10 Comic Villains With The Best Motivations

10. The Joker

The Joker is a villain of many faces, psyches and - in recent DC continuity - living forms. It makes discerning one clear motivation almost impossible, but whichever one you opt for, you're guaranteed to get a compelling clown.

In the comics, the Clown Prince of Crime has been a jolly prankster, an aimless agent of chaos, or even a man transfixed by his arch-nemesis, the Dark Knight. No supervillain has been remade has many times as he, and the explanation for that was, until recently, that the character was "super-sane", a phrase coined by Grant Morrison during his long-running stint on Batman.

As such, the villain is able to remodel his personality on the fly. Factor that in with an origin story that changes every other second, and you have the very embodiment of an unknown quantity, a figure so unpredictable that not even the World's Greatest Detective can pre-empt his next move.

It's difficult to nail down just one version of the Clown that works best, but they don't come more definitive than the one featured in Denny O'Neil and Neal Adam's Five Way Revenge, which brought the character back to his roots with an iconic story that went on to typify the Joker's most recognisable characteristics.