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The comments on this answer involve a disagreement about whether Return of the Joker is a direct reference to Return of the Jedi, with one party arguing is it obviously a reference and the other stating that it's just a common phrase.
There's another obvious eariler example in LOTR Return of the King.
Does the phrase Return of the XXXX actually predate Return of the King to any significant degree, particular in the titles of works of fiction?
Conceptually the phrase would have been familiar English usage from at least the 13th century, the first usage of note I was able to find was a reference to the biblical story made by Rembrant's painting titled "Return of the Prodigal Son" (1661 - 1669):
Hermitage museum Saint Petersburg
Return of the [Something] is a relatively common - and old - title. If you consider the variant "The Return of the [Something]", it becomes even more widespread.
Earliest example I could find was "The Return of the Native", by Thomas Hardy - 1878. It is by no means unique.
While "Return of the Jedi" is a fairly famous title, alongside "Return of the King", those titles are so common that is difficult to say later title was influenced by this or that previous work.
The novel Return of the Brute, by Liam O'Flaherty, was published in 1929.
And here are some movies from the '30s.
The Return of Doctor X is from 1939.
The Return of the Scarlet Pimpernel is from 1937.
The Return of Chandu is from 1934.
Return of the Terror is also from 1934.
While this is not the earliest, as far as popularity in its own time, this one could be right up there with other much more recent "returns":
The Return of Sherlock Holmes, published in 1905.
Yes.
The Return Of Frank James (1940) came long before Return of the Jedi (1983) and Return of the King (1955).
"The return of XXX" is a classic title for many serialized works. For example, The Return of Sherlock Holmes was published in 1905 (as mentioned in Lee Mosher's answer).
We can draw a parallel between the returns of Sherlock Holmes and the Joker. Sherlock Holmes was assumed to have died in The Final Problem (published in 1893) and got revived in the Return of Sherlock Homes. the Return of the Joker is part of Batman Beyond, a futuristic timeline (set in 2019!) where the Joker was assumed to be dead.
There is also a return of Tarzan published in 1913, so this kind of title was probably common for everything related to the adventure genre.
A short Google search returns many "the return of XXX" titles related to comics characters:
Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, written 1603–1604, has the line, “The contents of this is the return of the Duke.” The King James Bible of 1611 translates 1 Kings 20:22 as, “for at the return of the year the king of Syria will come up against thee.”
These are not titles, but they predate Rembrandt’s “De terugkeer van de verloren zoon” and the Shakespeare line is not translated from another language.
Return as a verb appears earlier than return as a noun, but something like this usage probably appeared by the late 1300s.
"Return of the Werewolf" was published in 1976.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6661032-return-of-the-werewolf
Looking at the Google N-Gram Viewer, we can see that the phrase enters usage even before Google can start tracking it in the 1500's. I tried putting in 1200 for the year start, but 1500 is as far back as Google goes.
