WHO'S LAUGHING NOW?
NAMED AND SHAMED
10 titles bestowed on the Joker by the golden age of comics
THE ACE OF KNAVES
THE ARCH BUFFOON OF BANDITRY
THE LEONARDO OF THE LARCENOUS LAUGH
THE CLOWN-PRINCE OF CRIME
THE FIENDISH FUNSTER
THE FUNNY MAN OF FELONY
THE HARLEQUIN OF HATE
THE MAD MAESTRO OF MIRTH
THE MALEVOLENT MIME
THE PRINCE OF PRANKSTERS
CALL HIM JOKER, JACK or Mr J, he’s the trickster god of Gotham, the twisted, maniacal yin to Batman’s grimly determined yang. Over nearly 80 years he’s been reimagined as everything from a computer virus to a Victorian serial killer, and he may be the only homicidal lunatic in history to be immortalised with his own Pez dispenser. Is he the goofy cartoon prankster thwarted by Scooby-Doo? Or is he the murderous bastard who brained Robin with a crowbar? He’s both, and so many more Jokers besides, an entire clown army exploding out of that fractured psyche. Even the story of his creation – in the real world, as well as the comics – is a cracked carnival mirror, full of competing truths and alternate takes. And guess what? It’s just how he likes it.
“Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another,” the Joker confesses in ’80s graphic novel . “If I’m going to have a past I prefer it to be
