My pal Lou Tambone and I have turned in the manuscript for our next anthology, The Man Who Laughs: Exploring the Clown Prince of Crime, to the graphic artist laying out the book, David Pipgras, who also created the very cool cover you see to the right. Once the book is laid out, we’ll send the file to Crazy 8 Press for publication in April 2023. This is exciting, as we’ve been working on this project since mid-2022. Lou and I are exceedingly proud of this anthology, which features more than 20 perspectives on the Harlequin of Hate from DC Comics luminaries and noted comics scholars. The table of contents is pasted below, and I cannot wait for you all to read the final product.
Introduction: Let’s Get Nuts!
By Rich Handley and Lou Tambone
Foreword: Who Is the Joker? A Question from the Answer Man
By Bob Rozakis
Text Messages of the Dark Knight
By Tom Mason
The Banter and the Bat
By Michael Jan Friedman
My, What Big Teeth You Have!
By Bobby Nash
Delicious! The Joker as Latin Loverboy
By Jim Beard
One Card Short: Missing the Joke(r)
By Brian Cronin
Something Tastes Funny—That’d Be the Clownfish
By Duy Tano
Why I’m Fed Up with the Joker
By Alan J. Porter
Is the Joker Gay? Queer Representation and the Clown Prince of Crime
By Valentina Rossi
Joker: Stop Punching Down
By Jo Duffy
The Joke Book: Laughing Along with the Joker’s 1970s Solo Series
By Lou Tambone
The Joke’s on the Audience
By Robert Greenberger
One Hell of a Joke: From Laughing Magician to the Man Who Laughs
By Rich Handley
Empathy for Emperor Joker
By Paul Cornish
Don’t Get Even, Go Mad: Joker and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Days
By Joseph F. Berenato
Why Do We Care That the Joker Hates Nazis?
By Alex Galer
Toward a Short Comparison and Contrast of the Joker with Trickster Characters of African Folklore
By LaMarrison Forte
Whatever Joker Wants, Joker Goetz
By Keith R.A. DeCandido
Fixing the Laughter: Voice Casting the Joker on Batman: The Animated Series
By John Trumbull
The Joker: Just How Crazy Is He?
By Glenn Hauman
Mountebank to Monster: The Bloody Road from “The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge” to The Killing Joke
By Paul Kupperberg
Afterword: The Last Laugh
By Steve Englehart