The Comic That Explains Where <em>Joker</em> Went Wrong

This story contains spoilers for Joker.

For the first few decades of his existence in the world of comic books, the Joker wasn’t a particularly tragic character. Starting with his debut in Batman No. 1 (1940), the villainy of Batman’s archnemesis fluctuated between chillingly ruthless and harmlessly goofy. While always sporting his signature clown makeup, he functioned first as a gangland spree killer in the 1940s, and was then softened to more of a gimmicky nuisance in the 1950s. By then, DC Comics’ editors had decided that Batman’s recurring villains shouldn’t be allowed to kill with impunity, since that reflected poorly on the Caped Crusader’s ability to fight crime.

In the 1960s, when the Adam West–starring TV series aired on ABC, the Joker was a goofy sideshow, refused to shave his mustache for the role, instead painting white makeup right over it). But even at the character’s softest, there was rarely any effort to inject any sympathy into the Joker, whose mysterious background was part of his mythos. His film counterparts, played by Oscar winners such as Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, and Jared Leto, have been similarly enigmatic. That might be why Todd Phillips’s new film,