Aug 052012
Surfing on the cyberwaves of Deviantart, I stumbled into this nice piece of art and felt compelled to share it with ya’ll. Blame it on my Joker-centric OCD!!
TITLE: THE SMILE IN THE MIRROR
ARTIST: ETHAN GRAHAM PEACOCK (aka Elfsar)
DESCRIPTION: (By the artist)
This was a commission by a psychology major who was very particular about what they wanted. This version of the Joker is taking a bit from both the comics and the Dark Knight film. I have been working on this off and on for about a year and it represents an interesting point in time with my art where I am starting to blend traditional methods with digital. Although the final print would be considered digital, a lot of the drawing process was completed using traditional methods and then working further on the piece digitally using Adobe Photoshop. So it was difficult to put this in a particular category. I would like to call it “Tradigital’ if there was such a thing.Mixed Media -Colored Conte, Tria Markers, Pantone pens, pencil crayon and then worked further with Adobe Photoshop CS5Artist site: Elfsar on DeviantART
You know, I love this one. It’s almost a capturing a moment in time – as if the artist has mixed his “Killing Joke” origin with a possible origin for Ledger!Joker. I can imagine the story now:
The rain came down in torrential sheets that night; the thunder cracked the sky like stained porcelain.
The man remembers stumbling through the doorway of the rundown apartment complex, rain drenching his messy, tangled waves. They stuck to his face like limp seaweed, clinging to his pale skin as if afraid to detach. The aching sensation in his jawline, the awful stench of acid, the burning that covered every square inch of his being – oh yes, he remembered it all.
And certainly, he remembers the first time he saw it.
Himself.
The REAL him.
The sterile light of the fluorescent bulb reflected off the bathroom tiles, reflecting onto a scene of almost tragically funny absurdity. All his flesh drained of color; eyes turned a piercing, toxic green that burned (or was that from chemicals?); hair a shocking verdant hue. And still this was not enough, still he couldn’t unfreeze the rictus from his face; still, still!
Something had snapped then, or perhaps it was a realization. Perhaps time realized he was an anomaly and just stopped working for him. Perhaps reality abandoned him like an unwanted child. He doesn’t remember anymore, even if it was just a few short days ago. Even his reflection doesn’t remind him.
And it HURTS.
He doesn’t know why, he can’t even begin to piece together why. But it hurts. It sears and burns, an ache, an emptiness, a… something. A joke?
A JOKE.
Yes, that was all it was. That was all it would ever be.
A joke.
Some urge possesses him, and he pulls the surgical mask from his face, showing that sickening grin of his again, the thing he’d hoped to cover up. The thing he’d hoped to remove by forgetting. It feels almost natural now. Almost right. The jagged edges of the broken mirror reflect his image back tenfold. His hand still hurts from when he punched it. Little fractured pieces of scattered memories. Little things he wished he could forget, but couldn’t.
It makes him look even more demented. Even more wrong.
His hands shake, holding the straight razor with a dangerous whiteknuckle grip. He wouldn’t cut too deeply; no, just enough to bleed a bit. Just enough to prove he was still a human being, that he wasn’t just some freak result of a chemical accident, that he WASN’T a clown for the world to mock. He had to. Maybe then he could bring himself back home again, maybe then he could remember.
The blade bites into his cheek, and he grimaces. The pain feels no worse than anything else he’s felt, no more than an inconvenience. Blood pours from the fresh, rough wounds into the porcelain sink, tainting its pure white innocence. Staining the floor in little droplets.
Somehow the red felt comforting, the iron salt odor, the color and consistency. It soothes him as he runs his fingers through its trails and droplets and spatters. It was almost an infectious giddiness that gripped him, a whimsy, a joy he hadn’t felt in a long time.
YES…
Finishing the other side, he sets the blade down, and sops up the blood from the cuts with a rag. He turns the sink on and wets the rag, trying to scrub the blood from the sink, but cannot. His iron grasp on the cloth wrings out red liquid each time he clenches his fist, sending pinkish-red streaks back into the sink. He’d never get the stain out. Never.
As for the rag and the sink? Easily fixed with a little hydrogen peroxide.
His eyes glitter feverishly, and an impulse grips him unshakably. His face continues to bleed. He smears at it with his hand, wiping the blood in a wide red swath of a smile before it clots fully.
Gently dipping a dextrous finger into the red on his palm, he begins to write. Nothing serious. Nothing important. But something nonetheless… perhaps a warning of the storm to come. Perhaps the last ramblings of a sane man gone mad, perhaps nothing more than a whimsy. He doesn’t know why he wrote it and he doesn’t know what it means – but it amuses him.
He pulls the surgical mask up over his mouth once more, concealing his unshakable smile. He must blend for now. A good showsman doesn’t reveal his secrets until the best possible moment. The surprise wouldn’t be as fun if he gave it away too soon. The punchline would have no punch…
Beneath the mask, he smirks as he finishes writing. At least he had a purpose. At least he remembered what he was now.
Chaos incarnate.
DAMMIT the story didn’t take the formatting right. :c You know there should be an edit button for these posts. This is getting beyond annoying with the formatting.
You might not be able to edit, but I do. I made some changes to the format, not sure if you wanted any more changes. Let me know anad I will edit your post.
Are you registered in my blog? If you are, maybe I can give you a little more freedom regarding editing your posts….
I am signed up on the forums, yes, and I suppose that counts as a blog account here? That would be nice to have the ability to edit my posts after they’re made if I need to. Because, yanno, I really am alive and not just some spambot. Might not get out of the fishbowl much, but when you basically look like someone crossed a clownfish with the Joker, the other tuna tend to avoid you and your lunacy like the plague. 😉
I do every so often have little strokes of inspiration, brought on by the most random things. The Joker actually is my muse for Batman fic, and he has a tendency to get rather… heavy-handed. He’ll throw ten ideas at me at once and ask me to sort them out. He’ll grab me by the throat and shove an idea down it until I can’t stand it anymore and have to get it out. He’s just that kind of an inspiration, I guess, and he does have a tendency to get… attached *coughobsessedcough* to his fans, you know. 😉
Thanks for saying you liked it. I’ve always kind of half wanted to do a Comic!Joker origin tale, but I never thought I’d handle it correctly because there’s so many ways I wanna write it and no one idea ever seems quite correct. And then when I do cement an idea for something, I feel like it could be better. But I force myself not to edit any of my written work unless there’s an obvious mistake, because it helps me remember not to sweat the small stuff – creators are never fully satisfied with their work, not really.
This is just an amazing piece….wow. I admire your wititng and the image is inspiring, isn’t it?
*NOTE TO SELF: Maybe I should include a fanfiction section in this site…hmmm…*
You could include a Fanfic section to the site if you so desired. I know a good number of other, excellent Jokerfic authors of all stripes that I’m sure would love to have their work featured. I can recommend several good Joker tales written by fans.
I believe if you truly love something, you will commit to doing your best to portray that something, to understand it. I think what makes a good Joker author is being able to pick him apart, dissect him, and get under HIS skin. You need to understand yourself before you can write other characters, and you need to know a character like you know YOURSELF before you even begin to write them. In fact when I first started doing Jokerfic I did a lot of reading and research. Some people are much better at intuitively getting a character to “speak” to them than others are, and I just so happen to be good at assuming roles. I was an actress for four years in high school theater and I have always enjoyed playing pretend, slipping on another character’s wardrobe and assuming their facade for a bit. I think that’s why I write him as well as I do – because I’ve been inside his head, I’m aware it’s a scary place, but I’m also always looking in on it through an analytical lens.