This dude is criminally insane.

There is no explaining Joker he is just violence incarnate. 

Joker is crazy, and you can't rationalize crazy. If you could, it wouldn't be crazy.

He's a genius, nobody is ever going to doubt that.  He's not insane, he is calculated, the recent issues of Batman and Robin are evidence of that.  

There is no way of trying to make sense of insanity without become insane yourself in the process. Once you understand pure insanity, you yourself have become insane

Don't write him off as simply being insane, it's not that simple. He's not like the others. He has no code. No methodology, no goals. You can't hope to understand him because his desires are fluid, they change. He can't be predicted. He can't be reasoned with. And if you're careless with him... You'll die...  
(Bruce to Jason) 

I think the Joker and Bruce Wayne have the same problem. They just handle it differently. 
 
When Bruce witnessed his parents' murder, he was traumatised. In time, I believe him to go so loopy that he developed an obsession with crime and putting an end to it. Dedicated he traveled the world to learn all of these techniques and he became the Batman.  
 
Joker, depending on which origin story you believe, might have just the same problem. If you're going by The Killing Joke (the one I go by), here's how I interpret it: Before he became the Joker, he was poor, his wife/girlfriend and unborn child were killed, and if that weren't enough, he was pushed into a vat of acid by Batman all in one day. That drove him to his own obsession: Batman. When things got so unbelieveably bad for him, Batman goes ahead and makes his life just that much worse. Joker is now hellbent on being everything Batman is not. While Batman brings justice to Gotham, Joker brings chaos. Joker won't stop untill Batman just stops, but Joker knows Bruce will just not quit. And that's the joke. Joker knows Batman is just as messed up as he is, and there's nothing he can do to stop Joker from causing chaos. In Joker's mind, the funniest joke is if Batman kills someone because it's the one thing that will ultimately break him. Joker's objective is to get Batman to do just that, defeating him once and for all.  
 
So in conclusion, calling the Joker crazy is calling Batman crazy. They are messed up in the exact same way, but each of them handle the situation entirely differently. That is what sets them apart from all the other heroes and their arch enemies.

An absolute blinder of an article.
 
I think some of the weakest writing I've read has been when writers attempt to write from the Joker's perspective.  I think no matter how well it's written it's alway going to have a sense of pulling back the curtain in Oz feeling.
 
One aspect I like about him as well is that only Bats really 'gets' him, in that there's nothing to get.  There's no planning, reasoning or logic to him, you just have to deal with him.
 
Again though Tony, top class article.

He's super sane

I think he's an irrational man who has a the tenacity to do what he wants, unfortunately the things he wants to do are bad things, and he has this need to be affiliated with batman for some reason. In the end I just think he's a wierdo with a taste for evil games

The Joker is crazy super insane awsome!!!! 
Thats how he managed to stay so popular!!!!!

" I always liked Heath Ledgers Joker reason for being evil,  It's like he had nothing else to do "

I don't like to think the Joker was a 'bad' person before he became what he is now. In 'The Killing Joke' he tries to bring Gordon down to his level. To make him as crazy as the Joker is, to prove that any sane and good loving person can become as evil as he is, just because of the circumstances. 
 
And it is already stated how the Joker really went crazy. You can't see the things Joker remembers from the past as fact, because he really can't recall what happened. The Riddler, on the other hand, remembered it very well.  
The Riddler witnessed how a corrupt cop killed the wife of the man who would later become the Joker. When he later stood on the street and looked at the burning apartment, he saw a man, looking terrified. He saw how the man broke. A man with white skin and green hair. This is just after The Red Hood fall into that fat of acid and became The Joker. 
I'll try to find a picture from that scene. I think this happened around 'Hush Returns' but I'm not quite sure.  
 
Edit: 
The Picture (from Batman Gotham Knights 54):

"The "great" villains in comics aren't just bad, they're evil to the core. "

There have been a few story lines in non-Batman titles that seemed to settle the issue.  In the "Rock of Ages" storyline in JLA, Luthor trapped Superman and Martian Manhunter inside Joker's insane maze of a brain. The only way they made it out was for Manhunter to make himself temporarily crazy so he could make "sense" to the patterns of Joker's mind. Later on in the storyline, Joker gets the Rock of Ages and starts killing millions with his thoughts so Manhunter forces sanity on him. t takes all of  J'onz considerable will and mind power just to hold it for a few seconds. Joker suddenly gets very remorseful and says thinks like "What have I done with my life? I..I think I need help." He then wills people back to life that he and Luthor killed. They grab the rock away from him just before he goes screamingly insane again. Not even J'onz could fight it.  
In an issue of The Specter,  Specter and James Corrigan go inside Joker's soul and find he really has no choice. They show this set of circuit boxes in him and things like "morals" and "self control" are burned and gutted. Only scorched wires remain. Batman and Specter agree Joker has a "unholy innocence" and is serving an unknown higher purpose by being the way he is.
In a JLA annual,  an arch angel takes The League inside Joker's mind and soul and shows deep down he is a good man who has no idea or control over what he is doing, and is blameless for his deeds. The angel tells them Joker exist the way he does to fulfill a plan.
When Nightwing beat Joker to death they actually showed his soul traveling to heaven before Batman resurrected him.
One final clue, during the "Last Laugh" initial issue, they showed Joker's CAT scan. One doctor said "Look at the gap in the pons, and all the lesions on the brain stem. This poor guy never had a shot at sanity."
He is unquestionably a genius. But a mad genius. And keep in mind "insanity" is a legal term, not a medical one. It is not an assessment of the type of mental illness. But a term referring to the subject being able to tell the difference between right and wrong and choosing to do right. I think he may fit the description because, even though he does know right from wrong and loves doing wrong, he is compelled by mental illness to choose wrong. What form the insanity takes, even the "super sanity" referred to in" Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth." could be the part of him that keeps changing. At least that's how they explained the different versions of him over the decades.
In his early appearances, he went to prison, not Arkham. There was even an issue where Batman and Robin played a trick on him to make him think he was insane, and he went out of his way to prove his sanity and get out of the asylum. In doing so he accidentally gave Batman the clue he was looking for. 
But by the time he showed up in "Joker's five way revenge" he was the lunatic we know him as now. And he had spent the missing years in Arkham, according to that story.
It's possible his mental state deteriorated over the years, as often happens with insanity. Staying in the insane world of Arkham made him WORSE. Combined with  what ever the chemical bath did to his brain evolving and damaging him.
I think he started out amoral and damaged, but has gotten worse over the decades. If he was exaggerating his madness, he was telling more of the truth than he realized.

I am not trained in diagnosing mental illnesses nor am I trained in making assessments of insanity in the legal sense. Nonetheless, it does seem clear to me that the Joker is mentally disturbed. The explanation of the Joker that makes the most sense to me is the one in the Killing Joke. The Joker experiences a series of events: the death of his wife/girlfriend, being pressed into service by a gang of criminals, and falling into a vat of acid. Each of these events combines to make the Joker who he is. I see Joker as being motivated by the belief that life is meaningless. He expresses this belief in his aforementioned flexible goals, methods, and his attempts to cause chaos.

As he recently said himself in Batman and Robin "Im not insane...im just differently sane." i guess thats one way to look at it. I agree with Nightfang that its hard to define good and evil when it comes to crazy people, and joker is obviously evil, so maybe he isnt crazy afterall.

'' differently sane''

"  Great article.  Wish you would have delved into the story in the Killing Joke a bit but still good irregardless! "

The Joker is clearly insane but he is also a genius, he's calculated, he does nothing without a purpose. Some of his schemes take years to come into play and are slow moving and work behind the backdrop. He has a plan inside plans and a plan for anything you could imagine. He views himself as the world's greatest comedian and he views his crimes as performances.

"  Even though his true origin may never be known, it's pretty much accepted that jumping into the chemical waste caused Joker's mind to crack." 
 
I disagree. I DON'T accept that his entire origin hinges upon him falling into the waste. I refuse to accept that falling into a vat of something people would just leave around could be the sole defining factor that makes you into the greatest criminal mind in the history of existence. 
 
I much prefer the origin from Lovers and Madmen, where he was insane but didn't fully realize it. Falling into the vat was more of a switch that opened the floodgates and made him self-aware of his madness. 
 
This is why I hate the origin proposed in Killing Joke. I always did, even before I read Lovers and Madmen. 
 
The Brave and the Bold issue with Joker and The Atom also suggests the same basic origin as Lovers and Madmen.

I think he is sane. Some of his most intrikate plans and s o on seem impossible for someone truly crazy to have set out, I think he is, as he puts it "a different type of sane."

The Joker is as insane as Bruce Wayne is, the only thing separating them is the fact that The Joker embraces insanity while Bruce fights it all he can. 
That simple fact is what makes him a great villain.

The Joker origin that I like to believe is the accurate one is from Killing Joke.  I hate to see Joker origins just because they are so weak compared to the one Allen Moore wrote.  He crippled Batgirl, that's huge.  She still hasn't gotten her legs back, and the character of Oracle is great and hopefully she'll never get them back because losing Oracle is more negative then positive of getting the original Batgirl back.  The evil surrounding that circumstance raised Joker to a higher level then even killing Robin.  The shooting of the police commissioners daughter and what one would assume was the rape of her as well was bad enough, but to take pictures of it and show them  to her naked in a roller coaster surrounded by evil midgets while hearing a song about "Don't even, get MAD" was beyond creepy.  Or even worse then that if there is a worse point.........To prove a point.   It showed (somewhat like Morrison's Arkham Asylum" that Batman was as just crazy the villains he hunts."  For once a person might have actually related with the Joker or understood why he is what he is.  Seeing the very very short instance where he was actually sane, and considered Batman's offer of help.  The look where he gives Batman a glance and he doesn't have smile on his face, he almost looks like he's tired of going thru the routine of getting the crap kicked out of him by Batman.  He didn't choose to be the Joker, he was down on his luck, and did what had to be done to take care of his family and it backfired on him to the point something that wouldn't be wished on anyone.  One bad day, one bad choice.......................  JOKER.

" But this is exactly what makes The Joker my favorite villain of all time (I mean, we are talking EVER in any medium). He is an elemental force- you can never stop him (you can only hold him back momentarily) he kills indiscriminately without motivation, rhyme or reason. He is Lovecraft's 'uncanny', an indiscernable cosmic force that is ultimately more terrifying.  "
 
YES! I agree 100%. He is also my favorite of all mediums and you summed him up perfectly.
 
There is another new wrinkle to this. I had forgotten that DC has made Joker more self aware. That he no knows he is a comic book character, that they all are. After he got shot in the head by the crazed cop dressed up as Batman, the real Batman said Joker came back from the dead "different". In Salvation Run, Joker even tells Luthor its all a game and none of it means anything.  That they will get to play it again and again. He even speaks directly to the reader on several occasions, going back to The Sign of the Joker /Laughing Fish story arch in the late 70's. But as he told Lex, in Salvation Run  "Just because I know its a game, doesn't mean I don' t want to WIN."

" The Joker origin that I like to believe is the accurate one is from Killing Joke.  I hate to see Joker origins just because they are so weak compared to the one Allen Moore wrote.  He crippled Batgirl, that's huge.  She still hasn't gotten her legs back, and the character of Oracle is great and hopefully she'll never get them back because losing Oracle is more negative then positive of getting the original Batgirl back.  The evil surrounding that circumstance raised Joker to a higher level then even killing Robin.  The shooting of the police commissioners daughter and what one would assume was the rape of her as well was bad enough, but to take pictures of it and show them  to her naked in a roller coaster surrounded by evil midgets while hearing a song about "Don't even, get MAD" was beyond creepy.  Or even worse then that if there is a worse point.........To prove a point.   It showed (somewhat like Morrison's Arkham Asylum" that Batman was as just crazy the villains he hunts."  For once a person might have actually related with the Joker or understood why he is what he is.  Seeing the very very short instance where he was actually sane, and considered Batman's offer of help.  The look where he gives Batman a glance and he doesn't have smile on his face, he almost looks like he's tired of going thru the routine of getting the crap kicked out of him by Batman.  He didn't choose to be the Joker, he was down on his luck, and did what had to be done to take care of his family and it backfired on him to the point something that wouldn't be wished on anyone.  One bad day, one bad choice.......................  JOKER. "

I think it is interesting that Joker is one of the most feared villains in the DC universe and he has no superpowers to speak of.  I think this is one of the things that makes him so evil.  The other is his unpredictability.  I think those trying to find out what makes him the way he is are a victim of one of the Joker's jokes.  Why else is it that he remembers things differently? 

I don't get why so many people don't like the origin told in 'The Killing Joke'. 
 
The one point that is made with this story, is that anybody could become as the Joker. Not just someone who was born that way. It means that any person that is pushed through so much in so little time, will see the true nature of live. A roller coaster with no directions. Random circumstances, random (in)justice.   
 
Joker is not insane, he just copes with the information he receives differently. He doesn't think about moral codes, or anything related to that. He is super-sane, and thus sees the world as it really is. In a way, the Joker is a mirror to our world, and that's what I like the most about him.

"As noted above there's one big gap that makes impossible to understand the Joker completly, the fact that even him seem not know (or simply to aknowledge) his own origin. Was the chemical bath that took him into the realm of madness? was the disfigurement? was just a bad day as he said in "The Killing Joke"?
 
In a certain way the real question is does this really matters?
 
I my opinion what makes the Joker evil isn't the "why", but rather the "how". Other villains had pulled stunts similar to his, other villains might have a body count close to his, but the Joker will always top all of them for one simple reason: abandon.
The Joker does what he does with a glee and a carefree attitude that are difficult to match, in this sense his last movie incarnation was right on spot, he doesn't kill because he like to kill, he doen't kill in self defense, he simply kill because he can.
Usually other comic book serial killers tend to follow some kind of ritual preying on specific victims (like Mr. Zsazs) or simply going postal with massive killing spree (like Carnage). The Joker sets in a middle ground he can spare 10000 people just because he doesn't feel in the mood, or because the scenery doesn't work for a mass murder, and at the same time kill a girl scout for not having chocolate flavour cookies.
 
I think that the phrase that this up best was Trickster quote from Underwold Unleashed: "When super-villains want to scare each other they tell Joker stories."

Great article, G-Man.  
 
He's only evil from a certain point of view. The less you understand why, the better.

I'm confused was this a Q because he is a bad guy

As talent is independent from being good or evil, genius is to being sane or crazy. 
 
I think the Joker is like some of those people who are utterly mind broken, but also very good to handle something. 
 
Some psychokiller and sociopathic people are truly smart, but theyre brain and mind make them act differently for anoter perspective of reality. 
 
The joker isn't that mysterious to me. He's irrationnal to the core, exactly like humor, but humor, though pointless in the perspective of rationality, isn't devoid of intelligence.

I believe one of the reasons he joker is so appealing is you can truely never know.  His plans are brillant and can have multiple layers before getting to what he really wants.  I gonna go with so sane it has brought him to insanity, I mean just look at the whole gravedigger complex.

A sane person who just happened to "find" the right  reasons to act insanely , according to hime anyway ..... I dont like the jester like approach to him ..... not a big fan of clowns etc. But I consider Heath's Joker the best way to portray the Joker , the right measure of intelligence/madness the perfect nihilist/misanthrope there is , and not too much buffonish idiocy

Well he wasn't born crazy. I always took the origin explained in "The Killing Joke" & later elaborated+supported in "Hush Returns" as true, & going by that Joker seems like a person who irreversibly lost his sanity all in one day with the loss of his wife & child-yet-to-be-born, & the humiliation he felt being confronted by the Batman, being screwed over by the gang that forced the job that led to him having an accident that would bleach his skin & make him appear to look like a clown. The trauma was irreversible but also transformed to a form of insanity that pushes the limits, always making a joke of death & extreme violence (perhaps because of his clown-like transformation). I think his transformation turned into obsession as well; obsession to get back at Batman. The only way to get back at Batman was to become a criminal mastermind, & with his transformation including a lack of sympathy, empathy, compassion it wasn't very hard for Joker to propel himself into the realm of criminal genius. After his transformation all he can do was hurt people & laugh. I wouldn't consider him a natural genius, not really someone academic, just someone obsessed enough to go the extra mile in his effort to ruin people's lives in a way that is humorous to himself. He doesn't want to see himself as a victim, so he has this massive ego, and when he victimizes other people he relieves himself even further of the truth that he is a victim of one terrible day. He laughs when he succeeds in victimizing others - it's his therapy - but his therapy can't be complete until he truly victimizes Batman in the worst way & perhaps Joker would rather want to break Batman down to be like Joker rather than kill him. The more people Joker can manipulate to think like him the better he feels. Deep down, Joker is insecure & afraid of just being a regular, average person again who can be victimized, traumatized - that's what motivates him as a supervillain,  to stay as far away from that as possible. In a way he wouldn't want to kill Batman because he fears the boredom of having no release. So in conclusion I'd say he's insane, & his insanity motivates him to do evil as a form of therapy. Without his insanity he'd have little motivation to do evil, but as it is it seems his insanity is irreversible, so he'll always be evil too.

" I don't get why so many people don't like the origin told in 'The Killing Joke'.  The one point that is made with this story, is that anybody could become as the Joker. Not just someone who was born that way. It means that any person that is pushed through so much in so little time, will see the true nature of live. A roller coaster with no directions. Random circumstances, random (in)justice.    Joker is not insane, he just copes with the information he receives differently. He doesn't think about moral codes, or anything related to that. He is super-sane, and thus sees the world as it really is. In a way, the Joker is a mirror to our world, and that's what I like the most about him. "

" @Tudoh: Is that a standalone issue or is that an arc where they told that story? "

" @Tudoh said:

" I don't get why so many people don't like the origin told in 'The Killing Joke'.  The one point that is made with this story, is that anybody could become as the Joker. Not just someone who was born that way. It means that any person that is pushed through so much in so little time, will see the true nature of live. A roller coaster with no directions. Random circumstances, random (in)justice.    Joker is not insane, he just copes with the information he receives differently. He doesn't think about moral codes, or anything related to that. He is super-sane, and thus sees the world as it really is. In a way, the Joker is a mirror to our world, and that's what I like the most about him. "

That's just it though, not just anybody could become The Joker BECAUSE he isn't insane. Not just anybody could gain his super-sane existential awareness just from one bad day. And The Killing Joke even proves that point! Gordon DOESN'T CHANGE A BIT from the one bad day Joker gives him. I agree with you on what he represents, but I like him precisely because he can't be just anyone. The Joker is a being of pure evil and chaos, and he always was, he just wasn't aware of it. The vat of chemicals merely opened his mind to what was already there, just locked away by the constraints of society's rules.  Plus the fact that Joker openly admits that he has no idea if the origin in The Killing Joke is true. "

I think the concept of evil is far less interesting than criminal insanity. I also do not think the joker is evil. He just does shit he thinks is funny and operates on his own twisted form of logic.