Joker (cartoon character)
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The Joker (English The Joker ) is a fictional character who appears predominantly in comics published by DC , a subsidiary of WarnerMedia . The Joker has also appeared in novels, cartoons, series and films, and in computer and console games based on the DC comics. Mostly the character is known as the arch enemy of the comic character Batman .
The name "Joker" refers on the one hand to the joker as a playing card and on the other hand to the court jester depicted on it . Today the joker is one of the most popular representatives of the narrative character of the evil clown .
The Joker figure was conceived in a rough version by assistant draftsman Jerry Robinson and subsequently reworked by Bob Kane and Bill Finger and made its debut in US Batman # 1 from 1940. Its basic features are based on the figure of Gwynplaine , played by the expressionist actor Conrad Veidt from the 1928 film The Man Who Laughs .
In Germany, the first story with the Joker appeared in the comic Superman Batman # 16 in 1968, before that only his image in the Bath cave was seen in older stories with Batman. In addition, Ehapa Verlag called the Joker "joker" in German in this story. In addition, the issue also contains Showcase # 4, the first appearance of the Flash at the DC Universum, here also Germanized "Zack", later then Red Flash.
Character biography
There is no standard version of the origin of the Joker and its real name. Some more recent Batman stories that emerged after the 1989 theatrical adaptation , in which the real name Jack Napier was given to the Joker , use Jack as his first name, but leave his last name open. In other films, series and stories, however, the references to his real name are simply left out. In the eight-part story Batman: White Knight , published in 2017/18 , which, however, has the character of an Elseworlds story, the real name is also Jack Napier . In the 2019 theatrical version , the Joker has the real name Arthur Fleck.
The creation of the villain Joker with the characteristic appearance is mostly attributed to an accident in which he fell into a container of chemicals, which bleached his skin, turned his hair green, his lips turned red and his facial features deformed into an eternal grin . The original story was first described in US Detective Comics # 168 in 1951, around eleven years after the Joker first appeared .
A second origin story is based on the fact that the Joker and his mother were often abused by the father in the Joker's childhood. One day the father is repeatedly in such a fit of anger and kills the mother of the Joker with a knife. After this act, the father turns around and looks his crying son in the face and asks why he looks so sad. Then he walks up to him and cuts the Joker's grin on his face by cutting into the boy's right and left cheek. This makes the Joker crazy. He puts on the green hair, the red mouth and the white face with make- up.
As one of the basic origin stories, the graphic novel Batman: Smile Please! ( Batman: The Killing Joke) . Here the Joker breaks out of Arkham Asylum and you can see his story in several flashbacks. The Joker was an unsuccessful comedian who, because of financial difficulties, got involved in a break-in at a chemical plant. He wears a red mask, which makes him the ringleader for the Gotham Police. Since he could not see well through the mask and was harassed by the appearance of Batman, he stumbles into a chemical bath. After he gets out of the bathroom and takes off his mask, his white face with the red lips is reflected in a puddle. He then begins to laugh uncontrollably. This origin story shows how closely Batman and the Joker are linked.
In the above-mentioned 2019 theatrical version ( Joker ), the element of its transformation through a selective event (accident caused by chemicals) is completely missing; Instead, the society itself, or its way of dealing with the lonely and strange Arthur Fleck, is the decisive element that led to his transformation from an unsuccessful comedian (who is initially depicted as emotionally unstable, but otherwise no recognizable malicious tendencies or criminal energy seems to have) contributes to the madman known today. In this version it is also made clear that the Joker has always suffered from a mental illness, which through ridicule, rejection and unfounded violent attacks against him, as well as the knowledge that his mother (with whom he has an unnaturally close relationship) has adopted him and had him mistreated by her partner, as well as the fact that he stopped taking his numerous drugs, gradually taking over his personality. One of the most distinctive features of this disease is manifested in loud, uncontrollable fits of laughter on the most inopportune occasions.
In US Justice League # 50, Green Lantern speaks to Batman about the Möbius chair at the end of the issue. This reveals all the secrets of the universe to whoever sits on it. He asks Batman how the answer to the question who the Joker is was. Then Batman says "He didn't give me a name". The chair's answer was "the joker is not one, but three!"
Appearance
The Joker is a master criminal who has a clown- like appearance: He is an approximately 1.80 m tall, thin man with a chalk-white face, black-framed eyelids, green hair and blood-red lips that are twisted into a devilish grin. He usually wears a purple swallowtail suit, occasionally a purple hat or coat. There is often a flower on the suit that can splash acid. He often has a stick with a pommel for this, and sometimes a sword is hidden in the stick . He also likes to use PENG pistols, which are deadly in their function. In The Dark Knight , however, it is stated that he prefers to use a knife as he enjoys feeling the victim's pain, which is why he has one built into his shoes. His trademark ( business card ) is usually a joker card, which he usually leaves at the scene of a crime.
characterization
In the later 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, the character was characterized as a goofy joker who pestered his environment with infantile pranks without actually being dangerous.
In contrast, the earliest Batman stories of the early 1940s, as well as the vast majority of newer Batman interpretations since the 1970s, portrayed the Joker as a violent lunatic who murders for sheer joy. In this interpretation of the character, the Joker is the originator of two central tragedies in Batman's life, namely the murder of Batman's sidekick Jason Todd, the second Robin, and the paraplegia of Barbara Gordon ( Batgirl / later Oracle).
In the media reception of the figure, the actors Cesar Romero in the 1960s and Jack Nicholson in the late 1980s (Batman film from 1989) and Mark Hamill ( Batman: The Animated Series ) in the early 1990s shaped the style. The American Film Institute put the joker in Nicholson's interpretation in a ranking at number 45 of the best 50 movie villains of all time. The Wizard Magazine , the technical body of the American comic book industry, put the Joker at number one of the top 100 villains of all time. In 2008, the Joker reappeared as a villain in the Batman film The Dark Knight , played by Heath Ledger , who received an Oscar posthumously for his portrayal .
Characterization change
During his first appearances, starting with Batman # 1, the Joker was a rather average mass murderer in the manner of the Dick Tracy adversaries, who had little absurdity to offer except for a bizarre appearance that was modeled on the rogue of the card game. He left the corpses of his victims, whom he usually killed with a mysterious “Jokergas” (sometimes called Smilex), with a deformed grin on his face.
Plans to have the Joker die in a backup story in Batman # 1, as was the norm for comic book villains at the time, were revised at the last minute at the urging of DC editor Whitney Ellsworth, who succeeded in making the character too held to give it up so easily.
In his first twelve appearances until 1942, the Joker killed nearly three dozen people and was able to escape his opponent Batman at the end of most of the stories - although it always looked as if he had died trying to escape.
The turning point came in 1943 with the story Joker Walks the Last Mile (US Detective Comics # 64), in which the Joker is apparently executed on the electric chair. After his return, the Joker was more harmless than ever before: the publisher had in the meantime decided that only one-issue characters should be allowed to kill so that Batman, in his inability to punish such recurring villains as the Joker or the penguin , should not be considered Failure would appear.
As the tone of the Batman comics became more and more played down over time, the Joker was degraded to a harmless nuisance. The Joker quickly became the most popular Batman villain, performing with extreme regularity until the mid-1950s. In the late 1950s the figure was used more sparsely and at times even disappeared entirely in the 1960s.
In 1973 the character was revived and overhauled by the creative team Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams in US Batman # 251 in the story The Joker's Five Way Revenge . This new Joker was a murderous madman who kills on whims and enjoys the "battle of wits" with Batman. This approach to character has been the predominant one ever since. Steve Englehart has enriched the figure with additional traits that define the character. In the 1970s, the character even made it to a nine-part series in which he faced various heroes and villains. The Joker commits murders in seven of these nine issues.
In Alan Moore's 1988 story The Killing Joke , the Joker shoots Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl , who has been in a wheelchair since then and appears as the character Oracle .
The character finally underwent an extensive change in the 1990s, when the Joker was given an assistant and occasional lover with Harley Quinn , a crazy former psychologist who wears a harlequin costume. The relationship is a love-hate relationship of the extreme kind: The Joker tends to insult Harley, to hurt and even tries to kill her on occasion. Regardless of this, she keeps coming back to him.
In the new Batman comics by Grant Morrison , the Joker is referred to as a “super-schizophrenic” who can “create” himself anew every time. This appears to be the authors' logical answer to the fact that the Joker is one of the characters in the Bat universe who has gone through the most changes over the decades.
After Batman's death, the Joker temporarily allied himself with the Bat family to get rid of Batman's killer (Doctor Hurt) more easily. He could only do this by disguising himself. He wore a black hat and coat and a white mask. After killing Doctor Hurt, he revealed his secret to Nightwing and came to Arkham.
With the start of the new DC universe, the Joker went through another change; he had his face cut down by the doll maker and disappeared. After a short time he appeared as a kind of monster; he had just put his face together with clamps. This time his goal was to kill the entire Bat family. In the bath cave there is finally the final battle in which the Joker falls into a ravine.
The wild card in other media
Batman TV series (1966-1968)
In the comedy Batman television series of the 1960s, the Joker was portrayed by Cesar Romero in 18 episodes and one film, Batman Keeps the World in Suspense . He was a harmless jerk character. His trademark is a cackling laugh. The only point of reference to his previous life is a remark by Batman that the Joker used to be a hypnotist.
Batman: The Animated Series
The animated series Batman ( Batman: The Animated Series ) came up with a different origin story (in the episode Beware the Creeper and the film Batman and the Phantom ): Here the Joker appears as a former hitman of a crime organization, who tries to rob a chemical plant , suffers his accident in the well-known way. In the series, the Joker was the most prominent villain, adding to the Joker's prestige as Batman's archenemy. The original Joker was dubbed by actor Mark Hamill (exceptionally also by Michael McKean ). Hamill achieved cult status through his role as Luke Skywalker . When portraying laughter, Hamill tried to do justice to the character of the joker: his laughter is both high and deep and, due to its uninhibited nature, appears "like a musical instrument that only he can play".
As in the comics, the Joker in the Animated series is possessed by Batman and eager to assassinate him. He has a kind of self-confidence that the other characters don't, as if he were aware of his own fictionality. In the Animated series, the Joker is the only character who speaks directly into the camera.
Batman of the Future
In the animated film Batman of the Future - The Joker Comes Back , a future adventure that revolves around Terry McGinnis, the Batman of the next generation, Tim Drake, infected by the Joker venom, returns as a future variant of the Joker . The Jokerz youth gang, whose members have succeeded the Joker, also plays a role. This group also appears frequently in the related series Batman of the Future .
The Batman
The actor Kevin Michael Richardson lent his voice to a decidedly different Joker in the series The Batman . The Joker in this series is an athletic, red-eyed man with a significantly wilder appearance than the Joker in the other versions: He has a long shaggy mane and mostly walks around barefoot. His voice alternates between deep and shrill. Joker always has two helpers with him, Punch and Judy, who are depicted as mute, made-up musclemen. He occasionally calls Batman a spoilsport and, despite his madness, is a criminal genius, so that, for example, he rebels the police officer Ethan Benneth against his boss and unintentionally turns him into Clayface.
In the animated film The Batman vs. Dracula the Joker is bitten by the vampire prince while sacking a tomb and turned into a vampire. Batman was finally able to develop a cure with which he "cured" the Joker at the end of the film. As usual, the defeated villain came to Arkham.
Batman (1989)
The 1989 Batman film (director: Tim Burton ) presented a new genesis of the Joker. Here the Joker - played by Jack Nicholson - is involved, unlike in the comics, in the events that brought about the development of Bruce Wayne's Batman: He is the man who murdered the parents of the young Bruce Wayne and thus Wayne's crusade against crime in Gears up (in the comics the killer was a man named Joe Chill, while Joker had no relationship with Batman). In the film, the real name of the Joker is Jack Napier, a reference to the word jackanapes ('noseweis'). Napier is the narcissistic right-hand man of Carl Grissom, the king of the Gotham City underworld . An affair between Napier and Alicia Hunt, Grissom's girlfriend, causes the jealous criminal to set a trap for his henchman. Napier receives an order from Grissom to break into the Axis Chemicals factory. Grissom informs his police liaison officer, Carl Eckhardt, about this plan, who is carrying out a surprise raid on the factory. Due to the surprising intervention of Batman and Commissioner Gordon, Grissom's plan fails: Napier kills Eckhardt, but is then hit in the face by a ricochet and falls into a collecting basin full of chemicals.
Napier survived his "acid bath", but after a screwed up attempt to restore his face with the means of plastic surgery, he was struck with an "eternal smile": from now on his smile is permanently fixed on the face. Napier takes the name Joker - owing to his disfigured appearance - murdered Grissom and takes over his criminal empire. He then takes on a violent and chaotic crime series to outbid Batman, who he believes is receiving too much press attention. After a series of unsuccessful fights, the Joker dies in a duel with Batman when he falls from the roof of Gotham Cathedral, the location of the showdown.
The Dark Knight (2008)
In the summer of 2008, The Dark Knight , the sequel to Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins , hit theaters. Joker is the "main villain" of the film. He was played by Heath Ledger , who died shortly after filming was finished. Here the origin and background story of the Joker remain uncertain, but hints reveal that his permanent grin is due to cuts at the corners of his mouth ( Glasgow Smile ). He tells two different stories about their creation, which seems conclusive on closer inspection, since both scars have different characteristics: On the one hand, his father wanted to put a "smile" on his face when he was drunk, on the other hand he wanted his wife, who had been disfigured by gangsters To prove love and inflict the scars on herself, whereupon she left him. Screenwriter Jonathan Nolan pointed out that neither of the two genesis stories are likely to be true. He also has shoulder-length, green-colored hair and yellow teeth.
The Joker in The Dark Knight is less of a criminal than a maniac who suffers from multiple mental illnesses. He's not interested in money, but kills and destroys for sheer joy and to throw Gotham City into chaos. When Bruce Wayne wondered what the Joker might be interested in, his butler Alfred Pennyworth told him, "Some people just want to see the world burn." He also takes pleasure in putting law-abiding people into extreme situations where they begin to act immorally. He bombs two passenger ferries, one of which carries innocent citizens and the other transports convicted criminals, and gives the detonator to the passengers on the other ferry. Whoever blows up the other ferry first by midnight is allowed to survive, otherwise all passengers will die. With the murder of his girlfriend, he brings District Attorney Harvey Dent to a murderous revenge campaign against the police officers who are held responsible for him. Harvey Dent then becomes Two-Face and tries to find the corrupt police officers who kidnapped his girlfriend on a personal vendetta. The purpose of the Joker is to bring one of the triumvirate (Batman, Gordon, Dent) to a criminal level. Unlike in the 1989 film, the Joker survives in the end, he is only arrested by the police.
Heath Ledger posthumously received the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. The original plan was to have the Joker appear as a repeat opponent in the third part of the series, The Dark Knight Rises . Due to Ledger's death, however, these plans were discarded and Bane was used instead as the villain in the next film.
Suicide Squad (2016)
The Joker is played by Jared Leto in the film Suicide Squad . It is inspired by the Joker from the comic The Dark Knight Returns , has bleached skin (no make-up) and is therefore similar to the Joker comic version.
Joker (2019)
The film Joker by Todd Phillips tells the backstory of the Joker. The Joker in this film is played by Joaquin Phoenix . In this film, the real name of the Joker is Arthur Fleck.
Arthur Fleck works as a party clown in Gotham City in 1981, but dreams of a career as a stand-up comedian. He is mentally unstable, relies on medication and suffers from sick fits of laughter. His mother Penny is in need of care and used to work as a secretary for Thomas Wayne (Bruce Wayne's father), whose son is also allegedly Arthur (that Penny used to suffer from delusions, like Arthur, and Wayne is not the father Plot out). As a severe economic crisis prevails, social benefits are cut from the city, so Arthur can no longer afford therapy and medication. When he shot three young businessmen in the subway, more out of self-defense, he felt for the first time freed from the feeling of being only stirrup holders for the rich and powerful. The three men were also employed by Thomas Wayne, who publicly expresses himself very derogatory about the socially disadvantaged citizens of the city, which provokes a protest movement of the lower class of the population against the establishment of the city.
Arthur not only loses his job, but also gradually loses his mind. So he kills his mother and later his ex-colleague Randall, who had previously illegally slipped him a revolver. After Arthur presented some jokes very awkwardly on an open stage, excerpts of this appearance land on the late night show of his great idol Murray Franklin. Franklin invites Arthur to his show in which Arthur tries to commit suicide in front of the cameras. Dressed up as a joker, he confesses to killing the three suit wearers on the show, but then does not shoot himself, but rather disappointed Franklin. Meanwhile, the situation in the city has escalated and the revolt is becoming increasingly aggressive. On the way to the police, Arthur is rescued from the patrol car by some citizens and can be celebrated as the leading figure and trigger of the revolt. Meanwhile, after leaving the opera, Thomas and Martha Wayne are shot dead by a clown-masked supporter of the revolt. The film ends with Arthur imprisoned at Arkham Asylum, but still indulging in his joy of killing.
Phoenix won at the Oscars in 2020 the Oscar for best actor . The Joker is not only the only comic figure for whose portrayal an Oscar has ever been awarded, but also only the second character in film history after Don Vito Corleone (in The Godfather and The Godfather - Part II ), whose portrayal of two different actors earned the Oscar.
Video games
The Joker appeared in various Batman computer and console games. So z. B. in Batman Vengeance (dubbed by Mark Hamill ) or Arkham Asylum and its successors Batman: Arkham City , Batman: Arkham Knight and Batman: Arkham Origins . He also appears in the crossover fighting game Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe and in the game DC Universe Online . He is also a playable character in Injustice: Gods Among Us and Injustice 2 .
advertising
2001 and 2002 the Joker appeared in various commercials for General Motors , which OnStar , a security system through which feature the cars of General Motors touting. The joker was portrayed in these commercials by Curtis Armstrong.
Books
The novel The Further Adventures of the Joker , edited by Martin H. Greenberg, brought together twenty-one, partly macabre, partly silly short stories about the "Clown Prince". In his novel , Golden House satirizes Salman Rushdie the American President Donald Trump in the figure of the Joker.
Opera
In Calixto Bieito's Fidelio production at the Bavarian State Opera (2010), the minister wears the features of the joker and shoots Florestan at the moment of his liberation, who is however brought back to life in the final duet through the power of love of his wife Leonore .
Variations
In 1997 Tangent Comics published a story about a female variant of the Joker ( Tangent Comics: The Joker ).
literature
- Beatty Scott et al. a .: The DC Comics Encyclopedia . Panini Verlags GmbH, Stuttgart March 2005, 1st edition, ISBN 978-3-8332-1213-0 , pp. 160–161 (Joker)
- Joker anthology. Panini Comics, Stuttgart 2015, ISBN 978-3-95798-353-4 (18 comics from the period 1940 to 2013 with editorial explanations)
Individual evidence
- ↑ German edition: Batman: Der Weiße Ritter Softcover (= DC Black Label # 1), Panini Comics , March 2019, ISBN 978-3-7416-0984-8 .
- ↑ a b German edition u. a .: Batman: Killing Joke - A Deadly Joke (= DC Paperback # 98), Panini Comics , January 2017.
- ↑ www.batmannews.de: Information on the background story ( Memento from February 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ 5 Big Reveals About Jared Leto's Joker In Suicide Squad. In: www.cinemablend.com. March 13, 2015, accessed February 18, 2016 .