10 Terrifying Joker Stories You Never Read
9. The Man Who Laughs
An severely under-appreciated and oft overlooked story, The Man Who Laughs is truly the stuff of nightmares.
Set in a time period when the Joker is still an unknown quantity to both Batman and Gotham in general, the discovery of his first crime scene is enough to reduce battle-hardened GCPD veterans to vomiting, traumatised wrecks.
Mutilated, twisted, barely recognisable as human corpses are wheeled out of an abandoned factory unit, their unseeing, dead eyes are the very antithesis of their maniacal laughing faces.
As the Joker begins to emerge into the public consciousness, threatening to kill prominent members of Gotham City’s ruling class - including a certain Mr Wayne - by inflicting upon them the same chemically-induced death as the unfortunate transients from the factory, the city is in a perpetual state of panic.
Nothing is ever as it seems with the Joker, so expect twists, turns, and misdirects throughout this tale of terror, which all lead inexorably to a final showdown with the Dark Knight which is as brutal and visceral as the rest of the book.
A true horror masquerading as a superhero title, The Man Who Laughs will etch itself into your psyche as truly as a knife through the heart.