- The Man Who Laughs

- Killing Joke

- Joker: Killer Smile

- Brian Azzarello's Joker

The most accaimed/popular Joker stories are:

• Batman 251

• Detective Comics 475-476

• Batman The Killing Joke

• Arkham Asylum Serious House on Serious Earth

• Batman: Death in the Family

I personally really like those even though that might be controversial:

• Batman Death of the Family

• Batman Endgame

• Harleen (Thats not really a Joker story, thats a Harley Quinn story but check it out anyway)

• Batman White Knight

Check out Killing Joke.

Everything you see + Batman endgame vol 7.

For Joker, I would recommend starting simple. Try out 2 of the classic graphic novels with the character: Thw Man Who Laughs( his encounter with Batman) and The Killing Joke(really reinvented the characyer of Joker in the 80s). I also love Jokers role in Dark Knight Returns, but that's more a Batman story, with him as a secondary character at best, and it takes place much later in their lives, so save it for later. Death of the Family is really quite good , and Endgame is a worthy successor to it.

The Clown Dies At Midnight from Batman 663 is mostly a prose based story but it's my favourite Joker comic by some distance.

Killing Joke. Endgame is another great one.

The Killing Joke or Death of the Family

Slayride by Paul Dini personally. It’s dark, it’s twisted, it’s actually kinda funny in this really dark way.

The Killing Joke and the Man who Laughs are both good.

There's a Joker omnibus out by DC just before release of the movie. Do check that.

On the newish side, Death of the family and Endgame are bangers. Some of my favorite, modern Joker stories that will stay with you long after you close the book.

There aren't really any modern stories featuring him that are long enough for the omnibus treatment. There is an omnibus collecting a lot of his major Bronze Age appearances though

I agree totally. To add to this Arkham Origins does a great job of cementing the relationship between them.

I love how these 4 games come together to tell the decade long conflict between these archivals.

For that matter , the entire arkham saga tells the definitive Batman story from his origins, training (if we count the AO DLC), fight with the mafia, rise of the supervillains, city under occupation, pandemic and ultimately the fall and rebirth of the Dark Knight

Chef's kiss

Paul Dini didn’t write the story for Arkham Knight, but yeah, I do like Joker in that game too.

Gotham Central: Soft Targets

I love Morrison's Joker when he pops up in RIP and at the end of Morrison's Batman and Robin.

Snyder’s Joker is a lot of fun, both Death of the Family and Endgame

Brian Azzarello's Joker mini is getting a Black Label re-release.

White Knight

The 2nd annual from the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice league run is a good Joker story. It's basically about Joker trying all these ways to murder people and get rid of the league but they keep backfiring on him. Funny story and Mr J is basically the main character in it.

I don’t even think I’d say the killing joke is overrated I think it just got too many people reading it and misinterpreting a lot of it tbh

It's the few times we see the Joker dejected. Like the weight, oh his madness and his actions actually have an effect on his concious.

A moment the Joker actually reflects who he is, and even he in this scene doesn't like it.

The older I grow, the more I love The Killing Joke because of how a pathetic loser The Joker is, which is exactly the point.

When building my comic collection back, I ended up snagging the Absolute Killing Joke as it was on sale.

I was so thrilled to learn it has both the new records on modern glossy, but also the original colors on original paper in it

I like this one way more than The Dark Knight Returns if we're taking influential 80's Batman comics

About 6 months ago, I was trying to decide what my personal favorite Batman story is. Most people would say Year One or Dark Knight Returns or even Court of Owls, but I don't think it's any of them. I really think it's Dark Knight, Dark City. I never really thought of it as 'Riddler's Killing Joke,' just an amazing haunted story with perfect art. Second favorite is either Ego or Dark Knight Returns.

Also, I love those two Joker covers. Just perfect.

Haven’t read Dark Knight, Dark City, but it looks amazing.

Also, we’ve gotten to Tim’s chance to shine as Robin

That Annual Two-Face story is one of the great Two-Face origin tales ever. It feels like it had to be a major influence on the TAS origin story.

Man I love this run and era such awesome stories and some of those covers are amazing, Breyfogle, Bolland Mignola. Classic stuff.

Aparo, Breyfolgle, and Mignola covers are perfection 🔥

Yeah, moments like this always seemed out of character to me. I just can't suspend disbelief that someone as twisted as Joker would have empathy for anyone, let alone an abused child. Some people just don't have that level of humanity in them, and I think Joker works better when he's so evil that there's LITERALLY nothing he won't do as long as he thinks it's entertaining and/or funny. The only reason I could picture him saving this kid is because he finds her too amusing to lose. Otherwise, he could easily make murdering her into a punchline.

Likewise, the reasons I can picture him opposing Nazis is because he thinks "They're just too boringly militaristic.", "They'd cramp my style!", or "They don't get my sense of humor." The scariest Joker is a Joker with no moral boundaries. Or, at most, he sometimes pretends to have them to manipulate people for his own ends. It's why I'll ALWAYS prefer versions of him & Harley where he only uses her despite everything she's done & suffered for him (The tragedy of it is impactful) vs. continuities where he sincerely cares about her.

Joker should really do some charities sometimes not because he's good but as in some kinda joke.

I can't wait for this to show up in a gallery with anti-racist joker and anti-nazi joker that gets spammed all over twitter

Even professionals have standards.

I think taking into account that he butchered a room of kindergarteners on top of shooting babies, plus murdering a gorilla, stealing its baby, and pushing it to suicide really dulls the jokers good moments

The fact that they had a comic where Bruce wayne saved him from Capitol punishment because he was innocent of one death is ridiculous

I’d say these are two of the most influential stories.

For example, Arkham Origins is takes a lot of influence from Year One. Considering it features a Batman new to crime fighting, the cops are corrupt and have it out for Batman, and James Gordon is learning to trust Batman.

Now to be honest I’m not too too familiar with The Dark Knight Returns. Though it clear that the DCEU Batman is inspired TDKR if nothing but his appearance. The cover art has been referenced quite a few times with thunderbolt and the silhouette. As well as any inclusion of Carrie Kerry in other media like the Caped Crusader for example seems to be directly referencing TDKR. I also don’t think they would’ve titled the 2nd and 3rd movies in the TDK trilogy The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises if they didn’t already get inspiration from TDKR. One last thing I’d say is there probably wouldn’t be stories of the Joker going sane like Batman Going Sane or stories about Joker dying like Batman Beyond Return of the Joker or Arkham City if TDKR didn’t play with the ideas first.

Very influential. The dark Knight returns brought Batman to his darker more serious roots and helped kick off the EXTREME era of comics. I really don't know enough about how Year One effected everything but I think that it influenced writers of future Batman titles a fair bit

Very. They’ve inspired all 3 21st century Batmen’s movies as well as Keaton’s first movie.
Likewise Year one has become the definitive origin for the character.

Immeasurably so.

So influential it might have hurt Batman as a character. So many people think of him as a sociopath because of bad stories written by authors who didn't really understand Miller's vision - including, ironically, Miller himself.