The Joker's Real Name Seemingly Revealed In The Pages Of DC's FLASHPOINT BEYOND #5

@WruceBayne - Well the origin of him being the Red Hood and falling into a vat of chemicals will ALWAYS be canon. However, who he was before that should stay a mystery.

@marvel72 - I do agree about Wolverine losing a lot once they revealed his past. (Even though I get why they did it. The original X-Men films were just starting up and they knew that Fox might try to do an origin for Wolverine. So they wanted to beat the movies to the punch and write Wolverine's origin in the comics on their own terms.)

Having said that, what really hurt Wolverine the most for me is his popularity. And no, I'm not some hipster that hates everything popular. His popularity hurt him because he started showing up in everything, written differently by different writers. He was in every X-Men book. He had 2 or 3 of his own solo books. And he was an Avenger. As well as guest starring in everyone else's books under the sun.

This hurt him because these writers all wanted to trump each other and pushed his healing factor over the limit. You can actually see the progression. In the 80'snand 90's he could heal quickly, but he wasn't invincible or immortal, and he actually got taken out of fights quite often. Jim Lee even planned on killing him off before leaving the title and Jim Lee taking over.

Then, before you know it, after the Jim Lee Era, his healing factor just goes out of control. We see his arm get burned off down to the skeleton and he heals from it in minutes in New X-Men. We see Nitro explode right next to him and burns all the muscles and flesh off Wolverine's body and just leaves his entire skeleton on the ground. Wolverine heals faat enough to catch up to Nitro before he even makes it to his car.

It's just too much.

@CorndogBurglar - 1980's Wolverine was so great. Gritty in the right ways. Basically a cowboy and a lone samurai rolled into one. He did get overexposed over time which diluted his charm.

@WruceBayne - that sound like the unknown origin of Heath Ledger's The Joker.

@WruceBayne - It’s funny you say that because everyone loses their minds when villains aren’t more fleshed out with compassionate backstories in CBMs, but Heath’s Joker is one of the best ever and he’s just as you described. Proof that it’s all in the execution, not only one successful method.

@GhostDog - I think joker was best case scenario for giving him a name. Mostly thanks to the unreliable narrator angle that allowed them to say he might not even be THE joker.

@DrReedRichards - uh... Magneto is Max Eisenhardt. That's an alias.

@DrReedRichards - Or as much of a retcon as making Wanda and Pietro his children in the first place, maybe?

@Chewtoy - How do I apply.

@Nightwing1015 - I think they should be even more flexible than that.

I don't know how it usually works, but if I had to guess, big companies like DC and Marvel have general fixed road maps for their characters and their big events, and they just bring writers on board to find the stories within the wiggle room of that confined space and string things together.

Let me guess, all the heroes are going to unite to stop a world-ending event? Rivetting. A fan favorite character is going to "die" just to be revived by another writer 2 years later? Daring today, are we?

I'd rather see these companies open up their IPs to writers to do with them as they want. Basically like the movies. We went from Nolan to Snyder to Matt Reeves when it comes to Batman.

You got a story that will span 5 to 6 years? You have a vision in mind that you want to tell within the DC sandbox? Go ahead.

Whether you want to use bunch of characters like the Justice League or a single one like Superman, we will provide you the license for it. Hell even if you want to create "Jeffery, the extraterrestrial lawn mower" and tell its story as a new addition to the DC legacy, you go ahead and do that.

Mike Mignola didn't get Hellboy handed to him from a previous run, he created it. So did Gaiman with Sandman, Moore with Watchmen, Oda with One Piece, Kirkman with Invincible.

And what I love about those stories is that they started with one person and they ended/will end with them (aside from some exceptions).

I wouldn't mind if 3 writers approach DC at the same time to tell 3 different Batman stories that would span a few years each, they could all run simultaneously for all I care. It's like if I'm reading Attack on Titan, Invincible and Hellboy at the same time. Three independent, limited-run books, but they just happen to all be starring Batman.

One could kill Batman at the end, another could retire him to be replaced by a successor, and the third would turn him into a villain or something. Reinvent the character if you have to. BTAS did that to Mr. Freeze, and that version became the standard moving forward. When the stakes are real, and character evolutions are real, then I'm interested.

And then you don't have to reboot anything. Because stories just end when their creators finish telling the story. And there's nothing else to follow it, crossover with it or build upon it in any way.

And if you want spectacle, someone would come along to tell a 20-year-spanning consistent, single-visioned, epic story. Bringing together multiple characters from different corners of the universe for a climactic adventure. Eiichiro Oda is doing it with One Piece, why can't western comics do it as well?

That's my ideal comic book industry. Comics that start from issue #1 and end with the last chapter. Tell a self-contained story, with real characters that age, change, turn bad or good, and die or ride off to the sunset. Not stagnate in the same stasis for decades with mostly "just fine" writing.

@OldMan - please tell me you’re joking(HA)! At some point in time “Joe Kerr” was a real thing and somebody thought it was a good idea to put this on paper and sell it?

@WruceBayne - In "Batman: Going Sane" Joker kills Batman and becomes sane, and for a time lives with his girlfriend as a normal every day shlub Joseph Kerr.

@Reeds2Much - I can get on board with the Joker being so crazy that when he finally manages to kill Batman that it triggers his sanity. Almost like a reverse mental breakdown. His name being Joe Kerr just bothers me and it feels cheap.