After 30 Years, Let's Admit This Iconic Joker Moment Is A Stain On The Character
DC Comics’ Joker is one of pop culture’s most famous villains. An insane criminal mastermind and agent of chaos, few fictional characters are as sick and twisted as the Clown Prince of Crime, making him Batman’s perfect nemesis in the streets of Gotham City. However, a prevailing and rather bizarre sentiment held by the Joker makes very little sense 30 years later.
Back in 1996, Batman and Captain America were given their own Marvel/DC crossover event, which saw the two iconic heroes coming together in an epic team-up. It also saw the Joker joining forces with the Red Skull, albeit temporarily. Once Joker learned what the Red Skull was really about and his alignment as a Nazi, an unexpected “moral” line was drawn by the Joker…though it has never made much sense in the years that have followed, especially given Joker’s primary enduring reasoning for being against Nazis to begin with.
While there’s nothing wrong with Joker opposing another villain per se, the strange moral distinction created (and echoed) since 1996 doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, creating a rather problematic plot hole for the Clown Prince of Crime.
The Joker’s Patriotic/Anti-Nazi Sentiments Make No Sense
In Batman & Captain America (1996), written and drawn by John Byrne, the Joker ultimately discovers that Red Skull is a legitimate Nazi supervillain. Upon learning his partner’s full identity, Joker turns on the Skull and refuses to work with him, delivering a now-famous declaration: “I may be a criminal lunatic, but I’m an American criminal lunatic!” This then leads to Joker and the Red Skull attacking each other, only to discover that they’re both immune to each other’s signature toxic gases. Regardless, Joker still foils the Red Skull’s plan to drop an atomic bomb on Washington, D.C.
By all accounts, it’s a very memorable line, and it’s easy on the surface to see the appeal of a villain as sinister as the Joker drawing the line at working with a Nazi. Similar sentiments have echoed this same moment as well, like in 2020’s Injustice: Year Zero by Tom Taylor and Cian Tormey: “I’m a homicidal maniac, not a traitorous bigot!” or when an incarcerated Joker rejected membership into the Aryan Alliance.
However, the Joker taking a hard stance on the basis of patriotism makes zero sense. After all, the Joker has never demonstrated any meaningful commitment to American patriotism (and certainly not its values). In some cases, completely the opposite, like when Joker became Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations to gain diplomatic immunity (during the infamous Death in the Family storyline where Joker also killed Jason Todd). As such, national allegiance doesn’t seem like a big obstacle. That said, there’s an even bigger problem in that Nazism is a genocidal ideology built on racial supremacy along with widespread persecution and oppression.
Joker Does Nazi-Level S*** ALL The Time
The bigger issue is that the Joker routinely commits atrocities himself that certainly belong in the same conversations about extreme cruelty, mass violence, and even genocide.
A darkly prime example can be found in 2000’s Emperor Joker crossover event. After gaining reality-warping power from the 5th-dimensional imp known as Mister Mxyzptlk, Joker destroys and eats the entire population of China (all for the sake of making jokes about Chinese food). Likewise, it’s also been posited in certain comics that if Batman were to die before Joker, he’d waste no time trying to burn the entire world to the ground. By all accounts, the Joker has proven himself to be just as genocidal under the “right” circumstances.
Even without the powers of a god, Joker has repeatedly used poison gas to kill large groups of people. He’s tortured, killed, manipulated, and psychologically abused men, women, and children. Keeping all that in mind, the idea that Joker’s brand of evil is somehow morally superior to some higher “mythical” level of evil of the Nazis is fundamentally flawed and fairly problematic.
There Needs To Be A Better Reason For Joker Hating Nazis
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Overall, it can be argued that there perhaps are more interesting ways to explain why the Joker might despise the Red Skull and/or Nazis in general.
One possible interpretation could be that the Joker’s canonical devotion to chaos would naturally clash with the fascist ideals of the Nazis and their obsession with order and control. Additionally, the Clown Prince of Crime’s longstanding nihilism could motivate him to see those obsessed with achieving singular national/racial identities with a fair amount of contempt. Neither argument is exactly perfect, as it’s not as if Joker is super consistent to begin with when it comes to his motives or reasoning. However, they at least seem like more solid character-driven explanations for Joker’s anti-Nazi sentiments beyond American patriotism.
Ultimately, the core problem with the original line from 1996’s Captain America & Batman crossover is that Joker’s opposition shouldn’t have been a matter of national identity. Even worse, it runs the risk of suggesting that Nazis represent some unique magic or mythical evil category beyond someone as bad as the Joker himself, rather than what it is: normal people who bought into a horrific ideology, one that, unfortunately, still exists as a dangerous rhetoric in the present.
The Joker shouldn’t need to have this underlying moral code to be opposed to Red Skull and Nazis, even if it did fit the legacy of his character (which it doesn’t). He could have simply hated the Red Skull’s ideology and rigid worldview from the perspective that Joker favors chaos far more. Any of the previously mentioned motivations would be far more compelling and logical.
After 30 years, it feels well worth admitting that the moment isn’t the character-defining surprise moral stand many see it to be. The Joker’s opposition to Nazis shouldn’t have come from him being some sort of patriot, and pretending he has some sort of moral high ground as a result only weakens the character while also obscuring the real danger of the ideology he’s rejecting. In truth, the Joker’s own established cruelty and heinous atrocities really should prohibit him from being seen as somehow less evil.
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