Who's This? The Clown Prince of Crime.
The facts: Visually based on the silent film classic The Man Who Laughs, itself based on a Victor Hugo novel, the Joker made his first appearance in Batman #1 (March 1940), courtesy of Bill Finger and Bob Kane, and immediately became the Dark Knight's #1 foil, appearing almost 80 times in the Golden Age alone. The trend continued through the Silver, Bronze, and Modern Ages, with the Harlequin of Hate scoring a short-lived series in 1975 (a victim of the DC Implosion), and more projects when villain-led series became more of a thing (most recently in the 2020s). Over the years, he's become one of the DCU's main villains, not limiting himself to the Batman Family. Two crossover events were entirely based on him - Emperor Joker and Joker War - and he got to the Final 4 in DC KO. His biggest hits include The Killing Joke (where he crippled Batgirl) and A Death in the Family (where he killed Robin). Mark Hamill made a career of voicing him in animated series and video games. In live action, he's been played by Cesar Romero. Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, Jared Leto (boo), and Joaquin Phoenix (in a series of controversial self-titled films).
How you could have heard of him: You're joking, right?
Example story: The Joker #6 (April 1976) "Sherlock Stalks the Joker!" by Denny O'Neil, Irv Novick and Tex Blaisdell
Now, I'm not ready to claim the original Joker series was as insane as this issue seems to be - I just don't know - but I think it's a good tone for a Joker series to strike. I would WANT it to be some kind of absurd hallucination from start to finish. It's not QUITE that, as the Sherlock in our story is merely an actor who PLAYS Sherlock, but after a bop on the head from the Joker himself, maybe he THINKS he's Sherlock. And that the Joker is Moriarty.
The dangers of using the Method. 15 minutes later, the police arrive at the Bohemia Theater where only the picture of actress Fran Carfax was stolen from the set. She played Irene Adler, and this is... A Scandal in (the) Bohemia! The deranged Sherlock is on the case, and a stagehand called Watson is tasked with following him so he doesn't hurt himself. His nickname, "Docks". But what's the Joker doing in the meanwhile? Let's go back to the Ha-Hacienda for some dribbling...
Obligatory Batman appearance! But for the Joker, any detective will do, even a fictional one, and Denny O'Neil is opening Arthur Conan Doyle's oeuvre on random pages and having fun with them. Stuff like "recreating", say, The Red-Headed League using a guy nicknamed Red who heads an air hockey league (then why is he on a golf course, mixed metaphors, man!). But you can't take the Joker out of Joker stories, so regardless of the mysteries (I mean... this is really a Riddler plot, isn't it?), the clown has to show up with silly gadgets to stymie the Great Detective.
Speaking of mixed metaphors, the stories are all in a blender, as we discover when we look back into the Joker's Mobile Ho-Home to see his most unprofitable crime.
Are his goons losing hope of ever getting paid, I wonder. Next up is a Hound of the Baskervilles riff (of course), with the Joker cutting off a piece of worthless steel from a ship called the Baskervilles. It's a "dog", for "dogging down the hatches", and therefore a "hound", get it?! "Sherlock Holmes" catches up to him AGAIN, but at this point, the Joker's a little annoyed. He bolts and is taken down by a pressure water gun.
I'm surprised the star of the book has been so roundly defeated by a one-off guest star, and perhaps this is par for the course (golf joke) in this era, I dunno. Supervillains tend to escape, though, right? It's not like he HAD to be punished under some Comics Code statute. Indeed, I think the story shows the weakness of a villain-led book. Either you turn them into an anti-hero of sorts (Deathstrike, Venom), or you give them heroes to fight (this and Kobra) who must, by the moral rules of the comics universe, defeat them. Reading through this, the ersatz Sherlock gets many more pages than the Joker does. Of course, the Joker doesn't really need own series to be one of comicdom's most iconic villains...
Who's Next? A scarred cowboy anti-hero.
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