Here is my take on Three Jokers. This entire post is full of spoilers.
There are a couple things Iāve noticed here and I think people are missing one of the big points of this series.
Iāve read some posts here and watched some Youtube videos online after reading the book and people keeping asking who the real Joker is.
Asking who the real Joker is misses a key point of this series. Theyāre all the real Jokers.
To prove that point, let me ask you this. The Joker and Robin were both around for almost exactly the same time. Eighty years, only introduced a hand full of months apart from each other. So, whoās the real Robin?
Asking who the real Joker is; is just as ill-concieved a question as asking who the real Robin is.
Say for a moment that I said that the answer to who the real Robin is; is that the real Robin is Damian Wayne. If thatās my answer, because heās the newest and most current Robin, I have just invalidated every other Robin that has ever existed.
So, to try to pick which Jokers of the three is the āreal Jokerā is to miss the point of the story that they were all three the āreal Jokersā in their era just as much as each Robin was the āreal Robinā of their era.
I think one of the key points of the three Jokers was to give a comprehensive and direct explanation as to why the Jokers before and after the comics code have absolutely nothing to do with each other besides superficial aesthetics. They all three look like āthe Jokerā just as much as all Robins look like āthe Robin.ā They all call themselves āthe Jokerā just like all Robins at one point called themselves āRobinā in the singular. They each wanted to hold the position of being Batmanās arch enemy. Just like each Robin occupied the position of the person who trained under Batman.
But, give any criminal pathologist a study of the personality traits of the Jokers over these eighty years; and the conclusion will be that these three eras are three different people. They are as legitimately different as each Robin was. They are, in fact, nothing alike substantively.
DC decided with this series to turn āthe Jokerā into a mantle, instead of a single character. DC did this because it was the most direct way to explain why the Golden Age Joker, the Silver Age Joker, and the Bronze to present day Joker are written as if they were three different people.
Trying to explain the eighty years of the Three Jokers as if the Joker was a singular character would be as contradictory as trying to explain eighty years of the Five Robins as if the Robin was a singular character.
The only real difference here between the Three Jokers and the Five Robins (aside from there being 3 and 5) is that the reveal of the five Robins were explicit reveals and the reveal of the three Jokers was an open secret.
The five Robins were shown to us over time directly as each Robin passing the torch. The Three Jokers was instead an open secret that DC finally canonized with this series.
When the comics code came in and the original Joker (date wise) had to be turned from a unhinged mobster into a wacky and zany prankster; the writers didnāt give an explanation as to why the Joker changed into an entirely different person overnight. It just happened one day, and no one at that time gave an in-story reason for it. Then, when the comics code was lifted, they wanted a darker Joker again. But, not the mobster. It was the 1980ās, and the mobster was dated as something from the 40ās and 50ās at this point. This is where the writers created the nihilistic sadist. Like before, this change happened overnight and no one at the time gave an in-story reason for this change.
So, these are the breaking points. These are the Three Jokers. The Criminal Mobster from the 40ās to 50ās. The Clown Prankster from the 60ās to 70ās. And the Comedian nihilistic sadist from the 80ās (The Killing Joke) to the present day.
These lines were drawn by the original creators, because of the comics code coming and going, but without any in-story explanations as to what happened to the Joker or why the Joker changed.
So, Batman: Three Jokers comes in after all this time and instead of keeping the decades long ruse that somehow these three different characters that have three completely different personalities are somehow one character; decides to canonize the obvious and say that they are three different characters because there is no way to reconcile them together as one. Because the people who broke Joker going in and out of the comics code didnāt reconcile him as one at the time of the breaks. They broke him, gave no reason, broke him again, gave no reason again. So, they left the Jokerās personality continuity as a complete and total mess. Three Jokers is finally mopping up that mess that DC has inherited from its own past in the only logical way that it can be mopped up now; by turning the Joker into a mantle and retroactively drawing canonical lines separating him into different characters going in and out of the eras of the comics code.
The same goes for people asking for the Jokerās real back story. Again, each Joker has a different back story. They are three different people. Do the five Robins have the same back story? No; of course not. Why would they? Theyāre five different people.
One question I have seen raised is one that was thrown to us as readers by the Comedian at the end. Who was the original Joker?
This is a really good question, actually. Comic timeline wise; that would obviously be the Criminal. Butā¦ story line time wise; thatās put into a lot of question. The Comedian himself says he was, but then turns around in the very next sentence and says that the Criminal was.
I tend to think it was the Criminal. The Criminal says ābefore Batman, I ran this town.ā Batman says, the Criminal reminds him of the first time he ever encountered the Joker.
I think the Criminal and Batman are far more reliable people to trust here than the Comedian.
The Comedian told us, in The Killing Joke, that he often remembers his back story one way and other times other ways. That he himself prefers his back story to be multiple choice. The Comedian tells us here, in three Jokers, that he doesnāt want the Joker to be a defined concept. This is different from the Criminal who tells us that he does want the Joker to be a defined concept word for word in this issue. Just another example of how these three Jokers are three different people with three different personalities that can have different goals from each other.
Many have called the Comedian an unreliable narrator by his own admission, as far back as in The Killing Joke. Three Jokers takes this a step further and has the Comedian tell us, by his own admission, thatās heās an intentionally unreliable narrator. The Comedian wants the Joker to be a mysterious and undefined concept on purpose. This constant misdirection is on purpose.
So, because this misdirection is purposefully unreliable and contradictory; the safest thing to do is to just throw out everything that the Comedian has to say about who the original Joker was.
This makes the original Joker the Criminal for four reasons.
1: It makes sense with comic release dates.
2: Batman says he is.
3: The Criminal says he is.
4: The Comedian misdirects on purpose and so his words mean nothing on this topic.
I think some people have missed the point as to looking for the original Joker. Itās not a bad thing to look for this. The story itself invites you to. But, many seem to be emotionally taking that quest of who the first Joker was as meaning the same as who the ārealā Joker is. As if the community can somehow make the other Jokers āfakeā by finding the ārealā Joker by finding the original Joker. Again, this is a quest of validation by trying to call one Joker real over the others by assigning more value of legitimacy to the original Joker. As if somehow the original is ārealā and the others are āfake.ā Again, thatās as pointless as trying to say Dick Grayson is the ārealā Robin because heās the original Robin and all Robins who came after Dick Grayson are somehow āfakeā Robins.
I think this is all interesting, from a psychological perspective, because itās an interesting case study in fandom. What happens when you canonize the obvious but unspoken?
I think itās been obvious that there were three Jokers for decades now. Itās a rather long standing fan theory to explain away the personality inconsistencies that arise if you try to say that the Joker is one person. DC essentially canonized the fan theory because itās the only good explanation that can be given that makes any real sense.
My take away, is that some people are in a sort of shock and denial phase at this point. The Joker has been seen as one character by many of the fans for years. So, the first reaction from many fans was to try to push this new idea out of the way be constantly asking if it was canon so that they could easily write it off as not canon and not have to think about. When it was confirmed to be canon, the next step was to try to say it was multi-verse Jokers. When it was confirmed it didnāt have anything to do with Jokers from different universes, the next step was to try to say one of the three was the ārealā Joker while the rest were essentially āfakeā Jokers. When that didnāt work, the quest for who the original Joker began. Some people think that the idea of finding who the original Joker is gives more ārealnessā to the original Joker. When people realize that all three Jokers are the real Jokers, regardless of who the original Jokers was, the real take away will eventually became clear to everyone.
1: The Joker was broken by the comics code coming and going.
2: Canonizing the fan theory that heās been three different people this whole time is the most direct way to fix the comic code coming and going breaking the Joker.
3: Each Joker is real and legitimate and should be given the same proper respect as each of the Robins.
4: The debate on who the original Joker is might go on forever. But, again for my take on it, I go with the Criminal. But, I think healthy debate is a good thing on this topic.
What I donāt understand is why the three Joker concept is seen as so shocking and bothersome to some people. It makes perfect sense to me. Itās basically like paving over pot holes. The Joker was broken twice with no real good in-story reason ever given either time. He was broken so badly that he became effectively three different characters. I think itās better for canon to just canonize him as three different characters rather than leaving him as a mess of three different personalities that donāt fit together as one character. What they did here was the responsible thing to do for the Joker mantle.
And, look, they left us with the Joker most people today actually like anyway. So, itās not like much really changed in the modern cannon. It was more like a retroactive story patch than a modern canon overhaul.
