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Post by BATMAN1 on Aug 23, 2006 13:36:39 GMT -5
The orgin of the Joker has never officially been written but there have been several accounts of his beginings The most widely accepted origin can be seen in Alan Moore's The Killing Joke. It depicts the Joker as originally being an engineer at a chemical plant who quit his job to pursue his dream of being a stand-up comedian, only to fail miserably. Desperate to support his pregnant wife, the unnamed engineer agreed to help two criminals break into the plant where he was formerly employed but during the planning, Police contacted and informed him that his wife had died in a tragic and freak house-hold accident. Stricken with grief, he attempted to back out of the plan, but the criminals strong-armed him into keeping his promise. As soon as they entered the plant, however, they were immediately caught by security and a fatal shoot-out followed in which the two criminals were killed. As he tried to escape, the engineer was confronted by Batman, who was investigating the disturbance. In desperation, the engineer leaped over a rail and plummeted into a vat of chemicals. When he surfaced in the nearby reservoir, he removed the hood and saw his reflection: bleached chalk-white skin, ruby-red peeled-back lips and green hair. These events, coupled with his other misfortunes that day, drove the engineer completely insane, resulting in the birth of the Joker. Source Wikipedia
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Post by BATMAN1 on Aug 23, 2006 13:43:38 GMT -5
In the story "Pushback" (featured in Batman: Gotham Knights # 50-55) the above story is purported to be true when a witness (who coincidentally turns out to be Edward Nigma, a.k.a. The Riddler) recounts that the Joker's wife was kidnapped and murdered by the criminals in order to force the engineer into performing the crime. In this version, the Joker's name was given as Jack.
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Post by BATMAN1 on Aug 23, 2006 13:50:18 GMT -5
In the short story Case Study by Paul Dini, published in Batman: Black & White 2, the man who would become the Joker was already a well-established criminal, working for several of Gotham's gangs, being the first to enter the racket, the first one to execute the job, the first one to get his part and the first one to leave. Even if he was captured, he always would hire the best lawyers, so he could never stay in prison for long. After a dispute with a mob boss named Tommy Doyle over a woman, the criminal made Doyle kill her in a cruel sort of joke, taking over his gang in the process. The gangster constructed a new identity for himself - that of the infamous Red Hood. This strategy worked well until the gang hit the Monarch Playing Card Company, where Batman was waiting for them. The Red Hood leaped into the vat of chemicals and escaped, but emerged transformed into the Joker. Unlike other stories, Case Study posits that the Joker is actually perfectly sane, and that his crimes are carefully planned and researched to look like the work of a maniac, in order to pursue his vendetta against Batman. As in The Killing Joke, the Joker's real name is never revealed in this story.
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Post by BATMAN1 on Aug 23, 2006 13:57:10 GMT -5
In the short story "On a Beautiful Summer's Day, He Was" by Robert McCammon, featured in the anthology The Further Adventures of The Joker, the Joker is suggested to have been born a monster, not made one by circumstance. The story concerns him as a young boy who derives pleasure from killing small animals (the second and most serious component of the so-called "homicidal triad") and collecting their bones. The story notes that his father is also insane and, in a chilling scene, beats his mother while the boy listens through the wall, grinning. The end of the story has him graduating to murder, killing a neighborhood boy who discovers his makeshift graveyard. The story identifies the Joker's last name as Napier.
In Best of All, another tale in the anthology, the Joker attempts to torment Batman by revealing that Leslie Thompkins is his mother. When Batman later questioned Leslie about the claim, she explained that earlier in her life she worked in an orphange and she reffered to all of the boys and girls under her care as her "children", a young Joker being one of them. It is also revealed that the Joker murders his abusive, alcoholic father as a child, and spent years afterward in a mental institution.
Both of these stories are considered non-canonical.
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Post by BATMAN1 on Aug 23, 2006 14:22:14 GMT -5
After becoming the the Joker he became the Dark Knights greatest advisary, though not from great strength or a brillant mind, but because of his diobolical ways, representing the caos that Batman was fighting against. But the Joker's biggest impact on Batman's life was the murder of Jason Todd, the second Robin. In his search for his long lost mother, Todd eventually found her in the captivity of the Joker. Joker beat Jason with a crowbar to within an inch of his life before blowing up the warehouse they were in. Joker escaped but Batman was left to find the lifeless body of the second Robin, a death which haunts him to this day. The Joker was never charged with the murder due to an obscure diplomatic immunity he had obtained.
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Post by BATMAN1 on Aug 23, 2006 14:41:27 GMT -5
One of the other biggest impacts on Batman's life was when, randomly, The Joker appeared at Commissioner Gordon's home one night and shot Barbara Gordon, then Batgirl, in the stomach at close range. The bullet pierced her spine and crippled her permanently. James Gordon was then subdued and forced to watch as the Joker stripped Barbara naked and took photographs of her injured body before he took the Commissioner away to be tortured further. The Joker tried to make Gordon snap and go insane, to prove that any man can have "one really bad day" and become just like him. The Joker imprisoned Gordon in a run-down amusement park, stripping him naked and caging him in the park's freak show. He then chained him to one of the park's rides and cruelly forced him to view giant pictures of his wounded daughter in various states of undress. Once Gordon completed the maddening gauntlet, the Joker ridiculed him as an example of "the average man," a naïve weakling doomed to insanity. Batman arrived to save Gordon, and the Joker retreated into the funhouse. Gordon managed to stay sane despite the torture and insisted that Batman capture the Joker legitimately. Batman entered the funhouse and faced the Joker's traps while the Joker tried to persuade his old foe that the world was inherently insane and thus not worth fighting for. Eventually, Batman tracked down the Joker and subdued him. Batman then attempted to reach out to the Joker to give up crime and put a stop to their years-long war. The Joker refused, but responded in a regretful, rather than manic manner, saying only "No, it's too late for that. Far too late." He then told Batman a morbid joke about inmates in an asylum, and the two old foes laughed together as the police arrived to take the Joker back into custody.
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