A book of essays on the Clown Prince of Crime by a rogue’s gallery of writers…
One of first notable Batbooks of 2023 is The Man Who Laughs, an essay collection due in April from Crazy 8 Press.
The paperback is edited by familiar names Lou Tambone and Rich Handley, with a foreword by Bob Rozakis and an afterword by Steve Englehart.
But what else is in store? Well, pretty much every angle you can think of, so here’s the book’s table of contents, along with its list of contributors. And since it’s Cesar Romero’s birthday Jan. 15, you can catch an excerpt from Jim Beard’s essay by moseying on over here.
“DC Comics’ Joker has been a goofy trickster, a giggling lunatic, a psychopathic killer, a methodical mastermind, a failed comedian, and an unstoppable force,” Tambone and Handley write in the book’s introduction. “It all depends on the writer and artist telling the story, and the era and medium in which that story is being told. He’s an agent of chaos, a purple dog chasing cars, with no special abilities or superpowers, but also no moral code or grip on reality. The only method to this madman’s madness is that there is no method.”
That both sums it up and leaves you wanting to read a lot more, so dig this:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: Let’s Get Nuts!
By Rich Handley and Lou Tambone
Foreword: Who Is the Joker? A Question from the Answer Man
By Bob Rozakis
Text Messages of the Dark Knight
By Tom K. Mason
The Banter and the Bat
By Michael Jan Friedman
My, What Big Teeth You Have!
By Bobby Nash
Delicious! The Joker as Latin Loverboy
By Jim Beard
One Card Short: Missing the Joke(r)
By Brian Cronin
Something Tastes Funny—That’d Be the Clownfish
By Duy Tano
Why I’m Fed Up with the Joker
By Alan J. Porter
Is the Joker Gay? Queer Representation and the Clown Prince of Crime
By Valentina Rossi
Joker: Stop Punching Down
By Jo Duffy
The Joke Book: Laughing Along with the Joker’s 1970s Solo Series
By Lou Tambone
The Joke’s on the Audience
By Robert Greenberger
One Hell of a Joke: From Laughing Magician to the Man Who Laughs
By Rich Handley
Empathy for Emperor Joker
By Paul Cornish
Don’t Get Even, Go Mad: Joker and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Days
By Joseph F. Berenato
Why Do We Care That the Joker Hates Nazis?
By Alex Galer
Toward a Short Comparison and Contrast of the Joker with Trickster Characters of African Folklore
By LaMarrison Forte
Whatever Joker Wants, Joker Goetz
By Keith R.A. DeCandido
Fixing the Laughter: Voice Casting the Joker on Batman: The Animated Series
By John Trumbull
The Joker: Just How Crazy Is He?
By Glenn Hauman
Mountebank to Monster: The Bloody Road from “The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge” to The Killing Joke
By Paul Kupperberg
Afterword: The Last Laugh
By Steve Englehart
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The Man Who Laughs, edited by Lou Tambone and Rich Handley, with a foreward by Bob Rozakis and an afterword by Steve Englehart, is due in April from Crazy 8 Press. The price has not yet been set.
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MORE
— Why CESAR ROMERO’s JOKER Was Perfect For the Swingin’ Sixties, by JIM BEARD. Click here.
— BATMAN ’66: The JOKER’s TOP 13 Devilish Devices. Click here.
