Batman: Joker Time
A three-issue limited series written and illustrated by Bob Hall, 2000’s Batman: Joker Time #1 begins with the Joker dying… onstage, yukking it up as a bad stand up comedian (akin to one of Joker’s “multiple-choice” origin stories in 1988’s Batman: The Killing Joke, among the comic book influences on Todd Phillips’ Joker). The Joker recounts his escape from Arkham Asylum after an attempt to treat his psychosis with television therapy, but reality TV drivel only drives Joker further over the edge.
When he ends up on Goth TV host Barry Dancer’s prime time television program and his “Joker Time” segment, Joker tries to kill Dancer on live television. Media madness turns Joker into a national TV star as his psychotherapy plays out in front of a live studio audience. As they say in showbiz: Leave ’em laughing.
The Batman Adventures: Mad Love
After the Arleen Sorkin-voiced Harley’s first appearance in the Batman: The Animated Series episode “Joker’s Favor” in 1992, the character made her comic book debut in the pages of 1993’s The Batman Adventures #12. Harley Quinn co-creators Paul Dini and Bruce Timm revealed Harley’s origin story in The Batman Adventures: Mad Love, a 64-page one-shot chronicling Harleen Quinzel’s beginnings as a pop psychologist interning at Arkham Aslyum who falls in love with her patient: the murderous, psychopathic clown known only as the Joker.
Batman: Going Sane
After seemingly killing Batman in a bombing, the Joker has a sudden realization: “If there’s no Batman to drive crazy, then what’s the point of being crazy?” In the four-part “Going Sane” storyline in 1994’s Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #65-#68 by J.M. DeMatteis, Joe Staton and Steve Mitchell, the Joker represses his insanity and adopts a new identity: as ordinary, law-abiding Gotham citizen Joseph Kerr.
The reformed “Joe Kerr” romances a woman named Rebecca Brown he plans to marry, but Batman’s return triggers the Joker persona to reemerge. In the end, a strait jacket-clad Joker laughs maniacally from inside his cell in Arkham.
Batman: Harley Quinn #1
Following her comic book debut in The Batman Adventures, Harley Quinn joins the DC Universe proper in 1999’s Batman: Harley Quinn #1. Written by Dini with art by Yvel Guichet, the one-shot plants the seeds for “Harlivy” when the jester-costumed criminal meets Poison Ivy after she’s blown up and left to die by the Joker. Recounting her origin as a first-year intern at Arkham Asylum who is seduced by Joker, Harley reveals she was committed after helping him escape. Harleen herself escapes Arkham after a devastating earthquake (during the Batman: No Man’s Land event) and suits up as Harley Quinn for the first time when she muscles in on Joker’s business dealings with the Penguin.
As sidekick to “Mister J.,” she’s blissfully unaware that the Joker sees her as little more than a distraction for Batman. “I’ve felt some changes coming over me since you entered my life. I’ve been reminded of what it’s like to be part of a couple, to care for someone who cares for me,” Joker tells Harley. “It’s the first time in recent memory I’ve had those feelings… and I hate having those feelings!” Joker leads Harley into a death trap, so she joins forces with Poison Ivy to get her revenge on Joker and Batman. “I loved you, but you never cared. All you did was hurt me, throw me away and laugh at me,” she says before exacting vengeance on her puddin’. The punchline: Joker claims to be so-rry, so Harley takes him back with open arms.
Joker: Devil’s Advocate
After he’s suspected of committing mass murder through stamps poisoned with Joker Venom, the Joker is arrested and put on trial in the 1996 one-shot Joker: Devil’s Advocate by Chuck Dixon and Graham Nolan. Joker’s attorney instructs him to enter an insanity plea, but Gotham’s assistant District Attorney puts the Joker on trial so that he’ll be found guilty and sentenced to death. As the prosecution presents their case in a televised trial, Batman’s investigation into the ongoing slayings leads him to deduce that the Joker is innocent in this case.
On the stand, the Joker takes credit for mass murder, maimings, torture, and terror… but not the poisoned stamps. Joker is found guilty on nine counts of first degree murder and sentenced to the electric chair, but it turns out that Batman — believing that the Joker shouldn’t be put to death for the crimes of the real killer — exonerates his arch-nemesis after bringing the killer to justice, and the Joker is granted a stay of execution.
At Arkham, Batman gets the last laugh when he tells Joker: “When you’re sitting here alone in the middle of the night, unsleeping in the dark, remember. Every breath you take you owe to me. What’s the matter? Don’t you have any jokes for me?”
Harley Quinn: Harley Loves Joker
The two-issue mini-series Harley Quinn: Harley Loves Joker, by Dini and Bret Blevins, is a classic Joker-Harley romp set during a Harley/Joker crime spree early in her career as Mister J.’s accomplice. The story pits the dysfunctional duo against Gabriela Matias, a.k.a. the Grison, who mixed animal and human DNA to become a mustelid-like hybrid. After Joker welcomes the master thief to his gang, the costumed Harley puts herself on the couch — in her own mind — as a patient of Dr. Quinzel. Harley’s subconscious tries to get her off the “codependent carousel” and out of her up-and-down, on-and-off relationship with Joker, so she sheds her jester identity for a pigtailed look in an attempt to be her own woman independent of the Joker. Ultimately, Harley resists her attempted emancipation and returns to the Joker.
Joker (2008)
2008’s Joker (since re-released under the mature DC Black Label), from writer Brian Azzarello and artist Lee Bermejo, is a street-level crime story told through the eyes of Joker henchman Jonny Frost. A dark noir graphic novel where Joker is as unpredictable as he is “un-understable” and Harley Quinn is a jester-themed stripper, Joker sees the scar-smiled criminal released from Arkham Asylum.
More Heath Ledger Joker than his traditional comic counterpart — the type to carve up a man’s face with a beer bottle and blow up a nightclub just because — this Joker has Killer Croc as his muscle as he goes to the streets to take back Gotham’s rackets, dealing with the likes of the Penguin, Two-Face, and the Riddler. Why so serious?
Harleen
Harley Quinn gets her own Joker-style origin story in DC Black Label’s Harleen, a three-issue series for mature readers written and illustrated by Stjepan Sejic. Like most versions of Harley’s origin, book one begins with Dr. Harleen Quinzel sympathizing with her patient: the Joker (who resembles a circus clown-painted Edward Cullen). Nightmares turn into fantasies that give way to delusions as she’s seduced by “Mr. Jay,” and an illicit, Gothamized version of Fifty Shades of Grey follows.
“The whole thing felt like one of those trashy romance tales where a plain, ordinary girl meets Mr. Tall, Sexy and Dangerous,” Harleen recalls. “A beast that simply needs her gentle touch and a little bit of guidance. In those stories, the girl helps the beast regain his humanity… in those stories, the beast loves the girl. I assure you, mine is not one such story. No, my story ended up being something completely different. My story’s the one where the girl dances with the devil, and he takes her with him on a long road to hell.” And you know what they say about the road to hell and good intentions, as Harley summarizes at the end: “All of our good intentions were just a big f—ing joke.”
Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity
2019’s Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity reimagines Harley Quinn as a forensic psychiatrist and profiler haunted by the murder of her roommate, Edie, five years earlier. The eight-issue DC Black Label series, by writer Kami Garcia with art by Mico Suayan, Jason Badower, and Mike Mayhew, sees Harley doggedly pursue the serial killer known as the Joker. With its photo-realistic art interspersed with noirish scenes as monochrome as its morally-gray characters, Criminal Sanity is a True Detective-esque crime thriller — one where the Joker’s insane depravity is on full display, and Harley is a heroine whose superpowers are forensic psychiatry, behavior analysis, and psychological profiling. After all: it’s a mad, mad, mad, mad world.
