The Dork Review: Rob's Room: 50 Jokers for the Month of October!

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Rob's Room: 50 Jokers for the Month of October!

This post is a Dork's Den / Rob's Room joint venture... a first (...and probably last...)! It was initially entitled "31 Jokers for the Month of October!" but paring down the list was a bigger challenge than anticipated, so the number was upped to 50. That's when the formatting challenges began... It's been a comedy of (t)errors to come up with this October list... so we hope you ~~ungrateful bastards~~ dear readers enjoy. The joke was certainly on us! Thanks to The Dork for helping me make this post happen.

Happy October! ☺

Let us know if you have a favorite Joker (in this list or one we may have overlooked) in the comments section! We love feedback!

Who Came Up with the Joker: The credit for creation of the Joker is disputed. Kane responded in a 1994 interview to claims that Jerry Robinson created the concept of the character:

Bill Finger and I created the Joker. Bill was the writer. Jerry Robinson came to me with a playing card of the Joker. That's the way I sum it up. [The Joker] looks like Conrad Veidt — you know, the actor in The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. Bill Finger had a book with a photograph of Conrad Veidt and showed it to me and said, 'Here's the Joker'. Jerry Robinson had absolutely nothing to do with it, but he'll always say he created it till he dies. He brought in a playing card, which we used for a couple of issues for him [the Joker] to use as his playing card.

Robinson has countered that he created the Joker to be Batman's larger-than-life nemesis when extra stories needed to be written quickly for Batman #1, and that he received credit for the story in a college course. Regarding the character's similarity with Conrad Veidt, Robinson said:

In that first meeting when I showed them that sketch of the Joker, Bill said it reminded him of Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs. That was the first mention of it...He can be credited and Bob himself, we all played a role in it. The concept was mine. Bill finished that first script from my outline of the persona and what should happen in the first story. He wrote the script of that, so he really was co-creator, and Bob and I did the visuals, so Bob was also [co-creator].