The Golden Age Joker

Personal Data

Real Name Unknown

Residence: Mobile
Occupation: Professional Criminal
First Appearance (Golden Age): Batman #1 (Spring 1940) 
First Appearance (Post-Golden Age): Justice League of America #136  (September 1961)   

History

Few facts are known about the early life of the man who become known as the Joker of Earth-2. He claims to be descended from ancestors that were clowns (Batman #59) but this may be untrue. He also stated that he had been to prison, leading him to murder Judge Drake who had sentenced him (Batman #1) but it's not known why he was convicted. The first reliable knowledge is from late 1939, in which he is known to have been employed as a laboratory worker who become frustrated with his slow rate of success and decided to steal $1M ($20M in modern funds) and retire.  Using materials from his lab, he creates a metallic red hood with two way mirror for the eye hole, completely obscuring his identity and start a crime spree as the appropriately named "Red Hood".  He staged a series of brazen robberies for a month, frequently encountering and escaping from the Batman, becoming the first criminal Batman never caught. The Red Hood's career culminated with his final theft at the Monarch Card Company  where, to escape Batman, he dove into a vat of chemicals relying on his hood to feed him oxygen.  Once more escaping, he arrived at home to see that chemicals had drastically distorted his appearance, giving him chalk white skin, green hair and a red distorted smile which he thought looked like an evil clown.  From that point on, even though he had succeeded in his theft of $1M, he embarked a new identity as the criminal known as the Joker (Detective #168). 

While the physical impact of his submersion in the chemical waste of the card company was evident, it appears that at least initially there were mental effects as well as he graduated from simple burglary to outright murder. Using his chemistry skills, he developed a series of timed poisons that caused death accompanied by terminal laughter and a rictus grin. In the Spring of 1940, the Joker staged a series of very high profile murders coupled with thefts of gemstones, one of his favorite targets of robbery and murdered the judge who had once sent him to prison.  He was ultimately captured by Batman and jailed but promptly escaped using explosive chemicals hidden in two false teeth.  He resumed his gem thefts, murdering the police chief and several prominent citizens along the way.  He was finally cornered by Batman and in the ensuing struggle, impaled himsellf on the blade he intended for Batman.  Hearing the arriving authorities, Batman left the Joker for dead and departed. When the medics arrived, they found the Joker badly wounded but still alive. (Batman #1)

When news of the Joker's survival became known, Batman raced the local crime syndicate to remove the villain from the hospital but was outmatched.  The Joker spent the week in a private hospital jet owned by local syndicate members, recovering at a remarkable rate.  While the Joker superficially agreed to help them rob the jewels of millionaire E.S. Arthur, he ultimately betrays them as Batman arrives on the scene and attempts to grab the jewels from his other competitor in theft, the Catwoman.  While Arthur is found murdered by the Joker, Batman defeats the syndicate and renders the Joker unconscious before abandoning the scene with the Catwoman, who in turn promptly escapes (Batman #2).

For the next year and a half, the Joker returned from repeated apparent deaths to bedevil Batman and Robin.  These incidents included the adoption of a commonly used psuedonym "Rokej" (Detective #45),  forming a prototype "Royal Flush Gang" of card-themed criminals on a riverboat (Batman #5) and getting caught up in solving the puzzle in the will of a local comedian, largely by killing his competition (Detective #62).  In the summer of 1942, the Joker had becoming tired of living on the lamb and concocted a scheme to reset his legal record.  He surrendered to the local police and provided a lengthy confession to his many crimes and murders, for which the judge concluded the only reasonably penalty was death.  The Joker was summarily executed by electrocution but unknown to the state, he had again used his chemical knowledge to develop an agent activated by electricity that placed him a death-like state of suspended animation until his gang could steal his body and revive him with the antidote.  The judge ruled that since he had been duly executed, he had paid for his crimes in full and was not free.  Predictably, he used his new legal clean slate as a cover for his hang to commit crimes before ultimately being revealed and  thwarted by the Batman (Detective #64).

Possibly as a result of his physical death or the chemicals used to revive him from brain death, the Joker's behavior changed.  While still profoundly criminal, his madness manifest not as violence but as obsession with his arch enemy, the Batman.  He became convinced that his true destiny was to outwit Batman and destroy him specifically in a grand and ostentatious fashion.  Perhaps more strikingly, the Joker's murderous behavior stopped and since 1942, no murders were directly ascribed to the Joker or his henchmen.  Instead his crimes became increasingly manic and bizarre such as advertising crimes in the newspaper (Batman #11), sending provocative letters to notable figures (Batman #12) or pretending to be an actual clown (Batman #13), all to cover up or distract from a crime he was planning to commit.  He was convinced he would achieve the greatest satisfaction by commtting a crime that his nemesis could not thwart.

The Joker's madcap career continued for at least another 15 years.

Multiversity

Prior Earth-1 = The Joker of Earth-1, also known as the Silver Age Joker, has a largely similar history likely being born in the late 1940's and beginning his career as the Red Hood.  Several similarities exist between this Earth-1 Joker and his Earth-2 counterpart, though arguably the Earth-1 had a more murderous bent, perhaps because he never had the execution experience of the Earth-2 version since his career was largely after the suspension of the death penalty in the US.  His activities after the Crisis on Infinite Earths are unknown.

Prior Earth-0 = In the merged world that emerged in the wake of Crisis, the Joker is even more dangerous and violently insane that his counterparts on Earth-1 or Earth-1.  On this world he is a comedian who

Current Earth-0 =  The persona of this Earth's Joker have yet to be full realized and there is some evidence that there may be three of them    

Earth-3 = A

Earth-9 = A

Earth-22=  The Joker of this had a career that generally parallel his Earth-1 counterpart. In his later years, he became increasingly malevolent and chose to punish Batman by killing those close to the Dark Knight's best friend, Superman.  He unleashed joker venom gas in the offices of the Daily Planet, killing Perry White, Jimmy Olson and Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane, among others.  The Joker was quickly captured and tried but the rouge metahuman Magog decided that only death fit the Joker's crime and murdered him while Clown Prince was in police custody.  Magog was ruled justified in killing the Joker, much to Superman's "law and order" dismay. (Kingdom Come LS).

Earth-32 = A

Earth-37 = A

Earth-40= A

Powers/Skills

Mentally, the Joker is deviously clever and possessed of sufficient scientific training to design chemical toxins to aid his crimes and devise traps of a high level of complexity.  He is driven by an obsessive mania that may be inherent

Weaknesses/Limitations

Certainly at the beginning of his career, the Shade appeared extremely dependent on devices to channel dark energies and he could be easily defeated without them.  In the latter part of the 20th century, he had condensed his need to his Erebus Cane and separated from it caused him to lose his ability to defend himself.  What his limits currently are are unknown, tho given the more potent range of his abilities of his Earth-0 counterpart, they could be greater yet.

Appearances

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