robinson
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Posted: 29 March 2013 at 9:51am | IP Logged | 2  
I don't think The Joker has had an actual "plan" since THE KILLING JOKE. I suppose it's easier to write about a guy who just... does stuff.

I was reading THE JOKER comic from the 1970s and really miss the character who is a clown-based criminal rather than a leatherface CRIMINAL MINDS reject. He also has *plans."
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Andrew W. Farago
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Posted: 29 March 2013 at 11:37am | IP Logged | 3  
Is the actually-insane Joker a product of The Dark Knight Returns?  He was sociopathic and had no qualms about murdering his henchmen or people who happened to get in his way, but I'm not sure we saw him totally out of his gourd until The Dark Knight Returns.    
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Eric Kleefeld
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Posted: 29 March 2013 at 11:50am | IP Logged | 4  
Even in the Dark Knight Returns, he was clearly thinking up highly elaborate plans.

I mean, his whole scheme was to pretend he'd been "cured" of insanity, and then pull off a huge massacre on live TV.

When a guy does that much premeditation and manipulation of people, he is obviously a sociopath — but he is also just as obviously living on the same planet as the rest of us.
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Jason Czeskleba
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Posted: 29 March 2013 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | 5  
 Andrew Farago wrote:
Is the actually-insane Joker a product of The Dark Knight Returns?


Englehart (in his 1977 Detective run) was the first writer to portray the Joker as being truly insane, rather than just "acting crazy."  In that story the Joker pursues a plan that is ludicrous and impractical: chemically turning all the world's fish into "laughing fish" because he believes he will then be entitled to a royalty payment on every sale of fish.  Englehart's story is also the first one in which the Joker is shown arbitrarily killing his henchmen for no particular reason.  Prior to that, the Joker always had realistic plans, and when he killed it was for a reason.  The writers that followed (including Miller) took it to greater extremes, but it started with that Englehart story.


Edited by Jason Czeskleba on 29 March 2013 at 12:09pm
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Andrew W. Farago
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Posted: 29 March 2013 at 12:42pm | IP Logged | 6  
Did the Joker kill any of his own crew in The Joker's Five-Way Revenge?  I know that he did the sign/speargun trick in the Joker birthday story by Wein and Simonson, but that was post-Laughing Fish.
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Jason Czeskleba
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Posted: 29 March 2013 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | 7  
In "Five Way Revenge" the Joker is hunting down and killing former henchmen whom he believes have betrayed him... an entirely practical thing for a criminal to do.  In "Laughing Fish" he is shown killing loyal henchmen for trivial or arbitrary reasons, or no reason at all.


Edited by Jason Czeskleba on 29 March 2013 at 2:36pm
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Andrew W. Farago
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Posted: 29 March 2013 at 3:43pm | IP Logged | 8  
Got it.  Sounds like I'm overdue for re-reading my Greatest Joker Stories collection.
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