Mindless Ones

What’s The Story?

The Joker is committing odd crimes, like just stealing a hairpin from a woman’s hair when in a shop full of furs worth half a million dollars

The second of three post’s looking at seminal takes on the Joker. Part 1 here.

I. Super Creep

“Do you want lipstick, sweet guy?”

I was five years old when Ashes to Ashes went to number one but I vividly remember how much the video disturbed me and continued to do so right up into my teens. There’s an intensity to it that few big name promos before or since have even attempted let alone matched, and why would they? Loosely centered around Bowie’s clown and a troupe of Blitz kids dressed in high fashion’s answer to mourning dress marching along a solarised beach, followed by a bulldozer, the video has the feel of a funeral set on some faraway peninsula of David Lynch’s imagination. The overall effect is alienated, surreal and ominous, reeking of drug addiction and mental illness, and while fans will detect an air of deep introspection this does nothing to create a more comfortable space.

Coming into his teenage years and young adulthood during the 70s and 80s respectively, Miller would have been steeped in Bowie’s career and protean flight through his various personae – aesthetically driven fiction suits which the mega star inhabited both on stage and to some extent in real life – so it comes as no surprise that a writer with his sensibilities would have produced a Joker that seems to borrow, intentionally or not, from Bowie’s iconographic legacy.

IT ENDS TONIGHT! (over the Jump)

Moore and Bolland, Miller and Varley, Morrison and well… a lot of different people. Three creative teams. Three definitive takes on the Joker.

Part 2 here

Prior to The Killing Joke’s publication the Joker was ahistorical except in a strict continuity sense. Post TKJ the character had if not a definite origin, the possibility of one. A less thoughtful writer might have failed to understand the importance of keeping history at one remove from the Joker, and a less skilful one might well have struggled to introduce its shadow into the Joker’s world without anchoring the character to specifics, but it’s with his usual elegance that Moore manages to maintain some distance between the origin and its subject.

Go loo-oo-oony after the jump

Here’s a few thoughts. Not many. Not enough time this week

Definitely in Greatest Hits mode at the moment, repackaging old tat to get ready for Christmas. 2.5% less VAT. Catastrophes averted by less.

Ancient Chinese Wisdom say: Jump! Juuuump!!

I got my black shirt on.
I got my Black Gloves on.
I got my ski mask on.
This shit’s been too long.
…
Cape killer, better you than me.
Cape killer, fuck superhero brutality!
Cape killer, I know your whole league’s grievin’
(Fuck ’em.)
Cape killer, but tonight we get even.

– Cape Killer, by Ice-2 (the Ice-T of Earth-2)

A thought caught me, late last night, and it won’t let go. So let’s kick it around a bit, and see what we get out.

More after the jump…

By God I’ve written some long winded posts. Everyone else has only managed to throw up one or two bigguns, but this here mindless poodle has at least five to his name and it’s time to give myself a break, in the name of my love-life, my free time and my sanity. So here it is, the first of a what will be an occassional, but altogether less masochistic, series of posts where I try to get to grips with what makes some of our fave baddies tick and why they have proven to be so popular. And maybe along the way unearth a few ideas that will serve as pointers, guiding today’s creative powerhouses towards a deeper understanding of their subject matter and, resultingly, a brighter, altogether more interesting future for the characters themselves.

Because everyone at DC gives a flying fuck what I think.

More after the jump