After reading the Dark Knight returns I thought that there was no way that this joker could have been approved by the “Comic Code” of the 50’s. As it turns out he wasn’t. This NPR article talks about the history of the infamous trickster. He started out as homicidal maniac like his current incarnation, but when the comic code was instituted he was turned into a whacky tacky, goofball thief. As the years progressed and the comic code became more lenient the artists and writers made him become a dark, twisted murderer again.