Delire Noir (Dark Delirium)

Warning: Long post ahead. You've been warned.

I've had this character taking up a lot of space in my head for a few weeks now, and he comes from a lot of different places. The first and probably most obvious is that he's heavily inspired by The Joker, and that's intentional. I was listening to a podcast at work, and this one is an overnight show that, amongst talking news, weather, politics, and sports, talks to a lot of truck drivers and deals with transportation issues. I find it interesting because a big part of my job involves preparing a lot of items for OTR shipment and receiving loads from truckers. That's not important for purposes of this post. What is important is that the show was talking about CB radios and CB culture, and it got me thinking about my early childhood. CB's were kind of equivalent in the 1970's to what internet chatrooms were in the 90's and early 2000's. My dad was never a trucker, but he had a pretty powerful less-than-legal setup (he broadcast with a lot more wattage than the law allowed, as a lot of people did), and he and my mom made a lot of friends through the CB radios in those days, to the extent that when my mom was pregnant, it was their CB buddies who threw Mom's baby shower, and it was there that I was given my CB handle, J.J. (Joker, Jr.), after my dad, whose handle was The Joker. So fun fact about me: I actually had a CB handle before I even had a name. I remember Dad having CB radios in a couple of his cars when I was a kid, but its popularity had waned through the 80's, and he had given it up by the time I was old enough to care. Still, I like the idea that my dad was relatively well known amongst CBers in the Midwest for bearing the name of one of the most famous fictional villains, and that the moniker got passed to me.

The other thing I like about The Joker is that, unlike so many existing characters, it seems almost expected and encouraged that every artist who renders the character and every actor who plays him gets to their own spin on him (Cesar Romero's Joker in the old 1960's TV series is still my favorite, and is the only thing I like about that awful show). So I thought that I should have a villain that paid homage to everyone's favorite bad guy while still being his own character.

Anyway, that's the genesis of my idea for creating this character, but it is far from the only source of inspiration. As far as the look, my least favorite part of every Joker character is the face makeup. I think a lot of characters do a much better job. Of course the OGs of really cool makeup are the band members of KISS, and growing up on 80's and 90's pro wrestling introduced me to a lot of painted larger than life characters like Sting, the Road Warriors, the Warlord, and the Barbarian, to name a few. So I took cues from all of these, many of whom borrowed a lot from each other, and sort of came up with a not-too-complicated amalgamation. I like the design, but I always reserve the right to change it, and having makeup that changes could be a signature of this character, if I choose to go that route.

Having the messy, loud-colored hair contrasting with the white skin (Delire Noir's skin is actually white, rather than him wearing white makeup) is my favorite Joker trait, as it visually alludes to his mind and personality spun into a downward spiral of chaos. So I had to steal that trait. But I went with deep blue rather than the Joker trademark green, because blue and black are generally my favorite colors, so blue hair paired with black makeup just hits it out of the park as far as my preferences are concerned.

Now we come to the dress. Joker is known for wearing dress style outfits, but in obnoxious clashing loud colors, always dominated by some shade of purple (maroon, wine, burgundy, plum, violet... If they involve a combination of red and blue, they're all purple to me, and this is my post, so it's not open for debate ). Delire Noir, while borrowing somewhat from the theme of semi-formal attire, has opted for a little more subtlety. He's sporting a smokey gray dress shirt, but no tie (I don't get ties; I've seldom ever worn one, and never by choice. I once heard a small company owner say that his dress code forbad ties, because he believed they restrict blood flow to the brain, and I'm inclined to agree). And he's donned a wine(?) colored vest, yes it's in the purple realm but it's subdued. I wanted his clothing to be a little more serious; more Tulsa King than Joker. I had also seen a picture of a gothic vampire while searching for reference images and wanted to borrow that look. I also opted to do away with wearing a jacket, partly because it's just less to draw, and partly again due to my own personal preferences and my general disdain for extra clothing layers.

All that, and I haven't really talked about who Delire Noir is. And if you've read this far, what's wrong with you? As with almost all of my characters, I haven't fully fleshed out his lore, but the very Cliff's Notes version is that he is a mild-mannered normal guy with a normal job and a normal life who spends a lot of time in his own head and feels like he should have done a lot more with his life and should be a lot farther along by now than he is. He spends so much time in his own head that something eventually snaps, causing a divergence in his own personality and creating the alter ego, Delire Noir. This alter ego is everything that he believes in his own mind that he is not. Daring, bold, strong, charismatic, fearless. Part gothic suave, part gangsta tough. But he's also delusional; reveling in chaos, lacking in self-control, taking what he wants when he wants. Each of his personalities is somewhat aware of the other, as if they exist in a vague memory. To the extent that each personality recalls the other, they hate one another. Delire Noir sees his normal persona as weak, cowardly, and useless. While his normal persona - who is yet unnamed because of reasons - sees Delire Noir as wicked, hurtful, destructive, and unstable, everything he has spent his life trying not to be.

Delire Noir is a villain to be reckoned with, but he is a lone villain. He holds no allegiance to Gravituum or any of my other villains. He has his own agenda, which can change by hour. That unpredictability makes him uniquely dangerous.