Faculty Members Peaslee, Weiner Compile Joker Book, Set to Discuss During Q&A

A black book sits on a desk. Spindly red text spells out a title printed over dark artwork featuring an seemingly evil grinning face in the shadows — the iconic Joker, and it’s a work of academia.

Also featured on the cover of “The Joker: A Serious Study of the Clown Prince of Crime” is Robert Peaslee, department chair of journalism and electronic media and communication in the Texas Tech University College of Media & Communication, and Robert Weiner, a librarian at the university who specializes in media and humanities, as the co-editors.

Robert Weiner, a Texas Tech University librarian, poses at his desk with a copy of his book.

After completing their first book together, “WEB-SPINNING HEROICS: Critical Essays on the History and Meaning of Spider-man,” the two embarked on constructing the first truly in-depth scholarly book to feature one of Batman’s greatest foes.

“I had the idea for it about eight years ago,” Weiner said, “because I noticed there was scholarship being done generally on superheroes, but nothing of note being done on super-villains.”

Weiner claimed there were four main fictional comic book characters known in the world’s collective unconscious — Batman, Spiderman, Superman and the Joker — predating “The Avengers” movie.

“Nobody had taken a long, sustained, academic look at the Joker,” Peaslee explained, “which to me seemed crazy because it’s a character with such longevity. It’s a character that seems to maintain a really high level of prominence in society, and it’s a villain.”

Peaslee described the four-year process of creating the book, from collecting abstracts from writers to finding a publisher and getting “The Joker” peer-reviewed. The associate professor said Steve Engleheart, a writer for Marvel Comics and DC Comics, wrote the foreword to the book. Will Brooker, a leading scholar on Batman, penned the afterword.

“It’s taken a lot of work,” Weiner admitted, “a lot of time, a lot of edits, and re-edits and re-edits, and even then, it doesn’t cover everything.”

Peaslee described how the book contains a variety of essays.

“There’s plenty of stuff in there for people who aren’t hardcore into theory,” Peaslee said. “Some of it’s about the history of the character, the history of the performances of the Joker that are really accessible. It’s a nice mix, you know, sort of academic versus general population.”

Finishing their second book, the editors agree they make a good team.

“A reason we’re such good partners on these projects is because we come at it from different angles,” Peaslee said, noting he focuses on the Joker from a cinematic perspective, whereas Weiner tends to view the history, theory and artwork of the character.

“When somebody writes an article and they say that such and such storyline happened in Issue 34 of Volume 2 of “Batman,” he knows if it’s true or not.”

Weiner recalled early memories of going to the store and seeing the colorful cover of “Tales of Suspense #39,” featuring Ironman and the Silver Surfer as well as wearing his older brother’s Batman bow tie.

Robert Peaslee, department chairperson for journalism and electronic media and communication, poses at his desk.

“From a scholarly standpoint now, I understand how comics are a part of social history,” Weiner said. “They’re a reflection of the times. They’re our modern mythology.”

While he listed renown works such as “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art,” a textbook completely written as a graphic novel, the “Watchmen,” which is revered as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, and “Maus,” a Pulitzer-prize winning comic book, Weiner explained some individuals in academia still consider this type of sequential art as childish or lesser than other written or artist works.

“I’m not justifying it anymore. It’s a legitimate form of academic study,” Weiner explained, saying the study of comic books is in its infancy, “just like film, just like sports, just like video games. It goes back to the cave painting or some of the hieroglyphics or pictographs of some higher civilization. They’re using pictures to convey ideas as a form of language.”

With a smile, Weiner clarified these stories are far more than characters fighting in their underwear.

“The Marvel universe and the DC universe is more sophisticated in some ways or equal to, if you will, Tolkien’s universe or C.S. Lewis’,” Weiner claimed, comparing comics to “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy and ” The Chronicles of Narnia.”

“These very fantastical universes that often mirror our own but feature beings that do fantastical things.”

A few weeks ago, the two attended WonderCon, a “con,” for comics in Anaheim, California, and witnessed a speech explaining research providing evidence that reading comics stimulates the mind in ways movies and other media do not.

“We’re finding out as educators, rather that making you stupid, reading comics might actually make you smarter because your brain is active,” Weiner related. “You have graphic images that convey a story, and you have to figure out between those panels what is going on. You have to infer things.”

Aside from the comic book world in general, Peaslee said he was eager to divulge the Joker’s realm.

“There’s sort of the changeableness of him, and I mean that over time, the different manifestations that the Joker had,” Peaslee said, listing the actors — Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger — all portrayed the character in a different manner.

Alongside the villain’s malleability, another factor of the professor’s interest, he said, was the Joker’s lack of a concise origin story.

“His origin story, as many people in the book point out, is multiple choice,” Peaslee said.

“The origin story is always such an important part of the hero and villain, so to have that be indeterminate is a very interesting part of that character. I think what that does is, on some level, identify with him because if you don’t know how he got that way, we could get that way.”

Elaborating, Peaslee discussed the Joker’s combination of dark comedy and tragedy. While he’s a killer, the villain is always smiling and kills with venom and gas, which distorts the victim’s face into a smile.

Weiner holds out a copy of his book in his office.

Contrasting more one-dimensional “bad guys” who simply want money or power, the Joker does what is unexpected or amusing to himself, Peaslee said.

“There’s something about our time now — post 9-11, social media-era — that the Joker is really, particularly relevant,” Peaslee said, mentioning his favorite article in the book regarding the “4chan” online message board where “trolling” began.

“And, the whole notion of doing things for the “lawls” that the article makes an argument about that as being sort of postmodern 21st century of the Joker.”

Weiner spoke of the Joker’s transformation from the gangster version of the character in the 1940s, to a trickster in the ’50s and ’60s, to a murder in the 1970s, to an insane patient in the ’80s, to being normalized in the 1990s and a wild card beyond.

“There’s so many unique ways to interpret the Joker, which is what our book does,” Weiner said of video game adaptations to performance study.

“With the Joker, you just don’t know; he’s just as likely to let you live as he is to shoot the gas in your face.”

Spanning professional actors, writers and artists, the librarian said, he’s the villain they choose to draw or perform.

“Even though the Joker is highly malicious, we also live out our fantasies,” Weiner explained. “Seeing him on screen or reading his adventures in the comics gives us as humans a catharsis sort of understanding.”

Peaslee said he and Weiner will be speaking at the DenverCon to unveil the book to the “con” crowd, and they are currently working with LubbockCon coordinators to present in town.

A question and answer discussion with a panel featuring Peaslee, Weiner and Ryan Litsey, another librarian at the university and another author of an article in the book, will take place at 6 p.m. Thursday in the Croslin Room of the library. Books will be available at the Q&A, to be signed.

“The Joker: A Serious Study of the Clown Prince of Crime” is also available on Amazon, at Wal-mart and will be in the faculty book section at Barnes & Noble at Texas Tech.

About Allison Terry

Allison Terry is an electronic media and communications major from Lubbock, Texas. She hopes to work in the media industry after graduation.