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Joker (character)
The Joker is a fictional supervillain created by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson who first appeared in the debut issue of the comic book Batman, published by DC Comics. Credit for the Joker's creation is disputed;
Kane and Robinson claimed responsibility for the Joker's design, while acknowledging Finger's writing contribution. Although the Joker was planned to be killed off during his initial appearance,
he was spared by editorial intervention, allowing the character to endure as the archenemy of the superhero Batman. In his comic book appearances, the Joker is portrayed as a criminal mastermind.
Introduced as a psychopath with a warped, sadistic sense of humor, the character became a goofy prankster in the late 1950s in response to regulation by the Comics Code Authority,
before returning to his darker roots during the early 1970s. As Batman's nemesis, the Joker has been part of the superhero's defining stories, including the murder of Jason Todd—the second Robin
and Batman's ward—and the paralysis of one of Batman's allies, Barbara Gordon. The Joker has had various possible origin stories during his decades of appearances.
The most common story involves him falling into a tank of chemical waste which bleaches his skin white and turns his hair green and lips bright red; the resulting disfigurement drives him insane.
The antithesis of Batman in personality and appearance, the Joker is considered by critics to be his perfect adversary. The Joker possesses no superhuman abilities,
instead using his expertise in chemical engineering to develop poisonous or lethal concoctions, and thematic weaponry, including razor-tipped playing cards, deadly joy buzzers, and acid-spraying lapel flowers.
The Joker sometimes works with other Gotham City supervillains such as the Penguin and Two-Face, and groups like the Injustice Gang and Injustice League,
but these relationships often collapse due to the Joker's desire for unbridled chaos. The 1990s introduced a romantic interest for the Joker in his former psychiatrist, Harley Quinn, who becomes his villainous sidekick.
Although his primary obsession is Batman, the Joker has also fought other heroes including Superman and Wonder Woman. One of the most iconic characters in popular culture,
the Joker has been listed among the greatest comic book villains and fictional characters ever created. The character's popularity has seen him appear on a variety of merchandise, such as clothing and collectible items,
inspire real-world structures, and be referenced in a number of media. The Joker has been adapted to serve as Batman's adversary in live-action, animated, and video game incarnations,
including the 1960s Batman television series and in films by Jack Nicholson in Batman ; Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight ; Jared Leto in Suicide Squad ; and Joaquin Phoenix in Joker. Mark Hamill, Troy Baker,
and others have provided the character's voice.
Concept
Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson are credited with creating the Joker, but their accounts of the character's conception differ, each providing his own version of events. Finger's, Kane's,
and Robinson's versions acknowledge that Finger produced an image of actor Conrad Veidt in character as Gwynplaine in the 1928 film The Man Who Laughs as an inspiration for the Joker's appearance,
and Robinson produced a sketch of a joker playing card. Robinson claimed that it was his 1940 card sketch that served as the character's concept, and which Finger associated with Veidt's portrayal.
Kane hired the 17-year-old Robinson as an assistant in 1939, after he saw Robinson in a white jacket decorated with his own illustrations. Beginning as a letterer and background inker,
Robinson quickly became primary artist for the newly created Batman comic book series. In a 1975 interview in The Amazing World of DC Comics, Robinson said he wanted a supreme arch-villain who could test Batman,
but not a typical crime lord or gangster designed to be easily disposed. He wanted an exotic, enduring character as an ongoing source of conflict for Batman, designing a diabolically sinister-but-clownish villain.
Robinson was intrigued by villains; his studies at Columbia University taught him that some characters are made up of contradictions, leading to the Joker's sense of humor. He said that the name came first,
followed by an image of a playing card from a deck he often had at hand: "I wanted somebody visually exciting. I wanted somebody that would make an indelible impression, would be bizarre,
would be memorable like the Hunchback of Notre Dame or any other villains that had unique physical characters." He told Finger about his concept by telephone, later providing sketches of the character
and images of what would become his iconic Joker playing-card design. Finger thought the concept was incomplete, providing the image of Veidt with a ghastly, permanent rictus grin.
Kane countered that the Robinson's sketch was produced only after Finger had already shown the Gwynplaine image to Kane, and that it was only used as a card design belonging to the Joker in his early appearances.
Finger said that he was also inspired by an image in Steeplechase Park at Coney Island that resembled a Joker's head, which he sketched and later shared with future editorial director Carmine Infantino.
In a 1994 interview with journalist Frank Lovece, Kane stated his position: Robinson credited himself, Finger and Kane for the Joker's creation.
He said he created the character as Batman's larger-than-life nemesis when extra stories were quickly needed for Batman,
and he received credit for the story in a college course: Finger provided his own account in 1966: Although Kane adamantly refused to share credit for many of his characters,
many comic historians credit Robinson with the Joker's creation and Finger with the character's development. By 2011, Finger, Kane, and Robinson had died, leaving the story unresolved.
Golden Age
 [^]  The Joker debuted in Batman as the eponymous character's first villain, shortly after Batman's debut in Detective Comics 7. The Joker initially appeared as a remorseless serial killer,
modeled after a joker playing card with a mirthless grin, who killed his victims with "Joker venom": a toxin which left their faces smiling grotesquely.
The character was intended to be killed in his second appearance in Batman, after being stabbed in the heart. Finger wanted the Joker to die, because of his concern that recurring villains would make Batman appear inept,
but was overruled by then-editor Whitney Ellsworth; a hastily drawn panel, indicating that the Joker was still alive, was added to the comic. The Joker went on to appear in nine of Batmans first twelve issues.
The character's regular appearances quickly defined him as the archenemy of the dynamic duo, Batman and Robin; he killed dozens of people, and even derailed a train. By issue 3,
Kane's work on the syndicated Batman newspaper strip left him little time for the comic book; artist Dick Sprang assumed his duties, and editor Jack Schiff collaborated with Finger on stories. Around the same time,
DC Comics found it easier to market its stories to children without the more mature pulp elements that had originated many superhero comics. During this period, the first changes in the Joker began to appear,
portraying him more as a prankster than threat; when he kidnaps Robin, Batman pays the ransom by check, meaning that the Joker cannot cash it without being arrested.
Comic book writer Mark Waid suggests that the 1942 story "The Joker Walks the Last Mile" was the beginning point for the character's transformation into a more goofy incarnation,
a period that Grant Morrison considered lasted the following thirty years. The 1942 cover of Detective Comics 9, known as "Double Guns", is considered one of the greatest superhero comic covers of the Golden Age
and is the only image of the character using traditional guns. Robinson said that other contemporary villains used guns, and the creative team wanted the Joker—as Batman's adversary—to be more resourceful.
Silver Age
The Joker was one of the few popular villains continuing to appear regularly in Batman comics from the Golden Age into the Silver Age, as the series continued during the rise in popularity of mystery and romance comics.
In 1951, Finger wrote an origin story for the Joker in Detective Comics 68, which introduced the characteristic of him formerly being the criminal Red Hood, and his disfigurement the result of a fall into a chemical vat.
By 1954, the Comics Code Authority had been established in response to increasing public disapproval of comic book content. The backlash was inspired by Frederic Wertham,
who hypothesized that mass media was responsible for the rise in juvenile delinquency, violence and homosexuality, particularly in young males. Parents forbade their children from reading comic books,
and there were several mass burnings. The Comics Code banned gore, innuendo and excessive violence, stripping Batman of his menace and transforming the Joker into a goofy,
thieving trickster without his original homicidal tendencies. The character appeared less frequently after 1964, when Julius Schwartz became editor of the Batman comics.
The character risked becoming an obscure figure of the preceding era until this goofy prankster version of the character was adapted into the 1966 television series Batman, in which he was played by Cesar Romero.
The show's popularity compelled Schwartz to keep the comics in a similar vein. As the show's popularity waned, however, so did that of the Batman comics. After the TV series ended in 1968,
the increase in public visibility had not stopped the comic's sales decline; editorial director Carmine Infantino resolved to turn things around, moving stories away from schoolboy-friendly adventures.
The Silver Age introduced several of the Joker's defining character traits: lethal joy buzzers, acid-squirting flowers, trick guns, and goofy, elaborate crimes.
Bronze Age
 [^]  In 1973, after a four-year disappearance, the Joker was revived by writer Dennis O'Neil and artist Neal Adams. Beginning with Batman 51's "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge", the character returns to his roots as an impulsive,
homicidal maniac who matches wits with Batman. This story began a trend in which the Joker was used, sparingly, as a central character. O'Neil said his idea was "simply to take it back to where it started.
I went to the DC library and read some of the early stories. I tried to get a sense of what Kane and Finger were after." O'Neil's 1973 run introduced the idea of the Joker being legally insane,
to explain why the character is sent to Arkham Asylum instead of to prison. Adams modified the Joker's appearance, changing his more average figure by extending his jaw and making him taller and leaner.
DC Comics was a hotbed of experimentation during the 1970s, and in 1975 the character became the first villain to feature as the title character in a comic book series, The Joker.
The series followed the character's interactions with other supervillains, and the first issue was written by O'Neil. Stories balanced between emphasizing the Joker's criminality
and making him a likable protagonist whom readers could support. Although he murdered thugs and civilians, he never fought Batman; this made The Joker a series in which the character's villainy prevailed over rival villains,
instead of a struggle between good and evil. Because the Comics Code Authority mandated punishment for villains, each issue ended with the Joker being apprehended, limiting the scope of each story.
The series never found an audience, and The Joker was cancelled after nine issues. The complete series became difficult to obtain over time, often commanding high prices from collectors. In 2013,
DC Comics reissued the series as a graphic novel. When Jenette Kahn became DC editor in 1976, she redeveloped the company's struggling titles; during her tenure, the Joker would become one of DC's most popular characters.
While O'Neil and Adams' work was critically acclaimed, writer Steve Englehart
and penciller Marshall Rogers's eight-issue run in Detective Comics 71–476 defined the Joker for decades to come with stories emphasizing the character's insanity. In "The Laughing Fish",
the Joker disfigures fish with a rictus grin resembling his own, and is unable to understand that copyrighting a natural resource is legally impossible. Englehart
and Rogers' work on the series influenced the 1989 film Batman, and was adapted for 1992's Batman: The Animated Series. Rogers expanded on Adams' character design, drawing the Joker with a fedora and trench coat.
Englehart outlined how he understood the character by saying that the Joker "was this very crazy, scary character. I really wanted to get back to the idea of Batman fighting insane murderers at 3 a.m. under the full moon,
as the clouds scuttled by."
Modern Age
Years after the end of the 1966 television series, sales of Batman continued to fall and the title was nearly canceled. Although the 1970s restored the Joker as an insane, lethal foe of Batman,
it was during the 1980s that the Batman series started to turn around and the Joker came into his own as part of the "dark age" of comics: mature tales of death and destruction.
The shift was derided for moving away from tamer superheroes, but comic audiences were no longer primarily children.
Several months after Crisis on Infinite Earths launched the era by killing off Silver-Age icons such as the Flash and Supergirl and undoing decades of continuity,
Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns re-imagined Batman as an older, retired hero and the Joker as a lipstick-wearing celebrity who cannot function without his foe.
The late 1980s saw the Joker exert a significant impact on Batman and his supporting cast. In the 1988–89 story arc "A Death in the Family", the Joker murders Batman's sidekick. Todd was unpopular with fans;
rather than modify his character, DC opted to let them vote for his fate and a 72-vote plurality had the Joker beat Todd to death with a crowbar.
This story altered the Batman universe: instead of killing anonymous bystanders, the Joker murdered a core character in the Batman fiction; this had a lasting effect on future stories.
Written at the height of tensions between the United States and Iran, the story's conclusion had Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini appoint the Joker his country's ambassador to the United Nations. Alan Moore
and Brian Bolland's 1988 graphic novel The Killing Joke expands on the Joker's origins, describing the character as a failed comedian who adopts the identity of Red Hood to support his pregnant wife.
Unlike The Dark Knight Returns, The Killing Joke takes place in mainstream continuity. The novel is described by critics as one of the greatest Joker stories ever written, influencing later comic stories
and films such as 1989's Batman and 2008's The Dark Knight. Grant Morrison's 1989 Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth explores the psychoses of Batman, the Joker and other rogues in the eponymous facility.
The 1992 animated series introduced the Joker's female sidekick: Harley Quinn, a psychiatrist who falls for—and ends up in an abusive relationship with—the Joker, becoming his supervillain accomplice.
The character was popular, and was adapted into the comics as the Joker's romantic interest in 1999. In the same year, Alan Grant
and Norm Breyfogle's comic book Anarky concluded with the revelation that the titular character was the Joker's son. Breyfogle conceived the idea as a means to expand on Anarky's characterization,
but O'Neil was opposed to it, and only allowed it to be written under protest, and with a promise that the revelation would eventually be revealed incorrect. However,
the Anarky series was cancelled before the rebuttal could be published. The Joker's first major storyline in The New 52, DC Comics' 2011 reboot of story continuity, was 2012's "Death of the Family" by writer Scott Snyder
and artist Greg Capullo. The story arc explores the symbiotic relationship between Joker and Batman, and sees the villain shatter the trust between Batman and his adopted family.
Capullo's Joker design replaced his traditional outfit with a utilitarian, messy, and disheveled appearance to convey that the character was on a mission; his face was reattached with belts, wires, and hooks,
and he was outfitted with mechanics overalls. The Joker's face was restored in Snyder's and Capullo's "Endgame", the concluding chapter to "Death of the Family".
Character biography 
The Joker has undergone many revisions since his 1940 debut. The most common interpretation of the character is that he is disguised as the criminal Red Hood, and pursued by Batman.
The Joker falls into a vat of chemicals which bleaches his skin, colors his hair green and his lips red, and drives him insane. The reasons why the Joker was disguised as the Red Hood,
and his identity before his transformation have changed over time. The character was introduced in Batman, in which he announces that he will kill three of Gotham's prominent citizens.
Although the police protect Claridge, the Joker had poisoned him before making his announcement and Claridge dies with a ghastly grin on his face; Batman eventually defeats him, sending him to prison.
The Joker commits whimsical, brutal crimes for reasons that, in Batman's words, "make sense to him alone". Detective Comics 68 introduced the Joker's first origin story as Red Hood: a criminal who, during his final heist,
vanishes after leaping into a vat of chemicals to escape Batman. His resulting disfigurement led him to adopt the name "Joker", from the playing card figure he came to resemble.
The Joker's Silver-Age transformation into a figure of fun was established in 1952's "The Joker's Millions". In this story the Joker is obsessed with maintaining his illusion of wealth and celebrity as a criminal folk hero,
afraid to let Gotham's citizens know that he is penniless and was tricked out of his fortune. The 1970s redefined the character as a homicidal psychopath. "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge"
has the Joker taking violent revenge on the former gang members who betrayed him; in "The Laughing Fish" the character chemically adds his face to Gotham's fish, killing bureaucrats who stand in his way.
Batman: The Killing Joke built on the Joker's 1951 origin story, portraying him as a failed comedian pressured into committing crime as the Red Hood to support his pregnant wife.
Batman's interference causes him to leap into a chemical vat, which disfigures him. This, combined with the trauma of his wife's earlier accidental death, causes him to go insane and become the Joker. However,
the Joker says that this story may not be true, as he prefers his past to be "multiple choice". In this graphic novel, the Joker shoots and paralyzes Barbara Gordon and tortures her father, Commissioner James Gordon,
to prove that it only takes one bad day to drive a normal man insane. After Batman rescues Gordon and subdues the Joker, he offers to rehabilitate his old foe and end their rivalry. Although the Joker refuses,
he shows his appreciation by sharing a joke with Batman. Following the character's maiming of Barbara, she became a more important character in the DC Universe: Oracle, a data gatherer and superhero informant,
who has her revenge in Birds of Prey by shattering the Joker's teeth and destroying his smile. In the 1988 story "A Death in the Family", the Joker beats Jason Todd with a crowbar and leaves him to die in an explosion.
Todd's death haunts Batman, and for the first time he considers killing the Joker. The Joker temporarily escapes justice when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini appoints him the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations,
giving him diplomatic immunity. However, when he tries to poison the UN membership, he is defeated by Batman and Superman. In the 1999 "No Man's Land" storyline, the Joker murders Commissioner Gordon's second wife, Sarah,
as she shields a group of infants. He taunts Gordon, who shoots him in the kneecap. The Joker, lamenting that he may never walk again,
collapses with laughter when he realizes that the commissioner has avenged Barbara's paralysis. This story also introduced the Joker's girlfriend, Harley Quinn. The 2000s began with the crossover story "Emperor Joker",
in which the Joker steals Mister Mxyzptlk's reality-altering power and remakes the universe in his image. When the supervillain then tries to destroy the universe, his reluctance to eliminate Batman makes him lose control,
and Superman defeats him. Broken by his experience, Batman's experiences of death are transferred to Superman by the Spectre so he can heal mentally. In "Joker's Last Laugh",
the doctors at Arkham Asylum convince the character that he is dying in an attempt to rehabilitate him. Instead, the Joker launches a final crime spree. Believing that Robin has been killed in the chaos,
Dick Grayson beats the Joker to death, and the villain succeeds in making a member of the Bat-family break their rule against killing. In "Under the Hood",
a resurrected Todd tries to force Batman to avenge his death by killing the Joker. Batman refuses, arguing that if he allows himself to kill the Joker, he will not be able to stop killing other criminals.
The Joker kills Alexander Luthor in Infinite Crisis for excluding him from the Secret Society of Super Villains, which considers him too unpredictable for membership. In Morrison's "Batman and Son",
a deranged police officer who impersonates Batman shoots the Joker in the face, scarring and disabling him. The supervillain returns in "The Clown at Midnight" as a cruel, enigmatic force who awakens
and tries to kill Harley Quinn to prove to Batman that he has become more than human. In the 2008 story arc "Batman R.I.P." the Joker is recruited by the Black Glove to destroy Batman, but betrays the group,
killing its members one by one. After Batman's apparent death in "Final Crisis", Grayson investigates a series of murders. The Joker is arrested, and then-Robin Damian Wayne beats him with a crowbar,
paralleling Todd's murder. When the Joker escapes, he attacks the Black Glove, burying its leader Simon Hurt alive after the supervillain considers him a failure as an opponent;
the Joker is then defeated by the recently returned Batman. In DC's New 52, a 2011 relaunch of its titles following Flashpoint, the Joker has his own face cut off. He disappears for a year,
returning to launch an attack on Batman's extended family in "Death of the Family" so he and Batman can be the best hero and villain they can be. At the end of the storyline, the Joker falls off a cliff into a dark abyss.
The Joker returns in the 2014 storyline "Endgame" in which he brainwashes the Justice League into attacking Batman, believing he has betrayed their relationship.
The story implies that the Joker is immortal—having existed for centuries in Gotham as a cause of tragedy after exposure to a substance the Joker terms 'dionesium'—and is able to regenerate from mortal injuries. "Endgame"
restores the Joker's face, and also reveals that he knows Batman's secret identity. The story ends with the apparent deaths of Batman and the Joker at each other's hands.
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