Batman: Three Jokers Was a Mistake

DC Comics tried to say that there have been three Jokers this whole time and BOY HOWDY, that became a mess!

Featuring the voices of @AT4W and @WednesdayPull

Special thanks to our Patrons for helping make this possible!
Bonnie Davies, The Brain Teaser, Justin Wells, Milton Appling, Ethan Dannen, Davidnh, Yehoshua Flores, Yoav Haimovitz, Leviathan, LookWhosFhtagn, Lora, Camden McDonald, Andrew Shaffer, Vydal

The song Roots by Kupla was provided by Lofi Girl.

Tags: #Batman #Joker #Comics

[ComicDrake]

Yes, I know the rumor that Killing Joke was meant to be canon, but explaining the nuance would have been a tangent that wouldn't really flow well in the video because Fabok and Johns have both talked multiple times about the now debunked history of it not originally being so and how it was their goal to follow in its footsteps with Three Jokers.

For this video, I went with their narrative of Killing Joke's canonicity for the sake of flow.

[typemasters]

It might have been the worst retcon and a mistake but I can’t deny how funny it is to imagine three Jokers having to create a schedule to determine who is where at what time to make sure the illusion isn’t broken.

[JokerFan-hjiv]

I much prefer grant Morrison’s idea that joker just evolved his persona over time like an artist going through different periods.

[keeganseck]

Joker manipulating Batman into forgiving his parents' killer and moving past his childhood trauma just so that he'd be the biggest problem in his life is some real Joker level pettiness.

"No, I"M the worst thing to ever happen to you!"

[TheNemesis]

0:21 People to this day completely miss this panel and take Joker's "The Killing Joke" backstory as an absolute truth.
"-What did he tell you, Harley? Was it the line about the abusive father, or the one about alcoholic mom? Of course, the runaway orphan story is particularly moving, too. What was it he told that one parole officer? Oh, yes... "There was only one time I ever saw dad really happy. He took me to the ice show when I was seven..."
-Circus. He said it was the circus."

[edmaldonado]

I prefer the idea of the "three" Jokers being three personalities that the ONE Joker uses depending on his whims. In other words, he reinvents his entire identity depending on what he wants to do. This is also Grant Morrison's idea from his famous run on Batman. Having three literal Jokers is just so dumb and overly complicated in my opinion.

Also the Joker's true identity should never been set in stone ever. To me, he represents the random senseless violence that took away Bruce's parents. It's much more of an existential threat if Joker's true identity is always a mystery, filled with contradictions.

[denzellmovies]

I never understood the significance of the Joker having different iterations throughout the years. Because that is basically the case for every single comic book character. So I don't get why it supposedly needs to be explained in this story

[CavemanBatman]

I hated this whole story, but the thing I hate the most is Jason’s note to Barbara at the end. “I’ll go to therapy if you date me. I’ll even stop being Red Hood.” Nice way to put all the pressure of your mental health recovery on her. Glad it was swept away 😂

[gradualdecay]

I hate it when comic book writers get hung up on characters not being 100% consistent throughout their ~70 years of history. Joker is different at different times because he is written by different writers. You don't have to come up with some convoluted lore explaining the reason.

[MANESHARK]

The Joker doesn't need three personalities. He's an agent of chaos. One day he can throw a pie in the mayors face, and the next, he can blow up a hospital. He does what he finds funny. Sometimes that's catastrophic. Sometimes it's just inconvenient.

[theredrighthandproductions]

So my hot take is that canonizing the Joker's backstory from The Killing Joke does not in fact go against the entire point of the comic and in fact reinforces it.

See. The way I've always read The Killing Joke is that the picture it paints of The Joker is that of a man desperate for an external validation for his life of cruelty. He's absolutely desperate to prove to himself and to the one person who gives him the time of day that secretly everyone is like him deep down, because he's absolutely terrified of the alternative. Absolutely terrified of ever acknowledging that maybe he's in the wrong, that maybe it's him that's broken and not the world. That's even the whole deal with his multiple choice origin nonsense. It is explicitly, textually nonsense. Throughout the comic we are explicitly shown his origin story. He just lies to himself and says he doesn't remember it because he doesn't want to. Because as Batman straight up says to him in the comic itself, "Maybe ordinary people dont always crack. Maybe there isnt a need to crawl under a rock with all the other slimy things when trouble hits. Maybe it was just you, all the time."

Thats why we're explicitly shown his backstory. Its an intentional contrast to the words coming out of his mouth.

That's my two cents anyways.

[nathanl]

The problem with giving Joker a backstory isn't that it undoes his character in any meaningful sense imo, but just that he's a character different artists have taken in wildly different directions and so it's kind of impossible to go back and give him an origin story that works as a lead-in to all those different takes. Making him literally multiple different people is a cute meta approach to the question, but as an actual explanation it's just asinine.

[RebelTrooperHoth]

I do like the idea that Joker is truly just a rotten person, even before the acid. Batman knowing he is makes sense to, he is the world’s greatest detective

[Lozzu]

Hearing Linkara go Joker gave me whiplash, thought I clicked a different video for a sec lol

[SirFailsalot]

Personally, I just say the Three Jokers should have pretty much stayed being an evolution of the character to adapt to the presence of Batman in Gotham, three eras of the same character so distinct from each other that you swear that they have to be three different people:

The Criminal being a mob boss that's more dangerous than Carmine Falcone, Black Mask or Sal Maroni, who has grown bored of dealing with the GCPD and sees Batman as a new, more interesting challenge that brings a smile back to his face.

The Clown being the next stage in the Joker's fixation on Batman, spending his time coming up with wild life-threatening "pranks" to try and push Batman to the limits of his no-kill rule, proving all it takes is "one bad day" to become just like him.

And the Comedian being the Joker at his breaking point as he fully embraces his craving to watch the world burn just for laughs, whilst Batman tries to stop him yet never accepts that maybe killing the Joker would be the best option for the sake of everyone, since he's become that dangerous.

Three Jokers for three stages in his life that revolve around his growing obsession with Batman, each becoming more and more dangerous and unhinged as the years go by - it might not be perfect for a comic book that needs to keep being sold forever, but it's just how I feel it would work best.

[slykilla]

Another dumb thing with the 3 jokers book is why would batman ask the chair the jokers name if he already knew it after the first week?

[ToaArcan]

Man, Linkara makes a good Jonkler.

The issue with Zdarsky's versions of the origin is that it still doesn't quite fit with the Mobius Chair's request for clarification on which Joker's identity Bruce wanted to know.


If the three Jokers are weird quantum multiverse anomaly duplicates of one guy and then two of them were immediately killed, then they all share the same true identity and that there was three of them for about five minutes is a weird blip and not a mystery at all. There's one Joker with one real origin, and the Chair should be able to answer.

If the three Jokers are three distinct personalities within the same man, two of whom were created within Joker's mind via training from Capito, then the question still only has one answer. There's one true identity, and the other two don't _have_ true identities, they're just different bits of the same dude's brain.

[Dreadjaws]

There are many things that annoy me about this whole "Three Jokers" deal, but the main one that absolutely grinds my gears is how the story tries to tie up stuff like the New Gods and multiverses to the Joker. No, stop that. The entire deal of the Joker's story with Batman is that they're just two physically exceptional but still relatively normal people going at each other, and Joker's backstory remaining an unsolved mystery is not just key to the character's appeal but also makes it poignant to Batman's career as a detective. That's the one mystery he'll never solve and it's important it remains that way.

This sort of thing that modern writers don't seem to understand. Yes, street level characters like Batman and Spider-Man are part of a larger universe and they will eventually face larger, completely out-of-whack adversaries and events, but that doesn't mean you have to make it a constant part of their personal life. They've basically completely ruined Spider-Man's appeal by turning him into a multiversal hero and they're trying to do this shit with Batman too. And don't even mention that time they made the freaking Punisher a freaking angel. Stop it. You have other heroes to do this kind of thing with. Leave the street-level heroes to do what they do best.

[SolracDude]

I’ll be honest, I never really bought into the whole ambiguous backstory thing because everything in Killing Joke except for that one line points towards the tragic backstory being the clear definitive origin.
To me, the multiple choice line is more so about how Joker as a person rejects his history because he doesn’t want to be tethered to any single identity.

[nono]

Fixating on why the Joker is inconsistent is a ludicrous thing because nearly every DC character has been written to be inconsistent due to how long they've been around. With the Joker there's the least reason to analyze it.