What's your favorite interpretation of The Joker in comics

>>83045006
Joker looks like he is about to get raped.

>>83045323
it looks more like the opposite

The killing joke joker.

Mark Hamill Joker is the only Joker as far as I'm concerned.

>>83045883
same

>>83045323
Go to bed Gordon...

All Joker versions are shit because the character is shit, but maybe The Killing Joke is the best one.

>>83045323
you fucks killed this meme like a week after its appearance because it got to be spread nonstop

>>83050669
Now it just needs to pass what I call the "Bane threshold": when a meme is run so far into the ground it bursts out of the earth on the other side, stronger than before.

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Talking big picture, I hate Jokergod when he's infinitely competent, but I love the mythological aspects of the Joker, and I can dig a Joker "trickster god" when Batman isn't infinitely competent Batgod to match.

The Joker is the only card in a 52-card deck not counted in that number. He's also the only character who uses cards as a motif: perhaps because he's self-aware. He's the only one capable of embodying chaos and opposition because he is aware of the order of the (52) universe(s), and sees/makes his place outside it.

There are other shadow/doppelganger archetypes, like Bizarro Superman and Reverse Flash, but I think the chaotic trickster in Batman's mythos manifested as such for a reason. The Batman is a guardian and god of order, associated with Hades (keeps the dead/monstrous contained, wealthy, wise) among others, but he refuses to kill: rather than the reaper, Batman is a guardian of the gate. The Joker, therefore, is a transgressor of the gate: born in his return from death (fall into acid), and possessed of supernatural qualities (like those of spirits, he can go toe to toe with superbeings) with no mask, an impossible feat for the mortal living.

1/3

>>83045006
there was one crazy anon who came on here once who said that they had all the memories of Harley Quinn and used to think that they were her.
their version of the joker was a kind of over weight 40 year old who seemed like he always wanted to be crazy to escape the monotony of life, but never really snapped so he just pretended
i think that interpretation was really neat.

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>>83054572
He escapes Arkham/Tartarus, usually leading a gang or other villains, but not in an orderly manner. I think this wild procession of villains is akin to the Wild Hunt, the ultimate myth of transgression of the gates of death, in which otherworldly creatures and the dead revel and ride to hunt the living. Note the combination of revelry and violence - that's pretty Joker.

If you look at the development of leaders of the Wild Hunt through history, it turns out the character of Harlequin, from which modern conceptions of the fool were developed, is an outgrowth of the Wild Hunt. The name Harlequin is a French recombination of Arlecchino, which is a translation of the Old French Hellequin. That term is itself derived from legendary Herla cyning / Herla Konig, a leader of the Wild Hunt. Herla Konig is related to the Erlkonig (elf/fairy king), a Germanic legendary psychopomp who tricks mostly children into crossing into an Otherworld (faerie/death/Annwn) and becoming trapped there.

The Erlkonig is a psychopomp, who crosses the life/death boundary, and convinces others to come with him, just as the Joker, locked in Arkham (death/Tartarus) convinced Dr. Harleen Quinnzel to join him on the dark side as Harley Quinn (Harlequin, a later leader of the Wild Hunt) by recreating his ritual lethal submersion at Ace Chemical (referencing water surfaces as a world/otherworld boundary, like the Lady in the Lake).

In Morrison's B+R, it's pretty widely accepted that Oberon Sexton is an assumed name of the Joker. Reasons for this further below.

Oberon is one of the many figures who is derived from Erlkonig (alongside Alberich and King Elegast, associated with the disguised king myth (Odin and Charlemagne respectively)). The disguised king is sometimes an ally, sometimes an adversary, and sometimes the same person as the Erlkonig character - see Bats and Joker's Yin/Yang thing.

>>83054572
>>83054905
3/3

Oberon was also "king of fairies," and if you look at Morrison's interpretation of fairies, as malevolent tricksters (OG Irish myth and Sheeda in Seven Soldiers), it makes sense that the Joker is the king of them all.

A sexton was a graveyard watchman and gravedigger, and a sexton was a collaborator in the Hamlet scene in which Yorick, the fool, has his grave robbed. Both Shakespeare references, so the connection is probably deliberate. Also, he was seeking to "unearth" Batman and dig Bruce up from his grave; another transgression of the life/death boundary.