There have been many notorious stories about the Joker. They’ve explored the depths of human psychosis. They’ve asked how far a man can be driven before he snaps. He’s been used as an avatar of pure evil, to reflect everything from our fear of gangsters to the fear of ourselves. Yet, his most notorious story might just be the one about his boners.
I’m referring, of course, to Batman #66, released in 1951, 11 years after the Joker’s debut. It’s famous, or infamous, rather, for page after page of… well… this:
You might be forgiven for thinking that it just didn’t mean then what it means now, but your grandpa was fully aware of what the word “boner” meant to people, and it seems a bit unlikely that DC’s editorial staff were that naive, either. Besides, it just works too well:
Being a comics nerd, I’ve been giggling over this book for years. While sadly anybody who might be able to confirm this has passed on, it’s not difficult to see this notorious issue as an outright act of rebellion.
In the early 1950s, comics came under two brutal pressures that would set the art form back decades: Financial pressures as the war let up and the comics market exploded, and social pressures as campaigning against comic books began. The Comics Code of America was still a few years away, but DC had decided to shift their mature, gritty crime books into colorful, kid-friendly material. The Joker had, in just 11 years, gone from a grim, dangerous criminal to the Clown Prince of Crime, the kind of dimwit who gets himself trapped in an elevator in his own heist.
It’s especially notable because of who was involved. Bill Finger was more or less the man responsible for Batman as we know him, and he’d been writing Batman off and on for more than a decade when this issue came out.
Was Finger protesting the character he created being turned into a joke? Did he want to needle DC editorial and its “softer and safer” stance? Or did he just see an opportunity to have a little fun at the expense of the people squeezing his creation for every dime they could get? We’ll never know. But at least it’s given us one of the most memorable stories about the Joker, even if it’s all about his boner.