The Joker's 7 Most Compelling Potential Origins

6. Detective Comics #27 €“ The Retconned Golden Age Joker (1939; 2014)

Batman€™s first adventure was published in Detective Comics #27 (1939). Here we are given the tale called The Case Of The Chemical Syndicate, which focused on a group of businessmen who owned the Apex Chemical Corporation. One of the men, Stryker, made a deal to pay each of the partners a sum of money yearly until he owned the company. He eventually grew impatient with waiting and hatched a scheme to kill his partners and take control of their shares of the business. When Batman shows up to stop Stryker, he hits him so hard that Skryker breaks through a railing and falls into a tank of acid. Although this story has much in common with the aforementioned The Man Behind The Red Hood, this was never the official origin for the Joker€ until 2014.

During 2011 DC rebooted and renumbered their line, and when the renumbered issue of Detective Comics #27 (2014) was released, they used it as an opportunity to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Batman. This super-sized issue was a compilation of Batman stories, which also included a retelling of Golden Age Batman€™s first adventure by written by Brad Meltzer with art by Brian Hitch. At the end of this retold story, Meltzer potentially offers a new origin for the Joker, as we see Stryker€™s marred hand reach up out of the acid bath. Meltzer€™s retcon has possibly fixed a continuity problem dating back to the €˜60s by making Stryker the Golden Age Joker of Earth Two and thereby establishing that the 1951 Red Hood origin was indeed the Silver Age Joker of Earth One.