The Joker is DC’s most renowned villian and the archenemy of Batman, but who was the Joker and what did he do before he became the mad, homicidal clown of Gotham?
In the Prime Earth universe comics, the Joker was originally the leader of a small time criminal gang known as the Red Hood Gang. During this period he went under the alias Red Hood One, in which he wore a bright red cylinder helmet which covered his head upto his upper lip. The whole purpose of this gang stemmed from pointless violence, where the members dared to cross the line with every heinous crime they committed as a means to taunt the authorities who were trying to catch them.
It was almost like a game for them, as they played with each other with the idea of trying to go as far as possible with their actions out of a crazy thrill of gaining the most attention and the possibility of being caught. Though not every member of this gang was apsychopathic maniac like their leader, since many of the members were actually once innocents who were blackmailed into joining the group and were forced to undergo the Red Hood One’s insane games.
Also many of these blackmailed individuals came from the middle and upper classes of society, suggesting that the Red Hood One held some contempt to these more privileged groups and wanted to punish or mess with them, as he himself likely grew up in poverty during his childhood. Further more, each member was given an identical red mask and they were all branded with a specific number onto their body, stripping any individuality among them beyond their branded number. Their long list of crimes ranged from robbing local banks to just straight up murdering people, and they quickly became the most active and powerful criminal gang in Gotham with noone being capable of stopping their madness.
Noone until a certain vigilante named Batman returned to Gotham’s underworld and began to take out every thug and criminal that were unlucky enough to come across the dark knight. Bruce Wayne, disguised in a face mask of a truck driver, first came across the Red Hood One and his gang while rescuing a group of hostages that were kidnapped by the madman earlier.
Their next confrontation came shortly later, where Bruce Wayne disguised himself as one of the targets of the Red Hood Gang, allowing himself to be kidnapped so he could come face to face with their leader. After discovering that he was deceived by the same vigilante they had confronted earlier, the Red Hood One offered Bruce an invitation to join his gang. Bruce of course refused and was forced to escape after taking down a few of the Red Hood goons.
The next couple of weeks Bruce began to target the members of the Red Hood gang as Batman, taking them out in groups at of time and weakening the Red Hood One’s power in the underworld. With his gang’s numbers starting to dwindle, the Red Hood One out of possible desperation gathered the rest of his men and attempted to steal extremely dangerous chemicals to later use for bombings he planned for Gotham. Both Batman and the police caught wind of this plan and embarked to stopping the Red Hood gang once and for all. With the dark knight vigilante attacking his men from the rooftops and the police storming the chemical factory from the ground level, the Red Hood One quickly realized that his gang stood no chance against the two opposing forces and decided to flee with at least one canister of the chemicals he was originally after. Seeing the madman trying to escape, Batman gave chase and was able to stop the Red Hood One from fleeing on his helicopter.
The two of them then commenced in a tense fight on a platform over the exploding chemical factory. As they fought, Batman was able to overpower his opponent and place him in a position of mercy. But the Red Hood One would rather die than surrender, so he refused to be helped by Batman and instead allowed himself to fall into the hellfire below them.
However, instead of landing into the exploding, fiery chaos of the factory, the Red Hood One fell into a chemical tank and was swallowed up by the poisonous liquid. After witnessing this, Batman felt sure that the man he fought was surely dead and left the scene for his own safety. Unknown to him and everyone else however, the Red Hood One survived the exposure into the chemical tank.
Its affects went on to leave him quite disfigured with pale white skin, bright green hair, a permanent glasgow smile, and even more mentally insane than he ever was before. The infamous crime leader known as the Red Hood One was indeed finally gone, but what became of him was even more evil and unhinged, as the man once behind the red cylinder helmet went on to become the mad clown known as the Joker, who soon became obsessed with the Dark Knight known as Batman.
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