The Joker #1.

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. 

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I recently saw a Xeet on Elon Musk's swinging new social media site X which argued that Spider-Man and Batman have the best villains' galleries of any heroes.

To be honest, I wasn't convinced.

Spider-Man clearly has an awesome list of foes but, while Batman has plenty of enemies, I'm not convinced any of them are what you'd call top-notch. Even the Joker seems fairly second-rate when compared to Spidey's best antagonists.

But am I right?

There's only one way to find out.

And that's to look at the comic in which Batman's arch-nemesis gets to have adventures all on his own.

And that comic launches with The Joker #1 from way back in the sunny days of 1975.

Denny O'Neil's tale kicks off when a man called Señor Alvarez helps Two-Face escape from prison but leaves the Joker behind, on the grounds that he only wants the help of a top criminal, and the Joker doesn't qualify.

Not willing to take that snub lying down, the clown prince of crime organises his own escape, with the help of a helium-filled balloon and then sets out to prove he's a better criminal than Two-Face, by attacking his rival's not-so-secret hideout.

Sadly, this all results in him being knocked out and tied to a conveyor belt that's headed for a circular saw.

Thanks to his acid-powered buttonhole, the villain escapes and sets out to thwart Two-Face's plan to steal some old coins from a local museum. This intervention results in the dastardly duo knocking themselves out and being returned to the prison cells in which they belong.

I must be honest and admit I suspect that, even if I'd read this as an eleven-year-old, when it came out, I wouldn't exactly have been grabbed by the tale.

The first thing that strikes me is that, throughout it all, the Joker talks like Lost in Space's Dr Smith on cocaine which gets tiresome very quickly.

Secondly, as drawn by Irv Novick, he's so skinny that it's impossible for him to seem threatening in fight scenes. Admittedly, that's not totally Novick's fault. As far as I can remember, a pipe cleaner physique was bestowed upon the villain by all artists during this period. But I would say this issue takes the trend too far.

But the yarn's fatal flaw is that neither crook comes across as a master villain. They just come across as silly and so hamstrung by their own gimmicks that they become ineffectual; metaphorically shooting themselves in the foot every chance they get.

This is especially a problem for Two-Face whose insistence on everything he does incorporating the number 2 that it makes his every move totally predictable.

I would assume the two crooks knocking themselves out and being hauled off back to jail is down to the strictures of the Comics Code which doesn't want criminals to be seen getting away with wrongdoing. While that may be ethically admirable - and will, no doubt, protect all of us readers from having our minds warped - it does ultimately make the story feel futile and trivial.

All in all, I feel the whole thing pales when compared to Marvel's early 1970s Dr Doom series, in terms of art, mood, characters and writing. Also, neither of these silly ninnies would last more than two panels against Spider-Man.

That is, however, only my opinion, and others may think otherwise.

Others may think the Joker and Two-Face are among the greatest threats ever unleashed upon the comic book world.

They may think this is the greatest comic they've ever read.

If so, they are free to say so, below.