A classic villain, like a classic hero, casts many a shadow. So it is with Batman’s evil clown, the Joker.
Even Stephen King gave us his own variation on the theme in his 1986 novel It.
The comic book version of the Green Hornet faced an iteration of the Joker called the Clown (he appeared only in the Hornet’s Harvey Comics run, which began in June 1942). And a quarter-century later, Marvel’s Daredevil had the first of many battles with the Jester (Nobody Laughs at … the Jester, Daredevil 42, July 1968).
It figured, in a way. Both Daredevil and Batman are, after all, acrobatic, line-swinging, building-perching masked crimefighters who wear two little pointy things on their heads.
Points of comparison, you might call them.
The Jester, meanwhile, was a cross between Batman’s Joker and the Flash’s enemy the Trickster, knocking out innocent motorists with weaponized yo-yos and tripping up Daredevil with slippery marbles.
The Jester’s self-mocking theatricality came naturally. He was Jonathan Powers, an embittered actor who decided to prey upon a public that had booed him. However, though Powers clearly cannot play Cyrano, he can fight like him.
“With my superb skills … my titanic talents … I’ll reach the most dizzying heights of all!” the Jester declared. He wasn’t troubled by an inferiority complex.
More successful as a masked, harlequin-themed robber than he’d been on stage, the Jester is hired to get the inconveniently honest Foggy Nelson out of the race for district attorney.
Daredevil 42 wrapped up the title’s rather fun Mike/Matt saga. To preserve the secret of this identity, Matt Murdock had come up with an elaborate hoax.
As Alan Stewart recalled, “Improbable as it may seem, Matt has managed to convince Karen and Foggy that he has a twin brother named Mike and that Mike is Daredevil — and, as things have progressed, has also found himself actually enjoying playing the role of the more flamboyant and freewheeling Mike.”
But such a charade was, after all, cumbersome, and Matt finally decided to “kill Mike off.” But did that mean Daredevil was dead too? No indeed.
In issue 42, after they are captured by the Jester, Matt tells Karen and Foggy, “Yes, the original Daredevil was killed … but he trained someone else … to take his place! He never told anyone his identity … but he’ll be showing up any time now!”
And Matt should know, after all.
The year 1968 marked a major period of expansion for Marvel, and happy-go-lucky Daredevil might have gotten lost in the shuffle. But this issue ties the Man Without Fear directly into that expansion by sharing a background villain with the first issue of the magazine-sized experiment Spectacular Spider-Man.
The power-mad mayoral candidate Richard Raleigh plots against both superheroes before he is destroyed by the Man-Monster, a giant creation he had controlled by torture.
Naturally, Daily Bugle publisher J. Jonah Jameson — who always gets the wrong end of the stick — ends up editorializing about what a martyred hero the scheming megalomaniac was.
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