Best Joker Stories EVER!

I know I was slacking... part of it was vacation and part of it was slacking. Part of it was also that I have a BIG IDEA which is either going to be a Blog Post or a Book... or maybe the latter and then the former, I can't quite wrap my head around it. In any-case, in order to keep from starvation I offer up this, my list of Best Joker Stories EVER. And promises of more attentive posting in future.


1) The Laughing Fish - Detective Comics 475-476: I LOVE the Joker. I love him more than I love anyone else in the batman universe. For me this is the ULTIMATE Joker story, it perfectly combines his genius and his madness in his perfect and logical dedication to an INSANE idea (that he can trademark all Fish products because they look like him after he gassed them with his gas.) Most Joker stories are REALLY bad, but a few, like this one: grasp the essence of the character and play him perfectly. In addition, the way this story fits in to the over-arching Silver St. Cloud plot is wonderful and shows how well stand alone stories can figure into larger arcs without alienating readers who haven't been with the book the whole time (cough x-men)

2) Killing Joke - One Shot: The one problem with this story for me now is the thing which made it great for me when I first read it and for more than a decade following, namely that it tries TOO HARD to become a metaphoric encapsulation of the whole of Batman (esp in his relationship to the joker.) There's a childlike naivete to the idea that something which is big, like the meaning of life, can be wrapped up in something which is small... Maybe not childlike, adolescent. For me, I think a large part of adulthood is grasping the vastness of the universe, so I have a tough time relating to art which tries to wrap up its subject in a perfectly realized package, Killing Joke certainly does that. It's entire focus is on the Batman/Joker relationship, For me it is the ultimate 'deconstructionist comic' as it really does nothing more than pull apart the psychological underpinnings between the central, dysfunctional, co-dependant relationship. Still, it was important to me and important to comics, and has, for my money, the best Batman art EVER.

3) Robin II (Joker's Wild): My second favourite Batman character is Tim Drake. When I first started reading Batman in any real way it was the period AFTER Jason Todd but before Drake. First it was Frank Miller and then it was Tim Burton, but people decided that Robin was stupid. From his first appearance Tim Drake argued that HE WASN'T STUPID, perhaps it was forced, but at 12 I was impressed that this kid had been able to figure out Bruce Wayne was Batman (a nod to what I had always thought was Jim Gordon's stupidity.) But through his first year or two he still felt a little forced. To me he became Robin during the second mini-series. I know this was supposed to be a joker list and while I don't think that Dixon's Joker is as good as some others...this was an important series and it was well done. Drake has to stand up to the man who killed Todd, it had to happen and its executed well in this series.

4) A Black and White World - Batman Black and White #2 (Gaiman/Bisley): If you have never read the first 4 issue mini series of Batman Black and White you should really do so. There are SO many GREAT stories in this anthology (the McKeever one was on this list when it was Batman Stories.) This one features the Joker and Batman as 'Comic Book Actors.' Most of it happens when they're waiting for 'their scene to shoot' ...they banter and then run lines... then they shoot the scene, then as they go to lunch the Joker says:
"...Hey, that Splash Panel where you came through the window, that was just the coolest. I never get Panels like that."
(batman) "So? You get to make speeches. I don't get to make Speeches!"
(Joker) "Yeah, And? Well, you're the strong Silent Type, I'm the Crazed Speech Making Type"
For me the skewed perspective of the characters as working actors plays into the mindset of The Joker, it is more of him than of Batman.

5) Mad Love - One shot: Paul Dini is the other person who 'gets' the Joker. In addition to adding a much needed Foil to him for a TV show (as well as adding a much needed female character) Dini also created the PERFECT foil. One who totally understands The Joker and loves him for it, all of which sickens the Joker who only cares about Batman's opinion of him. This Origin book is great... and I haven't read it in years because my copy is worth a fortune. I should get the TPB huh?