He used to be a rather tame guy

Back when the Jester of Genocide appeared, he was a rather tame guy – it was required for him to be so since, well, those were different times. Yes, he was obviously a criminal – but so was Batman, who wasn’t too shy when it came to killing the villains, and with the gun that killed his parents.

So, besides his first appearance, when he was actually trigger-happy, the Joker was more of a pest than a murderous psychopath (we know he is sane, but the comic book characters with whom he interacts say that he is a lunatic). Robbing banks, getting caught, eventually escaping, robbing banks, getting caught, and so on – it’s a never-ending circle. Censorship was prevalent back then, so the comic books couldn’t contain any sex, harsh language, or gruesome murders.

A pest, a nuisance who couldn’t hold a candle when compared to today’s version.

But something from that age stuck with him – the use of gimmicks and goofy-looking gears. And from the first edition in which he appeared, there has been the use of Joker toxin. At least we are certain of that…

He disappeared for almost a decade

As previously mentioned, in the beginning, the Joker was something like an average villain. Which was no good because, after all, you don’t actually need someone like the Dark Knight to catch a simple prankster. Furthermore, by using him, the writers needed to dumb down the awesomeness of the Batman – which meant that, slowly, the Joker became less and less prominent in the comic books.

Thus, for the better part of the ‘60s and the first part of the ‘70s, the murderous clown was almost nowhere to be seen. Batman had to deal with other kinds of criminals, such as the Penguin.

It seems almost impossible for the yang to miss the yin. It seems almost impossible for the Dark Knight to function without the Joker, the one who tested him and proved that he was a hero. But it happened.

That was until ’73, four years into the total disappearance of the character. Then, in an attempt to boost comic sales, DC went back to its roots and reintroduced the Joker as the murdering psychopath who kills people, just because. The Joker’s Five Way Revenge was the storyline that brought him back and showed that he works better when he is used as a central character of overarching stories.