Joker’s ‘Smile’ Gag Is So Chilling, His Disappearing Pencil Seems Tame

In one of the most memorable moments of 2008’s The Dark Knight, the Joker asks a room of mobsters if they want to see a magic trick. The payoff of the “trick” – the Joker making a pencil “disappear” in a brutal act of violence – is a perfect encapsulation of the kind of Joker the movie was going for. Heath Ledger’s Joker was the scariest version of the character on film up to that point, and probably still is. Nonetheless, when Tom King and Mikel Janin depicted the Joker for his run on Batman, the depths of cruelty the Joker sank to were even more chilling.

King and Janin’s Joker is introduced in “The War of Jokes and Riddles” as an uncharacteristically scowling crank who, a year into Batman’s career, has lost any sense of humor in his fight with the Caped Crusader due to the predictability of losing to his pointy-eared adversary. As the story starts, the Joker is forcing comedians to try and make him laugh and murdering them when they inevitably fail. When the Riddler suggests the two join forces to kill Batman so that they won’t have to fight each other for the right, Joker simply shoots him and sparks a gang war between the two Gotham villains.

In an effort to get rid of the Riddler in Batman #26, Joker calls up Gotham’s mafia don Carmine Falcone and demands that he have Riddler killed within an hour. Falcone frantically sends goons to do as the Joker commands but the Riddler manages to get the upper hand with the help of Poison Ivy. When the hour is over, Falcone finds the Joker at his desk. The Joker notes Falcone failed so he took the teeth from Carmine’s mother and arranged them in a smile on his desk. He then opens fire, wounding Falcone and killing his guards. Joker decrees that the Falcone Crime Family’s resources are now his, and will be solely dedicated to killing Riddler until the War of Jokes and Riddles is concluded. As the Joker leaves, a young Oswald “Penguin” Cobblepot notes that Falcone’s mother lives three hours away in Metropolis. This means Joker actually attacked and killed her before he had even called Carmine.

During his feud with the Riddler, the glowering Joker is pure cruelty and malice. At least The Dark Knight‘s pencil trick was an act of defense and a demonstration to take him seriously as a threat. Murdering an already compliant Falcone’s mother gives the Joker nothing and actually risks Falcone allying with Batman or the Riddler in revenge. It’s an act of pointless cruelty that can only harm his cause, and communicates that the Joker is a force of nature – someone who it’s never safe to be around, even when you’re on his side.

By taking away the Joker’s ability to laugh, Tom King and Mikel Janin create a version of the clown even scarier than usual. Often, the scary part of the Joker is his predilection to find horrible things funny. But on this occasion, he was doing even more horrible things in a fruitless attempt to reclaim that laughter. By momentarily taking the Joker’s joy away, Batman may have done the impossible, creating a version of the Joker that made Batman prefer the usual, giggling, murderous Clown Prince of Crime. It takes a lot to be scarier than The Dark Knight version of the Joker, but the comics’ ‘smile’ gag does exactly that.

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