The Wild Card

Today's random idea for a DC character: the Joker.

They never find a body...it's one of the Joker's prominent tropes. He keeps falling off of tall structures, plunging into the harbor, getting seriously wounded and barely managing to crawl offstage, or just plain disappearing before he can be brought to justice. That he has managed to thwart death so many times is something that even the other characters in the comics have noticed.

There's another thing about the Joker they haven't remarked on much within the comics, though, and that's his variability: not only in physique and appearance, but in personality -- in some eras, he's just a gangster with a penchant for elaborate practical jokes, at other times, he's a whimsical prankster more apt to rob a bank using some joke-shop gimmickry than to actually harm anyone, and in the modern age, for a good long while, he's been a flat-out homicidal maniac. About the only thing he's kept consistently, through nearly every appearance, has been the characteristic purple-orange-and-green outfit, the green hair, white skin and vivid red lips, and of course the distinctively-designed Joker calling card. Even the hair/skin color has varied over the years from makeup to acid-induced disfigurement to, recently, rather sloppy makeup over a set of nasty scars.

Another thing long established about the Joker is that even he doesn't really remember who he was before he became the Joker; as Alan Moore memorably put it, if the Joker must have a past, he'd prefer it to be multiple-choice. In different appearances, he's been everything from a two-bit hood, to a successful and well-to-do hood, to the Red Hood, to a guy with no history at all who likes to lie about his scars.

One characteristic he's almost always had is fearlessness, willing to go toe-to-toe with some of the toughest heroes in the DC Universe...and it's not just bravado: at times, he's been able to make a credible showing in plain brawling even against opponents with superhuman strength. And yet he's not supposed to have any 'powers', beyond being batshit insane; he seems to win, at times, just on the sheer power of being the Joker.

How does he do it? Where did he come from? How can one guy have so many different backstories? How can "a man of his physique who engages in regular exercise" actually trade punches with Batman for at least a couple of pages and still be standing at the end of it?

And most importantly, how does he keep surviving after all his apparent demises over the years?

Simple. He doesn't. He hasn't been. The Joker has died several times, for real and permanently, right in front of us...and we, along with Batman, have believed that it's the same guy coming back again and again. How do we know it's the Joker? Because we recognize the outfit and makeup he's wearing -- and the logical flaw in that should be readily apparent even if you're not the World's Greatest Detective.

So in my Joker story, they do find a body. In fact they find all the bodies. Dozens of guys who have been the Joker, until reckless disregard for their own safety has brought their serial careers to the inevitable end. Except for a few whose remains have been well and truly lost, they've all been piled up in a cave near Gotham. Most of them are tall and thin, some of them are of average height, at least one of them is built like Jack Nicholson and another one actually has white greasepaint over the remains of a moustache. They're all wearing their own versions of the purple suit. And they're all just as dead as Thomas and Martha Wayne.

The one thing that all of them have had in common, the thing that's in possession of the current Joker now (and take that phrasing however you want), is a single playing card with a distinctively ugly Joker on it...