DC’s Controversial Joker Stories Finally Reveal a HUGE Secret

Warning! Contains spoilers for The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing #10!The Joker’s twisted and contentious backup stories have just revealed the Clown Prince of Crime’s biggest secret. As two versions of the Joker go to war, DC reveals the origin of the sinister villain’s copycat.

In The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing #10 by Matthew Rosenberg, Carmine Di Giandomenico, and Francesco Francavilla, Gotham is going to hell as the war between the two Jokers escalates. However, one of Joker’s henchmen has finally discovered who the fake Joker is and promises to tell the real one. Unfortunately, he dies before he can tell his boss the secret behind the other Joker.

As Joker begins terrorizing a hospital wing in frustration, he says hello to a young boy named Albert and borrows his comic book. In Joker’s mind, he reads a story about a henchman who had been exposed to Joker Venom that Joker decided to turn have surgically altered turn him into a doppelganger. However, when the copy of Joker begins acting against the original Joker’s wishes, the Joker has the henchman bound and bagged before shooting him in the head. As Joker’s fantasy concludes, he realizes that he was the one who created the second Joker.

One of DC’s Two Jokers is a Former Henchman Joker Mutilated

Multiple Jokers have been plaguing the DC Universe for a while, but it’s been quite personal to the villain himself. Two Jokers, each one proclaiming themselves to be the genuine article, have been terrorizing the country. The one in Los Angeles and the one in Gotham have been pursuing one another for months, and both have been amassing armies to take down the other. However, where exactly the second Joker came from in the first place has been up in the air.

Throughout The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing, the book has featured backup stories that presented hypothetical situations for how multiple Jokers could exist. The series’ fourth issue revealed that these backups were actually hallucinations that the Joker was having as a result of being shot in the head in the first issue. But after cycling through some of the more ludicrous visions, Joker has finally recalled how the second Harlequin of Hate came to fruition. While the DC Universe is still confused about which Joker is which, one of the Jokers has put a cap on part of the bizarre mystery.

Of course, this perplexing adventure doesn’t take into account the Joker variant Red Mask or his creation of multiple Jokers in the prime DC continuity. But assuming that this is separate from that, then fans can rest easy knowing that there’s only one true Joker and the other is just a henchman who’s been driven mad by Joker Venom. Of course, the two Jokers are still out to kill one another and chances are only one is going to be left standing when all’s said and done. But at least fans have an answer for how his bizarre war got started in the first place. Fans can see more of the dual Jokers in The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing #10, on sale now.