Chapter Seventeen:

Elements of an Egregore

DC Comic's villain the Joker represents an egregore created out of the collective effort of the writers, the artists, and the attentive imaginations of the readers over the last half-century of the Joker's existence. Where does the Joker live? The question has different answers depending on which way we approach the Joker's construct. He lives in Gotham City; he lives on the pages of comics printed by DC; he lives in the minds of the writers, artists, and readers. He also has mind share in those who've never read the comics, either as an archetype acted out by Jack Nicholson in the films, by Cesar Romero in the Batman television series from the Sixties and voice acted by Mark Hamil in the cartoon show of the nineties.

So while the Joker lives in Gotham City in that he is not wholly separable from his fictional narrative, to invoke the Joker is to bring up his associations. To bring up the Joker is to bring up Batman, even if Batman is neither seen nor mentioned. The actions of the Joker are constrained by his past behavior, as if he does something out of character the readers won't believe the actions took place and future writers and artists of the Joker are likely to ignore that episode in the Joker's past when describing new actions. In comics, this is known as continuity, with events that fall outside of continuity being attributed to Jokers in alternate universes or simply never being referenced in later works.