Origin

Once upon a time, in the tall, glittering city called Gotham City, there lived a man who wanted, more than anything else in the whole world, to make people laugh.

He was not very good at it, though — not yet. Every night, he stood on the small stage of a run-down comedy club, told his best jokes, and waited. And waited. But the room stayed quiet. No laughter. No smiles. Just silence, and the soft clink of ice in someone's glass.

He felt sad about that, the kind of quiet, ordinary sad that comes from trying your best and not quite getting there. He was also broke, with bills he could not pay, and one evening two crooks came to him with an offer. They needed a third person to help them sneak into a big factory called Ace Chemicals, where enormous vats bubbled and steam hissed from silver pipes. All he had to do was wear a red hood so nobody would recognize his face, they said, and help keep watch. It would be quick. It would be easy. He needed the money, so he agreed.

It was not quick. And it was not easy.

Because waiting inside Ace Chemicals that night was Batman, the protector of Gotham City, who always seemed to know exactly where trouble was brewing. The moment the crooks stepped inside, alarms rang out across the factory floor, and everyone scattered, running along the high steel catwalks above the chemical vats.

The man in the red hood ran too. But his foot slipped on the wet metal, and before he could catch himself, he was falling — down, down, down — into a huge vat of chemicals meant for dyeing fabric bright, brilliant colors.

He swam hard for the surface and pulled himself up over the edge, coughing, dripping, shaking from the cold night air outside. He had made it out. He was alive. But something about him felt different, strange, unfamiliar.

He found a puddle on the ground and looked down at his own reflection.

His skin had turned chalk-white, pale as a full moon. His hair, once ordinary, was now a bright, unmistakable green. And his mouth — no matter how hard he tried to close it, no matter how hard he tried to look serious — stayed curled into a huge, permanent, red smile.

He sat very still for a long moment, staring at the strange new face looking back at him.

And then, slowly, he began to laugh.

"HA," he said. Then, "HA HA." And then, louder, echoing off the factory walls: "HA HA HA!"

If Gotham City had turned him into the world's strangest joke, he decided right there by the puddle, then he would spend the rest of his days making sure Gotham City laughed right along with him — whether the city wanted to or not.

He said goodbye to his old, plain clothes forever. In their place, he chose a sharp purple suit and a bold orange tie, bright enough to be seen from across any street in the city. Nothing about him would ever be quiet again.

He started small, the way all good pranksters do. A joy-buzzer tucked inside a friendly handshake. An oversized playing card left behind like a signature, so everyone would know exactly who had visited. A wild, cackling laugh that drifted down the alleyways of Gotham City long after he had gone. Before long, he had even built himself a getaway car unlike anything the city had ever seen — a grinning, brightly painted Jokermobile with a horn that played tinny, tumbling circus music wherever it rolled.

It did not take long for Batman and Commissioner Gordon to catch him. It was, in fact, that very first week. They almost always caught him — that was simply how it went. But as the police wagon rumbled off into the Gotham City night, he leaned his chalk-white face against the cool glass of the window, grinning from ear to ear, already dreaming up his very next prank.

"HA HA HA," he laughed softly, watching the city lights blur past.

And so the Joker had arrived in Gotham City — mischievous, unpredictable, and utterly himself. Batman would stop him again and again, prank after prank, scheme after scheme. But every single time, no matter how the night ended, the Joker would simply laugh, dust himself off, and start planning something even sillier for tomorrow.

That was who he was now. And somewhere deep down, underneath the chalk-white face and the wild green hair, he was still just someone who wanted, more than anything, to make the world laugh.

Goodnight, Gotham City. The Joker will be back tomorrow.