"But Sugary," I hear you cry, "What about that version that wore the black and white tux? Or the version from The Batman; he wore a straitjacket!" Well, you're absolutely correct, sir or madam, the Joker has indeed worn other items of clothing in the past (including, to much snickering from Joker fans and many cries of "OMG SO WRONG!" from Bat-fans, wearing Jason Todd's ripped up Robin costume in an issue taking place in a virtual reality world. I'm fed ducking serious about that, and here's a picture from one of my favorite blogs Joker In Ink to prove it). However, the outcry over the Joker's non-traditional garb in The Batman was so great from fans that Warner Bros. eventually put him back in the trademark Joker suit (although he was still barefoot), which looked... well, it looked really weird to see monkey-lookin' Joker in a suit, but okay. And sure, plenty of Jokers have their own look - Ledger's has more of a scraggly look and that blue hexagon shirt, Nicholson's has the checkerboard pants instead of the traditional pinstripe, and Batman: Arkham Asylum/Arkham City's Joker looks like a hodge-podge of Ledger, Romero, and Comic, sounds like Hamill's Joker, and has the demeanor and some of the look of Nicholson's Joker. All in all, every Joker seems to have his own style when it comes to the suit, but the basics still remain, and even today if you ask a random stranger on the street what the Joker looks like, they'll basically give you the same story: a tall, thin, very pale man with green hair and an enormous grin wearing a purple suit, pinstriped pants, an orange or green undershirt, gentleman's shoes with white spats (usually), and that dastardly trick flower in the jacket's lapel. Depending on who you ask, they may embellish with ideas from their own image of what the Joker should be like, or if they're veteran Joker fans, they may add details like his green eyes and nails, a dandy cane with a jester's head as the handle, or a trenchcoat and hat. However, every version still has that purple suit present at least somewhere, and although that's not true for all Jokers, I'll be using the classic image of the Joker to analyze his attire and appearance. For you see, an awful lot can be determined about his personality, motives, and how evil his is just by looking at him. We all know he's bad, and even going back to our first memories of when we saw the Joker we knew immediately he was probably a really crazy bad guy, but why? Well, that's what I'm gonna look at today - how the Joker's appearance in general imples who he is and what he does, and what tricks the artist (or the character himself) might use to obtain that image.
First up, let's look away from the creepy clown face and grin a moment and check out his suit. As ZZ Top once famously put to song, "Every girl's crazy 'bout a sharp-dressed man", and it really does seem like the Joker subscribes to a similar belief. Look at the man's personality - he's vain, he's egocentric, he absolutely loves himself. The idea of putting the guy in a suit perfectly fits that idea, especially since it's a business suit look. Furthermore, it has elements of a ringmaster's attire to it as well - showy, but professional. Clearly this is the suit of a man who wants to say that he's serious about his work, which is crime, but also is in it to be a show-stopper, because crime is "fun" to him. Interesting enough, the suit changes with how serious or fun-loving the Joker wearing it is. Ledger!Joker's suit, for example, is a lot more businessy, indicating a certain professionalism to the spread of chaos, a method to the madness. That suit is the suit of a criminal who takes his view of anarchy seriously, believing it to be a rational idea. It's almost like a politician's or businessman's suit in that way, blending a sense of "I have a message to tell you" with the same Jokery irrationality we all know and love. Meanwhile, the traditional suit of the Silver to Bronze Age Joker is much more flamboyant, with more flair to it. It's much more ringmaster than businessman, with coattails and lapels and gloves and everything. It's the suit of someone who is in crime because it's fun, the more boistrous and flamboyant, the better. This Joker clearly wants to show you what "fun" is, even especially if it's causing danger, death, and destruction (all the better to rope the Batman into chasing him). Another interesting implication behind the suit is that since it is more professional-looking and actually well-kept, perhaps the Joker takes his personal appearance seriously - notice that he is almost always clean-shaven, and tends to wear shorter haircuts even if his hair is messily styled. That type of attention to detail is not something the average psychopath would go for, which to me either indicates that it's part of the Joker's rampant narcissism (and therefore part of his insanity), or intriguingly, that he may not be as crazy as he lets on, which leads to the implication that the Joker may very well be pretending, at least partially, to be crazier than he actually is. Whether that itself indicates a delusional mind or not is a discussion for another time and highly subjective to personal opinion, so I'll move on from it since we have more things to discuss.
Next up, the colors of the Joker's suit. Despite what else changes about his design, the colors always remain - purple, orange, and green. To further explore the meaning behind these color choices from both an artist's standpoint and the Joker's, I did some research on the symbolism behind common colors. The sites I found on the subject seemed to all concur the same ideas. Orange, for example, represents flamboyance, a need for attention, creativity, determination, and sometimes humor. Green represents luck, vigor, freedom, and misfortune amongst the obvious symbols such as nature and fertility. And purple, easily the dominant color in the Joker's wardrobe, can indicate royalty, arrogance, cruelty (which I find very interesting), individualism, wit, creativity, and vanity. All of these seem to be traits the Joker has, or at least feels he possesses. Okay some are a bit of a stretch, but the guy constantly cheats death (luck), his origin involves a chemical accident (misfortune), and he's not called the Clown Prince of Crime for nothing (royalty). It doesn't seem like an accident that the Joker was given these colors, nor does it seem all that unreasonable for the Joker to have some idea of the symbolic nature of these colors and thus choose them for his wardrobe based on them. He is, after all, a villain with a carnival/playing card theme, using bright colors like these would be essential. The brightness, suggesting the chaotic and madcap nature of a carnival, makes it appear that he's stepped out of that world and into the streets of Gotham, that is, it makes him stand out, which is precisely what the Joker strives to do in every crime he commits. Furthermore, the chaotic nature of carnival colors and of carnivals in general can be symbolic of the Joker's twisted, mad psyche, especially abandoned ones - think about that flaking paint, the fading colors, the broken down rides, all the life and joy sucked out of a place of happiness to make it a lifeless, eerie husk of what it once was. Color and the idea of carnivals representing the Joker's mind were used to great effect in Batman: The Killing Joke - in that GN, Jim Gordon wasn't just trapped in a carnival turned into the Joker's lair, but a living representation of the Joker's fractured, insane mind, a terrifying place where logic no longer rules and chaos reigns. Both colorings (original and recoloring) represent this idea in different ways, with the original's heinous neons representing the frenzy and chaos of the Joker's mind, and the recoloring's muted tones lending a sense of emptiness to everything, almost implying that (assuming the Joker's recollection about Jeannie is true) with the losses the Joker endured, everything in his life faded, broke down, and lost meaning for him. But that's a discussion for another time; back to the suit. Clearly the Joker wants to represent himself as not a man, but a force of nature with these colors, a symbol, something more (or maybe less) than human, something dangerously primal, and it seems that this is something that both the character and the artist drawing him agree upon.
Speaking of primal things, let's talk about animals for a second. Ever wonder why so many animals have fur and markings in the colors of their natural habitat? Well, it makes good sense for prey, because it keeps them from getting eaten if they can blend in, and predators can use it to hide from their targets while they hunt them. Insects do it, too - stick insects, for example, camouflage themselves as sticks, and the Orchid Mantis camouflages itself as a petal on orchid flowers to better catch its prey. However, some animals don't have camouflage and instead bear bright, eye-catching colors like yellow, red, blue, purple, and orange. Why would an animal do this? Well, just ask the Poison Dart Frog, a brightly-colored tree frog from South America that gets its name from its poisonous skin, which secretes a neurotoxin so potent that tribal peoples use it on the tips of their darts when hunting. This isn't exactly uncommon in nature - from Honeybees' black and yellow stripes to the Black Widow Spider's red hourglass, from the poisonous orange feathers of Pitohui to the bright blue rings of the venomous Blue Ringed Octopus, bright colors in the natural world scream the same message to potential predators - "I'm dangerous and potentially fatal, so you'd better stay away!" Some creatures even combine warning signal types, such as the Velvet Ant (actually a species of wingless wasp) - its bright red coloring and high-pitched alarm squeaks give a clear warning alarm about its nasty, incredibly painful sting, which is so damn bad that they are often called "Cow Killers" because their sting is rumored to be so heinously painful that it can kill a cow. This technique of warning predators of a painful bite, sting, or even just a bitter taste or something else unpleasant is so effective that many animals have evolved to mimic their poisonous cousins. A famous example is the Coral Snake, which is very venomous, and the Scarlet King Snake, which is entirely harmless. The only way to tell is by the similar, but very distinct, patterns of red, black and yellow bands. Their patterns are so close that us humans had to make up a rhyme ("Red on yellow, you're dead, fellow; red on black, you're okay, Jack") just to remember the difference. This works on humans, too - it's why caution signs are in bright eye-catching colors like yellow, red, and orange. Is it any wonder then why an artist would choose to include orange in the Joker's wardrobe? Sure, our brains know that it's just an orange shirt, but somewhere in the more primal part of our minds, those bright colors scream to us "This is deadly, maybe even toxic! Do not approach!". And speaking of toxins, green can be symbolic of something toxic - just think of how many non-specific poisons and witches' brews in pop culture are depicted as green; even things like radioactive waste, toxic sludge, and more are shown as being sickly green sludge. It could be that by adding the color green, the artist is nodding to the Joker's chemical origins, which is pertinant because he definitely does have toxic blood and is definitely dangerous in that sense as well as in a physical harm sense. So in terms of color, it would seem the artist uses it both to identify the character's personality and to denote his dangerous nature, whereas the character himself uses colorful clothing to signify who he feels he is, a sort of way of advertising to the world that he is unique and very dangerous.
However, there's a lot more to the Joker than just his clothing, and a lot can be said about how the artist draws him as well. The final piece of the puzzle, the final bit of unmasking to do regarding how the Joker is symbolized as villainous and vile in the comics even before he does a single wicked deed, is to observe how the artists use subtler techniques to explore the character, things like pinstripes on the clothes and the angles used, things like how his build is drawn. After all, one look at Batman's powerful (as Alan Moore once put it, "Muscle on top of muscle") and blockily, sturdily drawn physique could tell anyone that a scrawny, almost emaciated guy like the Joker shouldn't be able to stand up to him in a fight for five seconds, and in fact, often doesn't. So why pit a skinny dude against this massive superhero? To answer that, we'll have to look at the implications behind a thin-looking villain. One of my all-time favorite websites, as many of my readers know, is TVTropes. Of specific importance to how the Joker is drawn are the tropes "Lean and Mean" and "Looks Like Cesare" (read those links so you know what I'm talking about. Seriously, go do it now). Both tropes spring from the idea that a lot of villains, especially if they're meant to be foils of a hero, tend to look very scrawny and sleepless because evil not only drains the soul, but also affects the body. This is stupid, of course, but in the animated world, there's no better way to make your villain look more creepy or your lunatic look more crazy than to use these tropes. I think the reason why so many artists give the Joker that scrawny build is both to set him up as a foil to Batman (skinny vs. bulky) and to imply that he's all about the wit, so much so that he's almost neglected his body. Furthermore, a skinnier physique would make it easier for the Joker to move more quickly with greater agility, since he doesn't have as large a mass to drag around, and could also make it easier to hide in tight spaces that someone of a larger build couldn't get into. The height combined with the skinny build I believe is meant to make the Joker appear more absurd, either that or the Joker purposefully cultivates this image to further distance himself from reality. Another interesting explanation for the skinniness could be that the Joker just gets so wrapped up in his own delusions that he forgets to eat (which coincidentally is another trope) at points, but I somehow doubt a guy who fights Batman constantly would make that mistake. More likely, the height and skinny physique is just a cue to the audience that the Joker is a villain, and a pretty damn insane villain at that. That is, it's supposed to make him look creepier and more jester-like, just like his pointed chin is intended to make him look creepier and more jester-like.
I think there is probably also a similar reason to the above for the pinstripes - because pinstripes provide the illusion that a person is taller and thinner than they really are by keeping the eye moving up and down, the artist and possibly the Joker himself is using this illusion to make him look more absurd and more frail. However, that's part of the trick - a person might foolishly look at the Joker and assume he's a lot wimpier than he looks, but then end up getting their asses handed to them simply because the Joker is actually a lot stronger than he appears to be at first glance, either through deception or through a "Strength Born of Madness". He's strong enough to hold his own in a fight, and in fact is probably a very formidible street fighter with all of his weapons, tricks, sleight of hand, and agility, but he's just not strong enough to defeat Batman in hand-to-hand combat and will in fact lose every single time. Such illusions as using pinstripes to make himself look less deadly and using bright colors to intimidate the opponent goes well with the Joker's mercurial "Joke's-Always-On-You" nature. He's a trickster archetype. It makes good sense to use tricks like this, and even refers to his gimmick as a playing card/carnival themed villain. It all points to a villain focused on using wit and trickery to trip up his opponents before delivering a killing blow, which alludes to his wildcard nature as well as lends credence to the idea that the Joker is definitely a threat that isn't to be taken lightly. It makes him more intimidating because we know that this is a character that isn't afraid to fight dirty if it'll give him an edge, and in fact will do just about anything to get one over on his target.
His angular build further implies danger - look at these pictures, look at the sharpness of those angles and the prominance of the cheek bones and temple hollows. That screams "Villain" to us because it implies sharpness - the more angular a villain is, the more knife-like he seems to look, the sharper he looks, and the more deadly. It implies there is either a crazy so deep that it's deadly, or a mind so sharp that it's deadly. In the case of the Joker, it's both - and that angular build is deceptive, since it implies that the Joker is actually far weaker (potentially because he looks like he's starving or otherwise wasting away) than he actually is. It's yet another bit of deception that just works so well for the character and makes him that much more threatening and difficult to pin down. Furthermore, note how Batman is drawn with a blockier build, and the Joker is always more about triangles and sharp angles. This is yet another way of artistically rendering the idea that Batman and the Joker are perfect foils of each other, opposites even down to the very bodies they reside in, as opposed as two poles on a magnet and every bit as flipside as the heads and tails of a coin. All of these things show why so very many artists use angles with the Joker, and indeed why so many of them draw him as tall and thin - the contrast to Batman is not only visually appealing, but symbolically appealing, catching the eye as well as catching the feel of a Batman vs. Joker scene well. Of course, eye-catching visuals and symbolism aren't all it takes to make a good Batman vs. Joker scene work, but it does go a long way in setting the mood and making the tension between one of the most famous arch-nemesis pairs in comics history all that more enthralling.
Well, that concludes this little episode of Jokerology 101! Tune in next time for more hellish hilarity and interesting insights into one of the most prominant comic book villains of all time. And please remember to check your pockets for any missing articles before you leave Arkham Asylum's restricted ward, as the last possible thing we need right now is the Joker escaping and causing more havoc...