Batman Black & White: Case Study

This origin tale by Paul Dini provides an alternate take on Joker’s backstory via an unsigned report unearthed by a doctor at Arkham Asylum. The case study contains information about Joker’s past as a highly cunning career criminal with a sadistic streak, including interviews with other gangsters; one such interview reveals that Joker did not suffer an accidental fall during that fateful night at Ace Chemicals, but instead willfully jumped into a vat of chemicals in order to escape Batman. 

The report concludes with the proposal that Joker is entirely sane and his seemingly irrational behavior is comprised of carefully-executed, meticulously-planned acts designed to hide his true brilliance, resulting in him being continuously deemed “criminally insane” and therefore sentenced to Arkham Asylum rather than state prison; additionally, this diagnosis makes Joker ineligible for the death penalty. 

Just as the doctor prepares to share the seemingly unknown file and have Joker retried as “mentally competent”, a recently-captured Harley Quinn reveals herself to be the author of the case study, having written it prior to meeting Joker and beginning their infamous therapy sessions. Knowing that the study’s contents are now useless even if they are true, the resigned doctor is ordered by a colleague to “lock it away or burn it–I don’t care which”. 

“You don’t believe it?”

“Every word, as sure as I believe he left that file just where we would someday find it: the truth as reported by the doctor he eventually drove mad. He knew it would never stand up in court, but allowed us a moment of hope before yanking the rug out from under us. As Eddie Marcone would say, ‘it’s a pretty good joke so long as it doesn’t happen to you’.”