My uncle gave me this purple leather-bound book a long while ago as a gift, and it's taken me a long time to get through. That's not an insult to the work, but simply a commentary on the fact that its nature as an anthology can take longer. For any hardcore Joker fan, like myself, this will be a good read.The tone of the comics is a bit inconsistent. Generally this is a Golden Age work, with not much gore or too much darkness, but there is still murder at random. It strikes this odd balance betw...

A collection of comics from the very beginning up to the 1980’s, showing the Joker’s evolution as a villain, Batman’s opposite, rival, and arch nemesis. From his beginnings as a killer clown who left his victims dead with a smile on their faces, through his stints as a comedic character specializing in bizarre, spectacular crimes, to his plots over the years to set elaborate traps for his enemies, particularly Batman, this book showcases the growth and changes of a villain who’s been opposing th...

An excellent collection, though far from complete (which the intro/outro go to great lengths to remind us). However, I think an individual intro as to why each story was selected would have gone a long way, rather than the extended ramblings before and after the collection.

There are good Joker stories in here and bad ones, but if for nothing else, this is a great historical document. Watching how the Joker (and comics themselves) changed over the decades is fascinating in its own right.

Great cover, great collection of classic stories, arcs like the joker-fish are seminal

Good Collection of Joker Stories covering his career from his origins to the present day.It's a pretty awesome and fascinating look at how many variations and warpings an icon can take and still be among the most potent pop myths. The book to it's credit isn't afraid of the fact that the Joker was kind of well a Joke for plenty of years. Take this line of dialouge from a comic from the fifties where The Joker rants about well, his Giant Boner. (Note This Is Not Made Up. Or even edited. I'm Not T...

This collection of Joker comic stories came out when the first Tim Burton film came out. I was living in a small town in Japan and luckily a friend of mine sent me a copy of this book. It was the most precious thing I owned in Moji-Ku Japan.Excellent survey of Joker stories that appeared in Batman. The early ones of course are more sinister and the later ones got kind of silly. But as I mentioned before (the review down below) I more interested in The Joker as a character than the story or how h...

This sucked. The "greatest Joker stories ever told" are crap about a crap serial killer who got neutered by the Comics Code Authority - and it turned out that neutering was for the best - the Joker we have today is an idiot by comparison. DO NOT READ. It will be two days of your life you will NEVER GET BACK.

Greatly done collection of the Bat's most outstanding foe.Worth the price of admission.

"The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told" was okay. It's divided into roughly three sections, the first are the earlier Joker comics, mostly from "Detective Comics", then the middle half of it are ones where the Joker was appearing frequently in "Batman" comics, followed by the last quarter from later on, the 70's.In the first quarter, the earlier stories, the Joker is a killer, like we expect, with all his victims dying from his Joker venom or gas. Those stories are okay.The middle half, the longe...

Ohhh boyOverall average of all the stories: 3.0Favorite story: Fool's Errand, 2001Least favorite story: A clash of symbols, 1990Favorite art style: The man who laughs, 2005Least favorite art style: The joker & the joker returns, 1940This was, quite frankly, baad. It was interesting to get the full character journey but I'm left wondering why some stories were selected for this: especially The Origin of the Joker (2007), which is basically the killing joke but in just two pages.There were also st...

I was in the mood for some non-psycho, fun Batman stories; the kind that were getting reprinted in the 100 pg giants in the 70's. This was the book I had on my shelf that filled the bill.

This collection is great not primarily because every story in it is sublime, but because it gives an excellent historical overview of the treatment of The Joker in comics from just plain silly to dark humor. Published in 1990, this collection spans 50 years of Joker tales. And of course, there are some great stories. My favorites include:"The Man Behind the Red Hood," in which The Joker is given an origin. Writer: Bill Finger; Artists: Sheldon Moldoff & George Roussos."The Crazy Crime Clown," in...

What's better than a collection of the Greatest Batman Stories ever told? A collection of the Greatest Joker stories ever told! Oh how I do love the Joker, who in my humble opinion is the greatest villain ever created- better than Lex Luthor, better than Gallactus, better than Thanos and a whole lot more entertaining to boot! This was a really great book to own and read (it's a shame it took me this long to read since I've had the book forever) but like a fine wine, I guess I needed to age a lit...

This was my second graphic novel I ever received as a kid, and to my great shock, most of the material still stands up. There isn't quite the breadth and depth of material as in the first "Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told" volume, but the early "mad killer" Joker and the late period "return to being menacing" Joker stories are great representation of their eras. Even the mid-period "novelty criminal" stuff feels of a piece with the Batman TV series of the era, giving it a quirky, campy charm.

A nice collection of Homer stories, mostly from silver and bronze age books. So if you're expecting the dark, gritty Joker of modern times, you would be disappointed.

The Batman (a.k.a. The Dark Knight) series contains some of the best villains ever to appear in comic books. In my opinion, one of the primary reasons why the television series was so successful was due to the excellent casting of the villains. The primary ones were the Penguin, Riddler, Catwoman and the Joker. All were a few cards short of a full deck, but the Joker was by far the one farthest away. This obvious instability made him a stronger villain and I also think that was why the Joker ch

Thought I had read this: but, now I have. This is a great anthology, ending up at the moment in time when Killing Joke and Dark Knight Returns publish and further darken, with A Death in the Family, the character for seeming ever. Here you get beginnings and weirdness. Lots of great Dick Sprang art, too. Very few writer credits before the mid-1960s, something I think has deepened with fandom and scholarship. In particular, the writing of Bill Finger is prolific here, but we don't have full credi...

I knew the Joker from the modern classics like The Killing Joke and Batman Hush arc. Other exposures are like cartoons and not forgetting the on-screen version portrayed by Jack Nicholson, the late Heath Ledger, and most recently Joaquin Phoenix.The best Joker portrayal in video games and cartoons have got to be Mark Hamill. If you’re wondering why his name is so familiar, he’s Luke Skywalker, the Jedi. Yes, he does voice acting too and well known for his portrayal as the Joker.The Joker is port...

My disappointment in this volume echoes my disappointment in The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told. Of the 19 stories collected here, I could only say two felt worth keeping--the first and the last--which is to say they weren't totally terrible by modern standards. Those are the only stories where Joker (a) is a villain, instead of just an eccentric trickster or vandalizing thief and (b) is unpredictable in a manner that makes him seem dangerous. "The Laughing Fish" almost gets there were it not...