What's Joker's most identifiable trait? Is it his makeup? The purple get-up? No, it's his laugh - that iconic cackle that reverberates around the halls of Arkham Asylum and punctuates every encounter with Batman. It's what makes the Joker, Joker.
So, with that in mind, you'll probably understand that him not laughing is kind of a big deal. And you'd be right! The absence of laughter indicates that something is seriously, tremendously wrong with the character, which should go some way in intimating just how big a deal it was when Swamp Thing villain Anton Arcane left the Joker in a vegetative state during Swamp Thing #30, written by Alan Moore.
The creepiness of this moment is made all the worse by what Moore and artist Steve Bissette withhold from the reader. We never see what transpired in Joker's cell, or how Arcane caused the Clown Prince's breakdown. All we see is that blank expression, and Arkham's doctors looking on in shock.
Moore's Swamp Thing excelled at horror, and while there are plenty of scary moments to choose from, this might just be the most unsettling.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
