Long considered Batman’s greatest nemesis, the Joker’s status was obliterated by a single sentence uttered by the Dark Knight.
The Joker is one of Batman’s greatest enemies. The Clown Prince of Crime has terrorized the Dark Knight for ages, and has hurt every single member of the Bat-family.
But in Batman: Cacophony, the hero delivered the ultimate insult to the Joker, saying the madman used to be his “second most dangerous enemy,” but was no longer even in the top ten. How did the Joker fall so far, and how did he come back from that?
Written by Kevin Smith and drawn by Sandra Hope, Batman: Cacophony opens with Deadshot breaking into Arkham to assassinate the Joker. The villain Onomatopoeia shows up, saving Joker and setting him free. Elsewhere, the crime lord Maxi Zeus turned Joker Toxin into a new designer drug called chuckles. When a teenager died on chuckles the child’s parents hired Deadshot to kill Joker. The clown retaliates by killing Zeus’s nephew and beginning a gang war. Batman ends the war when he captures Zeus, but the Joker is still determined to kill the mob boss, breaking into the police station to do so.
Batman is waiting on the roof, having predicted the Joker’s every move. A joke is supposed to subvert expectations, but Batman considers Joker predictable, telling the clown as much. Joker demands to know what sort of hero the Caped Crusader would be if not for his “greatest foe.” Batman responds, saying that Joker has “gone soft” and that while the clown was arguably the second greatest of his rogues at one time, “now it’d be generous to list you at number sixteen.” These words hurt the madman more than any physical attack, and are enough to literally disarm him.
At that moment, Onomatopoeia arrives, shooting the Caped Crusader in the head. Batman only survives due to newly-installed reinforced armor in his cowl. Joker scolds Onomatopoeia for stealing the kill, and the newly-arrived villain stabs Joker in the chest. In a tragic twist of fate, Batman saves the Joker, who has fallen so far, he is barely even a threat. While hospitalized, Joker confesses he would not do the same for the Dark Knight.
After the DC Universe rebooted in “The New 52,” Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s story “Death of the Family” returns Joker to his former glory. One by one, the clown attacks everyone Batman cares about, and he does this not out of hate, but out of love, willing to kill others as an expression of his devotion. This trend has continued in more recent stories like White Knight and Joker War. However he ranked in the past, it seems that Joker is now once again Batman’s greatest foe.