While there is a later DC storyline in which the evil magician Loixas is revealed to be the Joker, what if the history reaches even further back to unearth him as the misfit of the Zatara clan who has a Faustian urge to delve into the forbidden shadows of magic after he grows bored with the more acceptable side?

The family denounces him after an experimental spell that releases a potentially lethal demon, and while Zatanna and the others try to get him to see the light, he is resentful of their wanting to stop his exploration of black magic and severs all ties.

Bitterness at the inability to control his inescapable demon blood could make an especially strong case for Joker feeling his entire existence is a cruel joke and wanting to annihilate everything that breathes.

Say the same explosion which gave Adam his powers was so intense that Joker’s cell walls were smashed, but instead of getting Adam’s card of unearthly abilities through bonding with alien metal (even though it did involve eighteen years of everyone assuming was dead), Joker gets the dregs.

The closest we’ve gotten to an Origin story for the Joker is Alan Moore’s alternative history in Batman: The Killing Joke , where the man who will eventually lose all semblance of humanity and turn into a grinning menace is an ex-lab assistant and struggling stand-up comedian who has no idea what a tangle with the Red Hood gang will get him.