What makes Joker tick?

This probably isn't a new revelation to many people, but one thing that struck me about the Joker in his first appearance in Batman #1 is how much he craves attention. I love that panel from the first story where he talks about fooling the police and how he'd like "to shout the answer into their stupid faces." His M.O. that whole story is to announce to the public that he's going to commit a crime (usually a combination of murder and theft) and then pull it off in a way that no one can stop him.

In the fourth and final story in Batman #1 (again by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson), the Joker escapes prison after only two days there and picks up right where he left off. He declares that he wants to "let all know" that he's "still in the game and is still high card." It's not enough to commit the crimes and get away with it; he also has to rub it in the public's face.

This seems core to who Joker is. A good Joker story will always have an element of panache to it, because the Joker isn't an agent of chaos (a relatively recent interpretation) so much as he is an agent of showing off.

The grim jester called... The Joker!

When people talk about whether or not Batman should ever kill, the discussion inevitably comes around to the Joker, a homicidal maniac who continually breaks out of custody to murder again and again. The government is helpless to stop him, so the only way for someone to end his terror is to end his life.

Batman seems tailor-made for the job. He's outside the law, has a supposedly unquenchable thirst for vengeance, and has experienced in very close, personal ways the Joker's capacity for murder. He knows without doubt that this is an unrepentant person incapable of rehabilitation who will only be stopped by being killed. That Batman's "code" prevents him from doing what needs to be done is frankly a massive impediment to suspending disbelief about the dark knight and his world.

One way of relieving this untenable tension is to ease off on the Joker's murderous impulses. I like the Silver Age Joker who was more interested in pulling off capers with panache than spreading terror, but that's not exactly true to the character's Golden Age roots. As presented in Batman #1 (by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson), the Joker is definitely interested in showing off, but he's just as into murder. The original Joker isn't a fun character, he's a horrifying madman.

He's also a massive hit and his creators seem to know it. He appears in two stories in Batman #1; jailed at the end of the first one and... well, we'll look later at what happens in the next. But I'm curious to see how the Golden Age storytellers kept the Joker around before Batman's "code" created an easy, ridiculous out.