Anatomy of an Art Page of a Clown: The Best Joker Artists

by Kenny Cooper

If there’s a comic book character that’s fun to draw, it’s Batman. The horned ears, the cape, the symbol, and the basic design make for much to play around with and have a blast figuring out what would look cool. You can make it detailed or just a simple iconic outline and it all looks fantastic. If there’s a runner-up, it’s the Joker. However, unlike his Dark Knight counterpart, the Joker is a bit more taxing and requires more skill. Drawing a great Joker is almost an art form onto itself. Great artists may do beautiful art and STILL not make a very good Joker. Still, an artist that can make an iconic Joker is one that really deserves to be noticed. I’ve compiled a list of some of the best Joker artists (and maybe a handful of not-so-good ones) and will looking to see what makes them great.

Lee Bermejo (Joker)

While Barmejo’s Joker may seem to borrow a lot from Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight but reportedly the coincidence is simply that.  Regardless of the reasons, Barmejo’s interpretation is certain the most unique among the selections.  The Joker here is the most realistic of the designs while still maintaining a dangerous edge to him.  Rather than the flashy purple suit, the Joker here settles for a black leather jack and street clothes while the only thing to let you know he’s the Joker is the pale skin, green hair, and (most importantly) a crudely made Glasgow smile.  The teeth are perhaps the nastiest of all Joker designs, adding the kind of detachment from normal society that makes him so scary.  This is the Joker most likely to stumble into a 7-11 at 11pm smelling like petrol and urine and pop your eyeball out.

Brian Bolland (The Killing Joke)

Of all the artists that have drawn the Joker, Bolland’s is perhaps the most iconic.  Bolland in general has a kind of grotesque detail to his style that really makes his Joker really pop.  There aren’t many big choices that Bolland made in terms of tweaking the design but there are really effective subtle ones.  For one, the eyebrows are much sharper and angular than previously, giving his eyes an almost demonic flair.  He’s also lankier with a pointier chin, giving him a lot of uncomfortably sharp angles, like he could just drive his face into your head and kill you that way.  The hair is also a bit of note.  Before Bolland, artists almost uniformly drew his hair combed back.  For , The Killing Joke, Bolland decided to draw it more foward and spiky, giving it a messier and more unkempt look.  Since then, a great deal of artists have co-opted this look for the Joker.  Since the late 80′s, Brian Bolland has been the benchmark of the Joker’s look.  I couldn’t leave Bolland off this list.  It’d be criminal.

Alex Maleev (No Man’s Land)

Alex Maleev, an artist most noted as the hand behind Brian Bendis’s Daredevil run, got his start in mainstream comics with the Batman family of books during the No Man’s Land storyline.  Of the artists here, Maleev is the one that drew the Joker the least (mostly covers and a single-page story) and yet he deserves a mention.  Maleev takes a lot from Bolland’s Joker– the frozen grin, the spiky pompadour, the chin– and adds a level of grit.  His work has been described as looking like an old photograph from the 20′s.  There’s a kind of photorealism to Maleev’s Joker; much like Bolland’s and yet somewhat less exaggerated and somewhat more three dimensional.  Maleev also ultilizes shading and shadows more often, giving a dark menace to his interpretation of the Joker.  All in all, it’s a very scary looking Joker.

Dave McKean (Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth)

Unlike the most artists here, McKean deals with paints, opting to look more impressionist in the classical sense.  His figures in Arkham Asylum feel more like ideas given form than characters themselves.  The Joker ends up looking more like a nightmare being than human.  McKean’s paints give the Joker texture but the features are very exaggerated as well.  His hair is like a green torch upon his head while his eyes are huge and constantly wide open with the usual giant grin.  He himself looks like he just took a shotgun to the face and survived… kind of… and it’s scary. The design lends itself well to the dreamlike style of the book and makes for one of the most frightening looking Joker ever.

Marshall Rogers (The Laughing Fish)

Marshall Rogers was for a long time the iconic Joker artist.  During the late sixties and early seventies, the Batman TV series had drained the franchise of any weight or gravitas by turning everything Batman into a backhanded joke.  The Joker was not immune.  While he had been something of a harmless trickster since the 40′s, the creators of Batman decided it was time to be serious again and created “The Laughing Fish.”  Rogers’ design was one of the first attempts to pull Joker out of the cartoony Dick Sprang/Jerry Robinson design and make something that looks a little more real.  The result is a more detailed, more off-putting Joker who looks more malicious in his amusement than before.  This was the first time artists really started to play around the Joker’s eyebrows, making look like he could kill you at any moment.  This is also where the Joker developed the blue -ish striped pants Jack Nicholson wore for the 1989 film.  In fact, visually, Nicholson’s Joker is very much Rogers’ version.

Alex Ross (Case Study, Justice)

The Joker is a subject Alex Ross likes to draw but almost always relegates him to bit roles or covers/posters.  Due to the natural feel of Ross’ photorealistic style, his Joker tie with Barmejo’s for looking the most realistic (though for different reasons).  The painted style Ross is famous for allows a meatier, more detailed, more three dimensional Joker.  This is the original Bob Kane Joker– the slicked, back hair, the posture– crawling into the real world.  Every wrinkle from every muscle pulled when Joker smiled is right there on the page.  There isn’t a spot on his face that isn’t tensed up.  It’s a pale, crazed vampire looking to make you laugh to death.

Bruce Timm (Batman Adventures)

Naturally, you’ll recognize this Joker as being from Batman: the Animated Series.  For a lot of kids of my generation, this was how they saw the Joker.  I won’t be talking about the cartoon version but more the version that Timm created for the Batman Adventures tie-in comic that was released in conjunction with the series.  For the comic, Timm’s influences by both Jack Kirby (in terms of shade and ink) and Harvey Kurtzman (in terms of curved design) really poke through more.  Being a comic and not chained to the absolute need to be on-model all the time, this Joker is more given to exaggerations.  For an example, if you own a copy of Mad Love, observe when Joker has his “YOU GOT WHO TIED UP WHERE?!” and compare it to when it happens in the animated series; the comic Joker had more lines wrinkles and lines that really helps put across the intensity of his mood.  Also, Timm’s Joker in the comic has the ability to exaggerate features such as his grin whenever it suits the scene.  Timm’s Joker is, of the ones on this list, the most expressive in his moods.

And, of course, the not-so-good ones…

Jim Lee (Hush)

Jim Lee has a very polished style that has helped define the way mainstream superhero book have looked since the late 80′s and early 90′s.  In the early 2002′s, Jim Lee set the comic book world ablaze with his work on the arc Hush.  That being said, his Joker is not very good.  Aside from the Wolverine hair in this shot, the jawline is too shrunken in and the nose is a bit comically long.  It makes him less demonic looking and more like that of an imp or an elf.  As such, it’s not as threatening as many of the others above are.  The desire to give the Joker sharp features is understandable but this is an example of when it doesn’t work.

Tim Sale (The Long Halloween, Dark Victory)

The big problem with this Joker is kind of obvious.  It’s the teeth.  In all fairness, this is the moment where the teeth are their biggest.  Nevertheless, even when they aren’t comically huge, they’re tall and thin in such a way that it’s only because they’re in his mouth that you know they’re his teeth.  Like giving the Joker sharp features, a big smile makes sense and yet this is done in such a way that the Joker doesn’t look scary but silly.  Also, he’s Conan O’Brien.  Once you see, you can’t unsee it.  Sorry.

Frank Miller (The Dark Knight Returns)

Unlike the last two where familiar elements of the Joker are utilized in ways that don’t work, Frank Miller opted to reject all that.  Where the Joker is usually lanky and stringy, Miller makes him thick and burly.  He also forgoes the combed-back look as well as the messy upwards design that Bolland created.  He prefers a more vaguely feathery style.  The face is squared out as opposed to the sharper features most other Jokers.  The problem is that it just doesn’t look like the Joker but a thug in Joker make-up.  He has none of the demonic flair that the others wield.  The Joker is more than just clown facepaint and dyed hair; he should be recognizable even in black and white.  Remove the color in Miller’s Joker and you’d probably think this was some run-of-the-mill mafioso.   Only at the end of this issue does he even begin to look like the Joker for a couple panels and by then, he’s… well… go read the book.

The Joker is a tricky one to draw.  Even great icons of the business can mess him up.  There needs to be a balance of exaggeration and structure to emphasize the fearsome impishness of the character.  When it’s done poorly, it can be bland or even comical (in a bad way).  Done right though, and you’ve created a masterpiece.

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