8 Burning Questions About The Joker, Answered

The Joker is one of the most fascinating supervillains ever put in the pages of comics. In fact, he is one of the most fascinating fictional characters ever created, period. He’s so fascinating that an entire movie is being made about him – how many comic book villains can that be said for? Okay, Venom. But even Venom is a hero sometimes. The Joker is unequivocally a villain. In the words of Michael Caine’s Alfred, he just wants to watch the world burn. He doesn’t have any designs on world domination or purifying humanity – he just wants to create anarchy. Here are 8 Questions About The Joker, Answered.

8 Why is the Joker’s hair green?

It seems as though the Joker has specifically dressed himself up to look like a clown, but that’s just a coincidence. The most common version of his origin story – in other words, when he’s actually been given an origin story and not been left a mystery like the Heath Ledger version – is that he fell into a vat of chemicals that left his skin permanent bleached white, his lips permanently stained red, and his hair permanently dyed green. Ledger’s version is different, because he has smudged hair dye, smudged lipstick, and smudged facial makeup, suggesting he applied it all himself.

7 Does the Joker hate Batman?

No, he doesn’t hate him at all. In fact, quite the contrary. The Joker loves Batman, and has said so on a number of occasions in the comics. Still, even that doesn’t fully cover their relationship. It’s more like an obsession. The Joker needs Batman. Otherwise, what he does wouldn’t be any fun.

He’d have everyone in Gotham worshipping him and fearing him. Batman makes the Joker’s quest to create a chaotic world governed by anarchy a challenge. Their battle is not physical. It can’t be settled with a simple fight. It goes deeper than that; it’s psychological. It’s a battle of wits.

6 Is the Joker a clown?

Yes, yes, he’s known around Gotham City as “the Clown Prince of Crime.” But is he an actual clown? Is being a clown more than just having the makeup? Clowning is technically the use of physical comedic performance styles, like slapstick. Even on the grand scale of the Joker’s schemes, what he does is nothing like slapstick. He’s too smart for that. The Joker may dress like a clown, but he’s more like a magician. He uses misdirection to deceive people and then surprise them with a big twist – even if that means using a clown prop, like a flower that squirts water, for nefarious purposes by filling it with acid. That’s closer to a magic trick, because it involves misdirection, than mere clowning.

5 Does the Joker truly love Harley Quinn?

The Joker and Harley Quinn’s relationship is one of the most complex in comic book history. The relationship is co-dependent and also abusive on both sides, in very different ways. But does the Joker truly love Harley Quinn and does she truly love him back? It’s a difficult question. The Joker could’ve used Harley’s obsession with him as a means to break out of Arkham Asylum and she could’ve used his dependence on her to fuel a tell-all memoir about life with the most dangerous man in Gotham. However, it seems as though he does love her, based on the changes to his plan. His original plan was to seduce Dr. Harleen Quinzel so that she would break him out of Arkham and then kill her. But he didn’t kill her – he kept her around, suggesting he really did care about her.

4 Have Batman and the Joker ever teamed up?

Despite the fact they’re possibly the most famous hero/villain pairing in the history of comics, Batman and the Joker have actually teamed up a bunch of times. Once, the Joker was framed for murdering the Penguin and the two teamed up to find the real killer and clear his name. Another time, they fought their way through the violent psychopaths held in Arkham Asylum together. When they were both infected with the same virus, they faced it together as they both slowly became weaker and weaker. They once even had their bodies melded together and became Siamese twins for a while.

3 How old is the Joker?

It depends on the rendition. Bob Kane once said that he pictured Batman as a young Cary Grant. When Batman was created in 1939, Cary Grant was 35, and modern incarnations of Batman depict him as around 34 years old (25 years after his parents were killed when he was nine), so this is about right. Batman has been that old now for 80 years. The Joker is different, though. We know a lot less about him, and it’s hard to tell age based on bleached skin – it tends not to wrinkle. The Joker was initially depicted as being much older than Batman. However, The Killing Joke presented his origin as a young comedian with a pregnant wife, and he was about 25 in it. This was nine years before the common DC canon, making him 34 now, so maybe the Joker is the same age as Batman.

2 What is the Joker’s real name?

For years, the Joker had no real name in the DC Comics canon. He’d been given names on the screen, like Jack Napier in Tim Burton’s Batman or Arthur Fleck in Joaquin Phoenix’s upcoming Joker movie, but he didn’t have an official bona fide alter ego. That is, until 2017, when the name Jack Napier was approved by Warner Bros. for use in an actual comic book, confirming this as his real name. It only took 77 years between his first appearance in Batman #1 and the confirmation of his real name in Batman: White Knight, which made Batman the villain and the Joker the hero.

1 Did the Joker kill Bruce Wayne’s parents?

In Tim Burton’s first Batman movie, it is revealed that the man who killed Bruce Wayne’s parents was in fact Jack Napier, the mobster who would go on to get burned by chemicals and become the Joker. This neatly tied up Batman and the Joker’s close, contentious relationship within the context of the film. However, in DC Comics canon, it was not the Joker who killed Bruce’s parents; it was just some thug named Joe Chill. Batman and the Joker’s relationship is an ongoing thing. It doesn’t date back to some major event – it’s just based on who they are, inherently.

About The Author

Ben Sherlock
(3461 Articles Published)

Ben Sherlock is a writer, comedian, independent filmmaker, and Burt Reynolds enthusiast. He writes lists for Screen Rant and features and reviews for Game Rant. He’s currently in pre-production on his first feature (and has been for a while, because filmmaking is expensive). You can catch him performing standup at odd pubs around the UK that will give him stage time. Previously, he wrote for Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop.

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