The Joker's Onto Us

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The Joker, Through the Years

A look at the many faces of Batman's nemesis, on film, on television and in the comics.

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Once the best comic books grew up and became graphic novels, the cruelty and psychosis of Joker became fuller and more terrifying. This is the Joker who possesses such superhuman intelligence that it has made him insane. Instead of becoming more of a cartoon, he became quiet and deliberate and that's where he got creepy. There was a lot more blood.

Most famously, Joker became Jack Nicholson (or vice versa) in director Tim Burton's smoky 1989 update of the entire franchise. Nicholson, with a prosthetic grin, embraced the part as profane camp: "This town needs an enema!" Nicholson/Joker plunged off a tower at the end -- splat -- left staring up at the night while a laugh box in his coat pocket cackled on.

This became a variation on Joker's eternal escapes, and he's been killed a time or two, but then, so has Batman. (This threshold was crossed years ago. Don't ever stop and read seriously a newspaper story about the dramatic "death" of some comic book icon, good or evil, as hyped by the publisher's marketing department.)

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The world has become much more accustomed to anarchy as a form of trendiness, and in a way the Joker is a symbol of that. Also, it helps his case enormously that people have a special, deep loathing for clowns. (We are a generation of coulrophobes -- thank you, John Wayne Gacy.)

Joker is a good fit in a culture fully accustomed to the discriminating yet random psycho. Fashionistas also like nightmare clowns, those punky androgynes in three-piece suits with mascara intentionally streaked. (Forget Charlie Manson and think Marilyn Manson, in an ill-fitting Thom Browne suit.)

Joker loves being on -- nay, interrupting -- live TV, a lot like our real-life bad men of the 21st century. (Osama bin Laden could have enhanced his scare factor considerably if he'd only employed just one bit of English in his grainy videos from the caves: Greetings, people of Gotham. . . .)

Batman pays a visit to Joker's cell at Arkham Asylum, that Gothic criminal mental ward on the outskirts of town (Gotham's own St. Elizabeths), in the opening pages of the classic 1988 graphic novel "Batman: The Killing Joke." (It's just been reissued in a deluxe edition, to capitalize on the culture's full-on Joker moment, which reaches a frenzy now with the late Heath Ledger's turn in the part.)

"Perhaps you'll kill me. Perhaps I'll kill you. Perhaps sooner -- perhaps later," Batman tells his foe, starting to sound like he'd banged bongos in a men's support group. "I don't fully understand why ours should be such a fatal relationship . . ."

But the Joker isn't listening.

He's just playing solitaire with his cards. The Joker isn't listening because it's not really the Joker, it's a jail-cell impostor. Batman grabs him and runs a Batgloved finger over the face, and the white makeup comes off, and now he knows: Joker is on the outside, in the world, escaped again. In every Joker story this is always the best moment. He is not where you think he is, and the joke's on you, and you are always two steps behind.

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