>
> > In your opinion; not so much in the opinions of several million readers for the forty-seven years in between 1941 and 1988.
> >
> > > > >Where is the motivation for Joker's insane actions?
> > > >
> > > > You've sort of answered your own question there, he's insane.
> > >
> > > Insane people have reasons for being insane, they are not just born insane.
> >
> > Except for those who are congenitally or hereditarily insane, and sociopaths who have no triggering event, as with Ted Bundy.
>
> Bundy started out messed up, but over time he became worse and worse as you described.
>
> The Joker did not start out as some jester. He started out as a person with reason. This goes all the way back to his original origin were he was the leader of the Red Hood gang.
>
> > It does those things for you. There's plenty of evidence that the Joker was considered Batman's opposite number by legions of readers, writers, editors, and others for a very long time before the very, very recent stories (relative to the character's 66-history) you cite.
>
> He was considered his opposite, but the inner connection of the character to Batman was not established.
>
> > If you're really claiming that the Joker wasn't a popular, well-written character before 1988, or that 1988 was somehow the year he was done being developed, I'd suggest you're at war with the past and the future.
>
> I never claimed that, the original appearance, The Laughing Fish and the Joker's Five Way Revenge all made him popular and were well written. However The Killing Joke forever established a real specific connection between the Joker and Batman that was only alluded to back when Bob Kane wrote the comic and established a definitive account of the Joker's character for all that has remained unsurpassed.
>
> > If Batman had been cancelled in the 1950s or 1970s -- they were under threat in both eras, saved by continuing strong sales the first time against cultural pressure and saved by pop-cultural inertia and licensing money against weak sales the second time -- we'd be talking about a very different set of "definitive Batman and Joker stories" in a world otherwise no different than our own.
>
> > That'll come as a surprise to Bill Finger, who wrote that origin in 1951, and to everyone in between Finger and Moore who considered it a perfectly good origin. I guess you and Moore are smarter than 99% of the human race. Luckily the rest of us don't need to agree with you to enjoy our comics.
>
> Bill Finger's origin was very limited and narrow, Alan Moore fleshed it out and filled it with depth. Everyody who has read Batman: The Killing Joke knows this. I am not claiming to be smarter than anybody.

That's good to know; because most people who read TKJ realise that the Joker's origin is left diliberately ambiguous, unknowable and uncertain.