We live in a landscape where words like “reboot” and “retcon” are common knowledge. Hollywood executives use the word “multiverse” in complete seriousness. No one can talk about “Batman in the movies” anymore — you have to specify. Nolan Batman? Snyder Batman? Reeves Batman? Bryan Singer’s Magneto, or the First Class one? Raimi Spider-Man or the Amazing run or the MCU version? Superhero movies don’t have to explain comics anymore. They can just be like comics — places for creative folks to drop in, do their take on a long-established character, and see what the audience thinks about it.

The gift this era has given me, as a comics fan and a critic, is a new thought experiment: What would I think of this superhero movie if it had been a comic book? Did the movie find something insightful to say about a decades-old character? Did it play well in the space, relative to all the other stories that have gone before it?

I think Matt Reeves’ The Batman might actually have been even better as a 12-issue alt-universe miniseries, giving its characters more time to breathe in a new variation on Gotham. On the other hand, the original Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has so much to say about Spider-Man’s themes of responsibility and identity, and it’s also so inventive with the form of the animated film that converting it into a comic would definitely rob it of some of its magic.

But this year, I found my experiment running aground when considering Todd Phillips’ Joker duology. Setting aside my own problems with Phillips’ writing and directing, did these two movies — which reimagine the Joker as the alternately pathetic and dangerous failed comedian turned successful murderer Arthur Fleck — have something to say about the iconic supervillain? And how did that statement measure up against the comics themselves? With Joker: Folie à Deux now streaming on Max, it seemed like a good time to reconsider the question.

And here’s my conclusion: Todd Phillips’ Joker movies don’t have anything to say about Joker comics, because they are simply not about the character of the Joker in any recognizable way.

The mutability of a character is a sign of its strength, but characters are not endlessly mutable. How much mutation is acceptable before a character becomes unrecognizable is a topic upon which gallons of........

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