DC Comics has spent over half a decade keeping fans confused about one of the big mysteries surrounding The Joker: just how many of them are there?
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Since Justice League #50 and the DC Rebirth initiative launched in 2016, there have been multiple versions of The Joker running around the Prime DC Universe, with little clarity on which ones we’re getting in each new Batman Universe story (or beyond), as well as what their respective origins and identities truly are. Batman: Three Jokers explored what’s going on with at least three of those Jokers from different eras of DC comics – and Jason Todd/Red Hood ended up killing at least one of them (the one who once beat him to death).
Well, The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing limited series hasn’t made the mystery of The Jokers any easier, by introducing a story of Two Jokers, each swearing he is the “real one,” colliding in a war for the mantle of King Madman. And, by the end, there could inevitably be only one Joker left standing!
The Man Who Stopped Laughing #12 sees the two Jokers running around Gotham finally meet for a final, all-out war. The previous chapters revealed that the Joker who opened the story – the one left for dead with a bullet wound in his head – was actually John Keyser, a former henchman that Joker altered into one of his doppelgangers. When Keyser took his role as “Joker” too far, the “real” Joker (the flamboyant villainous one in a purple overcoat) shot him and left him to die in Gotham, before relocating to Los Angeles. Naturally, when Keyser woke up and started carrying on as The Joker, West Coast Joker made a swift and bloody trip home.
The climax of The Man Who Stopped Laughing sees Keyser and Joker launch competing schemes of cataclysm for Gotham and killing one another – while Red Hood and Batman try to intervene. In the end, Jason Todd takes the ultimate risk of driving a train full of explosives with a blimp of Joker gas crashed into it, off the rails into the river.
Both Keyser and Joker are onboard the train, having come to an uneasy agreement to unite as a Joker franchise. However, when they go into the river, that alliance comes to a quick end: one Joker turns on the other and both go under the water in a bloody pool, but only one comes out.
As henchmen of both Jokers watch on, the surviving Joker comes out of the water carrying the head of his rival. With the mix of fire and Joker Gas that was in the wreck and the damage done to both Jokers, it’s impossible to discern for sure which one survived. All he’ll say about his identity is that ‘the pretender’ is gone, and “I’m the Joker.”
As the final voiceover for the series (from its uncertain narrator) implies: at this point the punchline to the “joke” about the real Joker and his origin is found in the constant twists and fakeouts with stories like The Man Who Stoped Laughing. And the only ones who don’t “get it” are the ones still hoping for some kind of clear, definitive, answer anytime soon. If ever.
Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing Is On Sale at DC Comics.
