The engineer tried to flee, but Batman appeared and cornered him on the plant's catwalk. During the robbery, the plant's security guards spot the intruders and shot the other criminals dead. His costume consisted of a large domed red helmet and a red cape. The men let Jack do their wishes under the alias The Red Hood. One night, the mob hired two men to kill Jack. In a desperate effort for money to provide for his family due to his dream job of being a comedian that turned out poorly, Jack resorted to a life of crime and placed himself in mob affairs. Like in the above comic, the Joker was the Red Hood during that time, although it was revealed that he was not the sole holder of the identity (and in fact, was simply the latest to hold the title), and he had more sympathetic and tragic motivations for becoming it: A man named Jack had a pregnant wife, Jeannie, and they lived in a rundown tenement on the far side of Gotham City. The Red Hood's origin was later revisited in Batman: The Killing Joke.

When he got back to his home, and removed his Red Hood, he noticed that his body had been discolored from exposure to the chemicals, and decided to adopt the identity of The Joker. He ultimately survived falling into the vat via a special apparatus in his Red Hood that allowed him to retain oxygen and swam all the way back. Joker then revealed that he had been the Red Hood of the past, and explained that he had intended to steal over a million dollars from his boss at the Ace Chemicals Plant and then retire, but then Batman interfered. Batman eventually stopped the Red Hood, although he deduced the man who used the costume was an imposter. In it, Joker attempted to relive his time as the Red Hood after Batman and Robin held a presentation at a college on how to do detective sleuthing, although a gardener had managed to ambush him and stole his costume. The Red Hood first appeared in Detective Comics #168 'The Man Behind the Red Hood (February 1951). Main article: The Joker Pre-Crisis (Golden-Silver Age)

Batman brave and the bold red hood