DC Gives The Joker a New DC Multiverse Origin Story and a Whole Lot of Variants

The mystery of The Joker’s origin story has propelled Batman lore for years – but in recent times, DC has seen fit to give The Joker’s backstory a little more shape – even as multiple variants and/or clones have begun showing up. Now DC has released Batman #135 (Legacy #900), a milestone comic that also serves as the conclusion to Chip Zdarsky’s “The Bat-Man of Gotham” storyline. In the wild finale, a new villain manages to add a whole new multiversal layer to The Joker’s origin story! 

(WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW!) 

The story of “The Bat-Man of Gotham” was built right off the back of Zdarsky’s “Failsafe” storyline,  which saw Bruce Wayne/Batman transported to an alternate reality by his own android creation, as the ultimate deterrent to Batman’s influence on Earth. The new reality Bruce arrived in was a Gotham City where he had died, and Batman never existed; the entire social order of Gotham was skewed, with Arkham and its sanity tests becoming the ruling measure of society, while familiar characters like Alfred, Leslie Thompkins, Selina Kyle, and Harvey Dent all wound up living very different kinds of lives. 

When Bruce re-created his Batman persona to “liberate” Gotham from psycho-fascist oppression, he finally found this new reality’s version of The Joker: Darwin Halliday, the crime boss of Gotham known as Red Mask. In Batman #135, Darwin tries to carry out the masterplan he’s been preparing for: to send his mind across the multiverse to the moment of Joker’s creation; Darwin hates being the only variant of The Joker plagued with sanity, and thinks if he can suffer the same kind of mind-breaking trauma as his variant, he too can become a full-fledged Joker, unburdened by fear. 

The Joker’s DC Multiverse Origin Explained

However, when Darwin achieves his goal, it’s not at all what he expected: He goes back to the pivotal moment in The Killing Joke where Jack Oswald White/Red Hood’s mind broke and he became Joker. But instead of gaining the insight to go insane himself, Halliday finds out that Joker is instead aware of his mental infiltration. The effect is that Jack/Red Hood is driven mad by a psycho from the multiverse invading his brain – and Darwin Halliday realizes that he is not just the next variant in line to become Joker: he’s the alpha source that creates the villain. 

The final act of Batman #135 (#900) sees Batman go on a desperate chase across the DC Multiverse, as Halliday travels to world after world (including the realities of just about every Batman movie and TV series) either creating new Jokers where there are none, or altering existing Jokers into even more insane versions of themselves. While Batman eventually apprehends Halliday, the villain’s power and influence as a one-man Joker-making machine – and all the new Jokers he made – are issues that currently remain unresolved. 

Batman #135 / #900 is now on sale at DC.