Among the many enemies of Batman - The Penguin, Two-Face, The Mad Hatter – none are quite so recognizable as The Joker, with his wicked red grin and shocking green hair. The Joker has had many different portrayals over his 75-year span, with notable actors like Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson and the late Heath Ledger stepping into the clown shoes, and Oscar winner Jared Leto slated to portray the villain in 2016's blockbuster Suicide Squad.
There's been plenty of discussion about superheroes lately, but none specifically devoted to the ire between Batman and The Joker, like the new book out by Texas Tech University faculty members Robert Peaslee and Rob Weiner.
The book, titled "The Joker: A Serious Study of The Clown Prince of Crime," is the first scholarly examination of The Joker and the role he plays within the Batman realm, the world of comics, and the larger world of pop culture.
Weiner, a leader in comic scholarship and associate humanities librarian for Texas Tech University Libraries, co-edited the book. Weiner said The Joker, as a character, is one of the biggest characters in the Batman universe, villain or not.
"Despite the fact that he is a villain, he’s cooler than Batman, as Grant Morrison says, and he’s interesting," Weiner said. "The whole idea of this chaotic figure, that has been with us for 75 plus years, and it’s no surprise that the biggest films featuring Batman always have The Joker."
The Joker's unpredictability is what makes him "cool," Weiner said, which is a theme investigated in the book.
"In spite of the fact that The Joker is a sociopathic murderer, and loves to destroy things, he’s compelling as a character, in all his iterations from the 1940s to today," he said.
Robert Peaslee, the department chair for the College of Media & Communication's Journalism & EMC Department, agreed with Weiner, and said heroes are typically more interesting with a bigger conflict - such as a villain like The Joker.
"Villains are often more compelling," Peaslee said. "Or at least heroes are more compelling to the degree that they have a worthy villain that they sort of have to outmatch."
The coolness of The Joker explored in the book has also secured the supervillain's place in comic history as one of the greats. It also secured Peaslee and Weiner's book as a unique one among the study of comics.
"The Joker’s an ideal character for doing that because he allows you that flexibility, Peaslee said. "Other characters, based on the fanbase, their canonical stories, the things that everybody hangs onto and says, ‘This is what the character is,’ – that’s not there with The Joker. Except that there are no rules. That’s the only rule with The Joker, that there are no rules. So yeah, I think there are degrees to which that any particular manifestation of The Joker shaped that."
Comic scholarship - the academic study of heroes and villains like the ones found in Peaslee and Weiner's book - is gaining respect as a field of study, and has progressed quite a lot in the decades since it was introduced.
Throughout nearly eight decades of portrayals - "it compares Cesar Romero’s TV, sort of campy, whimsical Joker to Jack Nicholson’s somewhat more sinister, but not-quite-so-sinister as Heath Ledger" - The Joker has remained a force in comics, Weiner said.
"The Joker’s one of those characters that just – whether you’re a little kid or an 80-year-old, you can find something about that character that resonates with you."
“The Joker: A Serious Study of the Clown Prince of Crime” is available through Amazon or the University of Mississippi Press.
