7. Detective Comics #168 The Silver Age Joker (1951)
In order to understand the earliest origin of the Joker, you first need to know a little bit about the DC multiverse. The multiverse was a retcon introduced in the 60s to explain how Batman was around fighting Nazis in the 40s, yet still relatively young and active in the 60s. In 1961 DC established that the older Golden Age version of Batman existed on Earth Two, while the younger Batman of the 60s, the Silver Age Batman, existed on Earth One. While this was an elegant solution to DCs continuity problem, Detective Comics and Batman were never renumbered; therefore, it was never truly established which of the early Batman stories were set on Earth One or Earth Two. Turning to the Joker of both Earth One and Earth Two, we see that the two characters originally shared the same back-story, as the lines between which Joker is which were not established when DC published his original origin. The Joker makes his first appearance in Batman #1(1940); however, this issue did not give an origin for the Clown Prince of Crime. This came over a decade later in Detective Comics #168 (1952), which was titled The Man Behind The Red Hood. It was revealed in this issue that the Joker was originally the masked professional criminal leader known as the Red Hood. One night, when the Red Hood and his men were attempting a heist, Batman and Robin chased the Red Hood into a chemical plant and cornered him on a catwalk. Out of desperation, the Red Hood jumped off the catwalk into a vat of chemicals that changed his appearance and drove him mad. It was later added that this vat of chemicals contained the ink used to make playing cards thus the origin of the Jokers clown motif. With regards to the Golden/Silver Age split, this origin falls about 10 after the Joker was revealed and 10 years before DC established it multiverse; therefore, it was unclear as to whether this was the origin for the Golden or Silver Age Joker until recently.
Since childhood, Bryant has been an avid fan of superheroes, and he has been reading comic books since 2006. His full name is "George Bryant Lucas"; however, after enduring countless Darth Vader jokes, he has chosen to go by his middle name. Born and raised in the United States, Bryant is currently living with his lovely wife in the country side of Wiltshire County, UK. Bryant does suffer from a mild case of dyslexia; misspellings and homonyms are to be expected on occasion.
