The theme of insanity has always been central to the concept of the Joker.
Though a cackling murderer, the Joker is also a dark, distorted mirror image of Batman (which may explain the character’s longevity — you can’t escape what you see in the mirror).
Both are ingenious and highly skilled costumed adventurers, but Batman protects them while the Joker attacks. Batman’s goals are altruistic and pro-social while the Joker is a malignant narcissistic master criminal, glorying in his own ruthless grin.
Free of all moral restraints, the Joker might be an unsettling reminder to the Masked Manhunter of what could happen if he were ever to “let himself go.”
As a shadowy reflection of Batman, this criminal clown clearly embodies the archetype of the Trickster, a figure that is part of the human mental structure, according to psychologist Carl Jung.
The Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences calls the Trickster
“…a collective shadow figure, a summation of all the inferior traits of character in individuals,” and one who “takes on the sacred cows of civilization, and does not hesitate to take advantage of whomever he can.”
“The Joker started out doing real scary things: he killed people,” observed Mike Gold in The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told. “Moreover, when he killed them, they died with a great big smile on their faces — a smile that resembled the unchanging grin of the Joker himself!”
Another factor in the Joker’s longevity is, no doubt, the character’s wide range. He can be played for horror or comedy, or anywhere in between, to suit the mood of the moment.
One of the best Joker stories — The Crazy Crime Clown in Batman 74 (Dec. 1952-Jan. 1953) — leans into comedy while toying with the insanity theme. The super-criminal seems to really have gone around the bend, becoming oblivious even to the value of money!
The Joker was engaged in what you might call reverse gaslighting — convincing everyone else that he was crazy. Batman thwarted him by playing a similar game.
“The Joker steals a series of worthless objects — such as a picture of the Mona Lisa painted on a billboard — and exhibits other bizarre behavior as part of a plot to get himself committed to Gotham City’s Institute for the Insane, where James Derek, a mentally unbalanced bank clerk who embezzled and then hid $1,000,000 in cash, has recently been incarcerated,” wrote comics historian Michael L Fleisher.
“Before long, a psychiatrist has diagnosed the Joker’s condition as ‘hebophrenic [sic] schizophrenia’ — ‘an insanity marked by extremely foolish behavior’ — and an elated Joker has been dispatched to the insane asylum, where he quickly succeeds in learning the location of the stolen bank loot from the sleep-talking James Derek.”
But two can play at gaslighting. Batman gets himself admitted to the asylum in disguise as Minos the Mind Reader. Among the patients, there are men who believe themselves to be Sir Isaac Newton, Christopher Columbus — and Batman!
However, the Joker sees through Batman’s disguise and traps the strait-jacketed hero in a padded room that he fills with water. But when the Joker returns to check on the proceedings, he finds not Minos but Bruce Wayne!
Just as the confused Joker finally figures out that Bruce Wayne must really be Batman, another Batman bursts in through the ventilator, followed by Robin!
This is, of course, the patient who thinks he’s Batman, who kept a Batman costume under his mattress.
The Joker, who’d pretended to lose his marbles to steal a fortune, has actually lost them by the end of the story.
“If Wayne is Batman, then Batman couldn’t be Batman,” the Joker raves. “But since Wayne couldn’t be Batman, then maybe I’m Batman! But that’s crazy — ha, ha, ha. So obviously — I’m crazy! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”
A few days later, having recovered from his “temporary insanity,” the Joker is transferred to state prison.
This era was one of the peaks of Batman’s venerable and varied career. Here we have not only a crackerjack story by Al Schwartz but also the art of Dick Sprang, whom comics historian Les Daniels called the “supreme stylist” of the early Batman artists. Sprang’s “clean line and bold sense of design” never fails to delight.
The story includes an amusing small touch. One of the exhibits in the Batcave shows how the Joker once used a set of false, detachable arms to escape the grip of a police officer. That’s an absurd supervillain trick that dates all the back to 1913 in the French movie serial Fantômas.
Much of American popular culture seems to have been anticipated in France decades before, including costumed supermen who engage in titanic struggles of good versus evil and always narrowly escape the fiendish traps that are set for them.
About Author
