Is the Joker funny?
Should he be?
These simple questions seem absurd on multiple levels. The term "Joker" is almost as subjective as the term "funny." Which Joker? Cesar Romero, Heath Ledger, Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Hamill? The one from the comics? Just kidding: there's way more than just one from the comics.
There are even a few different Mark Hamill Jokers at this point—he’s voiced various versions of the character in animated series and movies, the Arkham video game series, and even a dubbed live-action performance.
You could answer, “The Joker’s an unrepentant criminal who thinks morality is for chumps. He’s funny to himself, but if you’re nodding along to all his jokes, there may be something wrong with you.”
But fiction makes psychopaths of us all, to some degree. A key aspect of psychopathy is a lack of empathy—believing and behaving as if other people aren’t real. But the Joker’s victims, like the Joker himself, aren’t real. It’s all made up, so it’s fine to laugh if the story directs us to laughter.
And this may overcomplicate the issue. If you had to explain the Joker to someone who's avoided all Batman media, you might say, "He's a comedian-criminal: he turns crime into comedy and comedy into crime." Comedy should be funny, right?
So it's a bit of a shock to look at the first Joker story and find that when introduced (1940’s Batman #1), he wasn't funny at all. Most of the punchlines in this first encounter go to Batman:
Although the Joker’s killings are varied and showy enough to be a kind of theater, the only joke he has to tell is the cosmic “joke” of mortality itself.
Like any worthy comedian, though, the Joker soon refines his act. By Batman #11-12—less than one year later!—he’s become a much jollier sort of criminal, and his actions do little lasting harm.
He starts toying with whimsical “theme crimes”:
In most legal systems, chaining the D.A. to a giant frame, leaving live fireworks in the mayor's office, and slathering red paint everywhere would at least be misdemeanors. Yet Batman and the Joker alike treat this mischief as a smokescreen for the real crime of bank robbery. And even a robbery can be harmless if the robbers are caught and the money is returned afterward. Everyone seems to have forgotten the Joker was ever a killer.
Also revealing is this line: "The Joker's gone crazy at last!" Despite how he'd be played in later years, the Joker of this period wasn't diagnosed as insane, just eccentric. At most, his off-kilter sensibility was seen as at risk of madness, sort of like when your mother warns you, “If you keep making that face, it'll freeze like that.”
This was who the Joker was from 1941 to 1971: comical, money-motivated, kid-friendly. Oh, he'd still leave Batman and Robin in a death trap now and then, but he'd often only try to embarrass them. By 1952, he was so harmless he sometimes looked like a protagonist ("Joker's Millions," Detective Comics #180):
(“Lavender! It’s simply not done, sir!” Siri, what is “gay coding”?)
This culminated in the 1960s Batman TV series, which camped up the comics material even more, aided by Cesar Romero's compulsive laughter and mime-like reactions:
The TV fad soon faded, though—the show barely lasted three seasons, ending in 1966. The comics then started moving away from silly thrills to meet the growing demand for more "grown-up" stories. So the Joker, then the silliest element of the series, vanished. He wouldn’t be seen again for four years.
Tomorrow: The humor/horror dichotomy.