The Joker has undergone numerous changes in his DC Comics existence, evolving from a petty criminal to a jokester to a truly evil man who has committed some seriously demented crimes. Joker made his first appearance in DC Comics in April 1940 in the pages of Batman #1. At that time, he was a regular criminal, and he died in that issue. However, fans loved him, so DC found a way to retcon his death and bring him back. Since then, he has become Batman’s archenemy and one of DC’s most popular villains. Throughout his time in comics, he has been a criminal, a clown, and a comedian, but one thing he has consistently maintained is that anything can happen when the Joker is behind the crime.
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Joker has done some terrible things in the pages of DC Comics, and he has killed several people who never deserved his brutality. However, his goal has always been to torment Batman, and in some cases, Commissioner Gordon. For the Clown Prince of Crime, there has always been a reason for his demented actions.
7) Joker Turned Superman Into A Brutal Dictator
Although this doesn’t occur in the main DC timeline, it ultimately ties in to the main comics, making it a suitable fit here. On Earth-49, Joker is still Batman’s greatest enemy, but in this storyline, he targets Superman. In this terrible crime, Joker uses Scarecrow’s Fear Toxin, laced with Kryptonite, on Superman. This caused Superman to think he was fighting Doomsday. However, he was, in reality, murdering Lois Lane, who was pregnant with his child. Joker had connected a heartbeat trigger to her, and when she died, an explosion destroyed Metropolis. This was easily the worst crime imaginable, but Superman made it even worse when he killed Joker and became Earth’s new dictator, taking over the entire planet in the Injustice timeline. It took Superman from Prime Earth to arrive to stop him.
6) The Batman Who Laughs
In Injustice: Gods Among Us, Joker committed a crime so demented that it caused Superman to become an evil dictator while Batman tried to stop him. However, on Earth-22, the Joker then did something even worse. This Earth is in the Dark Multiverse, and Joker began a killing spree in Gotham City, murdering several of Batman’s prominent villains and Commissioner Gordon. He then paralyzed Batman and made him watch as he blew up a hospital and murdered the parents of young children in front of him before injecting the children with incurable Joker Venom.
This angered Batman so much that he killed Joker as soon as he could. There was one problem. Joker had a toxin in his heart, and the second he died, he released it, infecting Batman. This destroyed Batman’s mind, and he went on to kill everyone from the Bat Family to the Justice League, and then he set his eyes on Prime Earth. Joker created The Batman Who Laughs and was responsible for all the deaths.
5) Joker Beat Jason Todd’s Robin To Death
Moving to DC’s Prime Earth, Joker has always been a violent criminal. However, he took things too far when he lured the second Robin, Jason Todd, into a trap. Jason was struggling recently, and part of his problem was that his mother had shown up. What made this worse was that the one person who could have helped Jason turn things around ended up sending him into the teap since Joker blackmailed her. In A Death in the Family (Batman #426–429), Joker then told Jason that he orchestrated many of the bad things that happened in the teen’s life. Then, after revealing this, he beat the boy into submission with a crowbar and then blew up the building with Jason and his mother in it, killing them both. Batman refused to mentor another Robin until Tim Drake forced his way into his life a year later.
4) Joker Killed Commissioner Gordon’s Wife, Sarah Essen
Joker has killed a lot of people, but what he did to Sarah Essen was demented in the worst possible way. During the No Man’s Land storyline, Gotham City was shut off from the world, with no way in or out, and the criminals had mainly taken control. Batman and his allies remained to help protect the ordinary people trapped in this lawless town, and some police officers, such as Commissioner Gordon and his wife, Sarah Essen, were also on hand. In Detective Comics #741, Sarah found Joker at a hospital holding a room full of newborn babies hostage. Joker was holding a newborn and said that if Sarah shot him, he would drop the baby, and it would die. He then tossed the baby at Sarah. She caught it to save the baby, and Joker shot her dead as she held the baby she had just saved. It was one of the most demented things Joker ever did by a long shot.
3) Joker Paralyzed Barbara Gordon
Killing Sarah Essen was the second demented thing that Joker did to Commissioner Gordon. The first was shooting Gordon’s daughter, Barbara Gordon, and paralyzing her. Of course, Joker had no idea that Barbara was Batgirl, and he had just ended the career of one of DC’s most powerful female heroes. Instead, he was doing this because he wanted to push Gordon to the breaking point. In Batman: The Killing Joke, Joker showed up at Barbara’s home and shot her. He then stripped her down and sent compromising pictures to Gordon to make it look like he sexually assaulted her. Gordon remained strong and refused to kill Joker, which ruined the Clown’s plan, but the damage was done.
2) Joker Blew Up An Entire School Of Children As A Joke
Joker has killed children more than once in his DC Comics career. As mentioned earlier, he infected several children with Joker Venom on Earth-22. In The Dark Knight Returns storyline, he murdered an entire troop of Cub Scouts by giving them poisoned cotton candy at a carnival. However, what he did in Batman: Cacophony by Kevin Smith went one step too far. He was telling a gang rival named Maxie Zeus what he would do if anyone tried to start a gang war with him. However, he was delivering the line as a joke, and for the punchline to work, he had to blow up an entire school full of children to pay off his word play. The twist here is that Zeus’s nephew was in the school when it exploded, but this was a lot of young children Joker murdered just to make a point.
1) Joker Disrupts The World In Emperor Joker
Emperor Joker by Joe Kelly and Jeph Loeb is one of the most demented Joker storylines in history. It all started when the Joker was able to capture some of Mr. Mxyzptlk’s power and used it to become the Emperor of the world. With unlimited power and no morals, the Joker began to commit countless despicable acts. However, two moments stand above them all. First, he put Batman in a non-ending torture loop where he tortures and kills Batman every day using a different method. What is worse is that he made sure Batman remembered every death, leaving traumatic mental scars. Even worse was when Joker was sitting down, eating Chinese food. However, what he was actually eating was all of China, with a mountain of skulls sitting behind him.
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Courtesy of Warner Bros.
