A Brief History Of The Joker

2. "If I'm Going To Have An Origin Story, I Prefer It To Be Multiple Choice!"

The Joker is obviously a charismatic character, but one of the most fascinating things about him is that no one knows how - or where - he came from. Countless origins have been told, but as the character says in his most famous story - Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's seminal (and controversial) The Killing Joke - if he's going to have a past, he'd "prefer it to be multiple choice."

That in itself has presented endless opportunities for writers determined to place their own stamp on the villain, whether it be in Paul Dini and Bruce Timm's Mad Love, wherein Joker emotionally manipulates a vulnerable Harleen Quinzel with tales of his abusive father, or in Dini and Alex Ross' 1996 story that positioned the character as a gangster bored of untheatrical crime. There are dozens of tales that depict the Clown Prince's rise to prominence, each more compelling than the last, but it's really a case of the less we know the better.

Why does the Joker do what he does? The question is best left unanswered because, well, that's what makes him so terrifying. There is no method to the madness, and while various incarnations of the villain have come and gone, a fascinating explanation for his fluctuating personality has already been optioned by one famous comic book writer - everyone's favourite occult expert, Grant Morrison.

Morrison's interpretation of the character accounts for his entire history, and provides a reasonable and considered explanation for why he's undertaken so many different shifts throughout his life. It applies the mantra of Moore's Killing Joke, but instead of focusing solely on the character's origin, it goes one step further and applies it to his very being; if the Joker is to have a personality, why surely, he'd prefer it too to be multiple choice?

Morrison's interpretation of the character posits that the Clown Prince isn't necessarily 'insane' in the traditional sense, but rather 'super-sane'. This level of 'super-sanity' thus engendered the clown with the ability to change his entire personality on a whim, shifting from the lethal killer from the original Kane, Finger and Robinson comic, to the high-stakes prankster of the Dick Sprang-era, before then reverting to type with the ascension of Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams' seventies Batman comics. It establishes a precedent for writers to deviate from past depictions, and in accounting for these shifts, Morrison's contributions to Batman's lore are invaluable.

But, with comics being comics, Morrison's interpretation has recently been overridden. DC Rebirth has now optioned the theory of there having been multiple Jokers, each with their own distinct style and blueprint. It's rather literal, all things considered, but with the character's history in a constant state of flux, it too isn't without precedent.