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Joker: Stories
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In that story, the Joker was an unnamed engineer who quit his job at a chemical company to become a stand-up comedian, only to fail, miserably. Desperate to support his pregnant wife, he agreed to guide two criminals into the plant for a robbery. During the planning, the police came and informed him that his wife had just died in a household accident. Grief-stricken, the engineer tried to withdraw from the plan, but the criminals strong-armed him into keeping his commitment to them.
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The Joker first appeared in Batman #1 (Spring, 1940), one year after the hero's introduction in Detective Comics. The debut story featured one of his most horrifying schticks, the Grinning Death. Several times in that story, he proclaimed someone would die at midnight; and when The Joker says you'll die at midnight, you can be in a secure house packed solid with policemen, including Commissioner Gordon himself, with Batman patrolling the perimeter, but you will by gosh die at midnight — usually with a hideous grin on your face, rictus induced by his unique poison.
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During the events of the No Man's Land storyline, the Joker murders Sarah Essen Gordon, Commissioner Gordon's second wife, by shooting her in the head as she tries to protect the infants that he has kidnapped. He surrenders to Batman, but continues to taunt Gordon, provoking the Commissioner to shoot him in the kneecap. The Joker laments that he may be paralyzed, and then collapses with laughter as he "gets the joke" that Gordon has just avenged his daughter's paralysis.
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In "Best of All," another story in the anthology, the Joker murdered his abusive father as a child. His mother was revealed to be Batman's old friend and confidante Leslie Thompkins, which he revealed to Batman to torment him.
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In the 1950s and 1960s, following the imposition of the Comics Code Authority censorship board, the Joker shifted toward becoming a harmless, cackling nuisance. He disappeared from Batman stories almost entirely when Julius Schwartz took over editorship of the Batman comics in 1964.
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In the DC Comics/Dark Horse Comics crossover Joker-Mask #1-4 (2000), while vandalizing a museum exhibit, the Joker finds and wears The Mask, an item that grants the wearer a wide range of super powers and unleashes their hidden desires. Having no desires or personality traits that are hidden, the Joker essentially is himself but with near invulnerability, super speed, strength and other abilities. Using the Mask, Joker is able to defeat Batman and become unstoppable; the Joker quickly becomes bored with his power, but still refuses to remove the Mask. He takes over the Gotham television waves and broadcasts 24/7 destruction, threatening to destroy the world with bombs planted in every toy store. He tires of the scheme... and instead commandeers a nuclear bomb to destroy Gotham City. Batman confronts Joker/Mask, and his insistence that the Mask isn't funny forces the Joker to emerge and remove the mask.
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