Revealed today at WonderCon during the DC Universe REBIRTH review panel, DC Comic’s Geoff Johns and artist Jason Fabok announced one of the most boneheaded ideas to ever come out of comic book history. (Except MARVEL’s Spider-Man One More Day/Brand New Day idea, that’s still number 1). You can view the whole panel in the video below; the Joker specific moment begins at around the 1:42:35 mark.
For those of you who are unaware, DC Comics is doing a huge REBIRTH event starting in June. Basically, DC Comics is doing the MARVEL thing and rebooting their comics once again (Because why should any comic book in this day and age go past 50 issues. It’s like people these days have short attention spans or something) after the whole New 52 event and we’re getting a bunch of new issue 1’s. However, before DC Comics slams that reboot button, they are going to end a few mysteries. One of these mysteries began in Justice League Issue 42 during their current event ‘The Darkside War’.
The basics of ‘The Darkside War’ are that the Justice League takes down the god-like being known as Darkside (The DC version of MARVEL’s Thanos) and some of the League gets a bunch of super-advanced powers and stuff. One of these is The Mobius Chair, a chair that has the total sum of knowledge in all of space and time. The Mobius Chair falls into the hands of Batman, who tests the chair by asking for the name of his parent’s killer: Joe Chill. Then Batman asks one more question: What is The Joker’s real name?
Now most readers thought that DC Comics would not be stupid enough as to reveal The Joker’s real name. Well that is exactly what they are TEASING. Now remember, they are playing this like DC Comics is going to reveal The Joker’s real name, something that has been hidden from readers since the character’s introduction in 1940. This mystery is something that even Batman, who is also known as “The World’s Greatest Detective” has yet to crack. So are DC Comics going to do something as monumentally stupid as reveal something that has been a mystery for over 75 years? Probably not.
Chances are that The Mobius Chair doesn’t know The Joker’s real name. Going from the image above from Justice League Issue 42, Batman’s reaction is “No. That’s not possible”. Meaning that either The Joker’s real name is something so outside the box and shocking that it’s something no one would ever think of, leading to one of the worst moves in comic book history; or it’s more likely that the information is unknown to even the collective knowledge of the entire time and space, which would be a statistical impossibility.
There are very few mysteries in comic books that still exist, even more so when you look at all fictional media. Real names are a great one to play with. Over the years we’ve seen many mediums tease the real names of some characters. The Joker has had a lot of great ‘red herring’ names over the years, including:
- Joe Kerr
- Dr. J Reko
- Jack Napier
- Oberon Sexton
- Jack White
Jack Napier has been one of the forerunners since it’s inclusion of the 1989 Batman film, but it’s since been stricken and places as a false alias. Over versions of the Jack name have been used too, with none of them being correct.
To me, revealing The Joker’s real name would humanize the character and strip some of the appeal of the character from him. The mystery of how someone would become this insane homicidal maniac through whatever events transpired to him (The Joker’s origin itself, aside from falling into a vat of chemicals, also changes throughout the years and mediums with no one giving a correct version) and how he can commit these vial acts to others. It’s like revealing the true name of The Doctor from Doctor Who, it strips the appeal and mystery from the character and just makes him one of us; which is something no one wants.
I guess we’ll have to see what the answer is when DC Comics Justice League Issue 50 hits the shelves on May 25.
