Death of the Family Features the Most Deranged Joker in DC
Death of the Family is one of the few Joker comics that I own. I’m not a huge fan of every Joker comic out there, but this story caught me off guard so much…in the best way. This version of the Joker is a whole other level of evil, willing to do whatever it takes to take down Batman.
This time, he wants to psychologically destroy Batman, and the lengths that he had gone through to pull this insane scheme off…is downright EVIL.
And we know how evil Joker is, but this was a whole other level.
His goal this time around was to ‘murder’ the family of Batman.
He wanted to break apart the family for good, in order to ensure that Batman would always be alone, and only have the Joker left.
He kidnaps the entire main family of Batman, such as:
- Robin
- Batgirl
- Nightwing
- Red Hood
Each family member is psychologically tortured in horrendous ways, by harming or killing people that they cared about. Then their faces are cut off by the Joker, and are served to them on a silver platter as they are tied up at a dinner table, a dinner party hosted by the Joker. This turns out to be a very messed up joke, because their faces were never cut off in the first place. However, the damage that is done to the family is permanent.
Joker’s goal was to break up the family for good, and he is successful.
He tells the family that Batman knew about how the Joker was bad news, but he chose to never tell the family about anything, and this decision led to drastic consequences.
Hell, even Harley Quinn had given Batman an extra warning, before Joker hunted down the entire family. The fact that Harley Quinn, another villain who was in love with the Joker, noticed the massive change within him, was pretty bad. She literally tells Batman that Joker is no longer the man she once knew, and yes, Joker was already bad enough beforehand, but once he cuts off his face, he turns into a worse version of himself.
Even Harley Quinn gets tortured by him, and she is forced to chew the skin off her wrists to escape from the Joker, once he leaves her tied up in a dungeon. She was willing to harm herself to escape from the Joker, and this event should have led to Batman WARNING his family immediately.
But alas, he did not listen to Harley’s warning.
Toward the end of the comic, Joker and Batman face off one more time. He battles the Joker, and the Joker freaks out when Batman is about to reveal his real name to him. Joker ends up falling down a waterfall, leaving his fate unknown. I thought it was genius how Batman was willing to throw some of his own medicine back at him when it came to the psychological damage, but the Joker had already won against Batman before he was defeated.
The comic ends with Batman saving his whole family, but he ended up losing all of them in the end. The entire family refuses to meet up with Batman, and we see Alfred telling him that none of his family members want to speak to him. The experience had left them all deeply traumatized, and their anger at Batman was most likely permanent. I struggled to feel sorry for Batman, because he did bring all of this on himself.
So, in a way, Joker did break apart the family.
Batman would now live with his regrettable actions for the rest of his life.
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