How Gotham created the most faithful version of the Joker

“I’m more than a man. I’m an idea. A philosophy.”

The one thing Gotham gets right about the Joker that every other multimedia adaptation hasn’t is that the character is incredibly mutable. As opposed to most superhero comic book characters, the Joker has undergone significant changes in the 77 years since he was created by Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, and Bill Finger. Initially, the character was a pulp supervillain with a very distinctive look and modus operandi. Outfitted with chalk white skin, ruby red lips, a rictus grin, green hair, and a dapper purple suit, the Joker was a frightening underworld figure who killed whimsically and at random.

In the 1950s, the comic book industry was subjected to a moral panic that required the scrubbing away of all salacious content and the Joker underwent a drastic change. The formally cold-blooded killer became a criminal prankster more interested in antagonizing Batman than racking up a body count. In the next decade, the Joker underwent another significant revamp. Thanks primarily to writers Denny O’Neil and Steve Englehart, the character stopped being such a clown. He was depicted as a homicidal maniac whose garish appearance served as an ironic counterpoint to his monstrous behavior.

In the 1980s, the Joker became darker still. Alan Moore and Jim Starlin wrote him as an unstoppable psychopath obsessed with making the world as miserable and chaotic as possible. In the ‘90s, the Joker became somewhat prismatic. He wore an updated version of his original ‘40s gangster look, got a renewed fondness for ‘60s-style overly elaborate death traps but retained his grim ‘80s outlook. In the 2000s, the Joker’s antics were recontextualized as supervillain inspired terrorism. But in the 2010s, the character’s erratic behavior was finally given some context.