I am very curious about Jared Leto's interpretation of The Joker in the upcoming Suicide Squad movie. One thing I like about his look is the lack of any scars or facial paralysis like we have seen in previous incarnations. The Joker laughs and smiles all the time because he is crazy, not because his face is frozen that way - It always frustrated me that the film versions didn't seem to get that. I could do without the "Damaged" tattoo on Leto's forehead, but other than that he looks closer to the Clown Prince of Crime than any other live action version. Let's hope his performance is an accurate one as well.
THANK YOU. You're are entirely correct that the Joker's face is not frozen... his first appearance in Batman #1 shows that on the first page. I'll bet Jack Nicholson would've been a hell of a lot happier if they'd played him that way, too.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. I like my Joker expressive. The insane smile should be there often but not permanent.
ReplyDeleteHow about Nexus vs The Joker?
ReplyDeleteIt's said that Bob Kane's original inspiration for the Joker was THE MAN WHO LAUGHED. A period-thriller (circa 17th century Europe) in which a man named Gwynplaine grows up in a traveling circus sideshow, whose owner/ringmaster surgically widened his smile! Warners Brothers evidently decided to take that one step further and, after seeing the box office success of the Tim Burton/Michael Keaton version of Batman, decided not to mess with a cinematically proven gimmick.
ReplyDelete"That's my theory and I'm stickin' to it."
P.S.---how about a sequel where Batman takes on DD's foe, the Jester?
ReplyDeleteSo much for Nicholson, Ledger, and Leto, but what about Romero's take on the Joker? Other than the outfit being more pastel-colored (which was to the style of the show, so that's no huge sin) and covering Cesar's mustache with makeup (there's a story behind that) he looked reasonably close to the original.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of personality, though, I hold that Nicholson's performance was the best of the live-action Jokers.
Oh, and I'll second Anon's PS. If DD takes on Joker, let Batman take on Jester.
For that matter, maybe Jack-in-the-Box (from Astro City) could take on the Joker -- or perhaps even team up with the Tangent version of the character.
You can find THE MAN WHO LAUGHED in its entirety on YouTube.
ReplyDeleteMind = blown...
ReplyDeleteOkay - great cover!
So, I never noticed that The Joker, while his grin is not stuck, makes his victims like him by giving them his smile - literally sticking it to them! Until it was retconned in that the fall into the vat as The Red Hood caused his looks - including his smile...?
'Cos - comics!
I like this.
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My suggestion for another Joker appearance: Team him up with Arcade,
whom somebody (ex-president Luthor?) has hired to target Bruce Wayne.
Joker says: "A whole 'underworld' full of death-traps? You must be crazy."
"I like that in a man."
(I scripted a complete four-issue storyline for this concept "just because", several years ago, but unfortunately seem to have lost it...)
Jerry Robinson created the Joker, not Bob Kane. About 90% of Kane's career consisted of taking credit for other people's work. In most cases that involved him paying them a fraction of his page rate for Batman art and then signing his name to it, but in the case of the Joker that was just outright theft.
ReplyDeleteRobinson was an assistant doing backgrounds and some inks in 1940 and was trying to make rent money by designing face cards for a playing card company. Doing that on company time could get you fired from DC back then, so Kane took his Joker card and used it for a Bill Finger story about an anonymous murderer. He then had Robinson draw the Joker's face in subsequent stories, initially under threat of revealing his moonlighting to management and then eventually out of routine.
A similar scene was featured on a recent issue of Daredevil with DD facing a similar fate at the hands of his own Joker, The Jester. Yes, locked in a guillotine.
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