The Joker

**Jack Napier**, better known as **The Joker**, is an American anarchistic terrorist and criminal who is often referred to as the "most violent prisoner in Gotham" and "Gotham’s most notorious prisoner".

Napier is currently held in Arkham Hospital. Despite being a high-priority patient, he has very limited support due to his mental and physical danger to all medical professionals who come into contact with him.

An insanely homicidal super-villain, the Joker’s white skin, green hair, and blood-red lips hide the chaotic nature underlying his cartoonish appearance. The self-styled Clown Prince of Crime has no superpowers beyond a capacity for incredible violence and a skill at creating deadly mayhem. He frequently concocts elaborate schemes to entrap his archenemy, Batman.

## History

### Background Information

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Jack was raised with limited education on the road with *Haly’s Travelling Circus*, raised by a neglectful and abusive mother and an abusive father. In his younger years, Jack would amuse his friends by playing pranks, and had revelled in providing laughter and escapism to himself and his peers.

### Golden Age

In his school years, Jack proved himself to be emotionally unstable and prone to violent mood swings, but was highly intelligent, showing aptitude in art, science, and chemistry. When he was 15 years old, Jack was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon.

At the age of 24, Jack and his associate Joe Chill mugged Dr. Thomas Wayne and his wife Martha at gunpoint, while they were walking through an alleyway on Park Row after leaving Monarch Theatre. When Thomas interceded to protect his family, Napier stepped from the shadows and shot both him and Martha in the dead. Napier then took aim at Bruce, inquiring "Tell me, kid… you ever danced with the devil by the pale moonlight?".

Years later, Jack became the right-hand man of the crime boss Carl Grissom; although Jack doubted the competence of Grissom's leadership of the crime family and also snidely retorted to a news broadcast of Gil Colson's speech about decent people living in Gotham: "Decent people shouldn't live here - they'd be happier someplace else*"* as well as implied that he would kill Colson brutally if the latter even attempted to move in on Grissom. Things went further sour between them when Grissom found out that Jack was sleeping with his moll; Alicia Hunt, and out of vengeance he called corrupt GCPD Lieutenant Max Eckhardt to kill his right-hand man: who (along with his men) was trying to erase evidence of criminal activity in the Axis Chemical Factory, being investigated by Colson.

Breaking into the chemical plant with his men, Jack discovered the ruse after they broke into the main office vault to discover it was empty. Whilst his men kept the GCPD busy, Jack activated machinery around the plant to make detection more difficult and cover his escape. Grissom's plan went awry thanks to this, and Jack got away.

Jack eventually wound up working as a hitman and chauffeur for the mob triad of Sal Valestra, Buzz Bronski, and Chuckie Sol.

### Silver Age

Jack eventually began working as a lab assistant for Ace Chemicals. Eventually, deeply depressed with his life and his work, Jack met a cocktail waitress at a bar who told him he needed to get some fun into his life, after which he decided to quit his job and become a comedian.

A goofy prankster, he continued to pursue his comedy dreams and took on work as a clown for HaHa’s Entertainment on the side. This job suffered when he was jumped by street punks, and the property manager’s signboard was destroyed. Subsequently his co-worker, Randall, gave him a .38 revolver as a means of protecting himself from future attacks. Growing more lonely, Jack began to romantically fantasise about his neighbor Jeannie, following her to her daughter's school and on the subway train to work. When Jeannie confronted him about it, he admitted to following her and invited her to his stand-up comedy show, to which she agreed. Jack struggled to maintain a steady pace at his job, and was eventually fired when he accidentally dropped his .38 while doing a clown act for children at a children's hospital, and his co-worker Randall lied to their boss about Jack having wanted to buy a gun from him.

### Modern Age

Desperate to support his pregnant wife, he agreed to guide two criminals into his former workplace. The trio mastermind a heist of Monarch Playing Cards, a business owned by Carmine Falcone. Through a secret entrance at the side of Axis Chemicals, Jack knew a way the gang could get in without being seen. Jack quickly confessed his criminal involvement to Jeannie, who begged him to get out of it. Jack tried to withdraw from the plan, but the criminals strong-armed him into keeping his commitment to them.

Due to Jack’s erratic behaviour and outbursts, Jeannie became concerned what he would do to their child. Some Police officers helped her in faking her death after learning about this from her, and gave her some money to flee to Alaska. During the heist planning, police come and inform Jack that his wife had died in a household accident involving an electric baby bottle heater. Grief-stricken, he again tried to withdraw from the plan but the criminals forced him to stay.

At the plant, the criminals made him don a special mask to become the infamous ‘Red Hood’. Unbeknownst to the him, this disguise was simply the criminals' scheme to implicate any accomplice as the mastermind to divert attention from themselves. Once inside, they almost immediately blundered into security personnel, and a violent shootout and chase ensued. The criminals were gunned down, and Jack found himself confronted by Batman, investigating the disturbance.

Panicked, the man deliberately jumped into the chemical plant's toxic waste catch-basin vat to escape Batman, and was swept through a pipe leading to the outside. Once outside, he discovered to his horror that the chemicals has permanently bleached his skin chalk white, scarred his face and dyed his hair green.

This turn of events, compounding the man's misfortunes of that one day, drove him completely insane and resulted in the birth of the manipulative anarchist calling himself the Joker; with no past or future and no identity to speak of - an agent of chaos. Masterminding riots in Gotham and encouraging the people of the city to create fire and anarchy and terror over Christmas, Jack planned to commit suicide while observing the world burning.

The Joker was subsequently saved from suicide by Batman, who he became infatuated with as a result of his no-killing rule and the fact that he seemed to represent everything the Joker did not: order and justice. The Joker has dedicated himself to ensuring he breaks the Batman; as for him, Batman killing him would represent an ultimate form of chaos.

## Chronology

* 1973 - Jack Napier is born to travellers as part of Haly’s Travelling Circus.
* 1989 - Jack is convicted of Assault with a Deadly Weapon.
* 1989-1997 - Jack befriends Joe Chill.
* 1997 - Jack and Joe murder Thomas and Martha Wayne.
* 2005 - Jack begins to work for the Ace Chemical Processing Plant.
* 2008 - Jack becomes an amateur comedian, and begins working for HaHa’s Entertainment. Jack begins to visit a therapist and obtains medication to handle depression. Jack meets Jeannie, and they move into a house together.
* 2012 - Jack is fired from HaHa’s Entertainment after bringing a gun to a children’s hospital.
* 2016 - Jeannie apparently perishes in a house fire, and Jack is sent to Arkham Hospital after organising city-wide riots.
* 2019 - Jack is released from Arkham after manipulating his therapist, however he’s eventually sent back.
* 2024 - Jack will be freed from Arkham with help from his physiatrist.