New fan art brings DC Comics’ newest Joker into the live-action DC Universe as one of the most horrifying villains any superhero franchise has ever seen. Since late 2024, DC Comics has been exploring storylines set in an alternate universe known as the Absolute Universe. This reality was created by Darkseid to make heroes the underdogs and give villains the upper hand. This twisted many characters into intriguing new forms of the versions we know and love, allowing the Joker to become arguably even more terrifying than he has ever been.
Videos by ComicBook.com
James Gunn and Peter Safran have not yet introduced the Joker to the rebooted DCU, but the antagonist has been teased in posters seen in set photos from the upcoming Gotham-set Clayface movie. The Joker is surely on his way to the DCU, but DC Studios could twist his reintroduction by featuring the Absolute Joker, which opens the door for the DCU to feature the most horrifying version of the villain. This has been imagined in a concept poster shared by @bosslogic on Instagram, which depicts Absolute Joker’s demonic, monstrous form that hides beneath his normal, human exterior.
Why Absolute Joker Would Be Perfect for the DCU
In the Absolute Universe, the Joker is a billionaire businessman, who is one of the world’s 30 richest men, but is also an elusive serial killer. The Joker earned his name from the fact that he never laughs at anything — far different from the Joker we know from DC Comics’ main continuity. The horrible twist, however, is that the Joker is barely actually human, but his human exterior hides his true deformed appearance of bleached skin, green veins, and a mouthful of sharp teeth, and he must receive regular blood transfusions from infants in order to maintain his human disguise.
James Gunn has routinely commented on taking time to make characters in the DCU different to anything we’ve seen before, and we’ve already seen this with a much more comic-accurate and humorous Superman (David Corenswet). The same needs to be done for the Joker. We can’t simply get a repetition of Heath Ledger, Jack Nicholson, Jared Leto, or even Joaquin Phoenix, but the DCU needs to give us something new. Bringing the Absolute Joker into live-action, most likely in a horror-style series or movie, would be the perfect way to go.
We’ve never seen this version of the Joker on-screen, so this would completely change everything we think we know about the iconic supervillain. DC Studios is already developing horror-inspired projects with the body horror movie Clayface and the monster movie Swamp Thing both in the pipeline. It would be incredible to see Absolute Joker take center-stage in his own twisted story, setting himself apart from any previous iteration of the supervillain in his lengthy live-action history.
What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
Most Viewed
-
Image Courtesy of Netflix -
Image Courtesy of Netflix -
Image courtesy of Valve
