The Joker has always felt closer to being the devil than a human(ish) villain. His cruelty, lack of empathy, and warped sense of humor make him one of most dangerous antagonists in Batman’s rogue’s gallery. He represents how a one bad day can break someone until they turn into your worst enemy.
Now, take that cruel streak and combine it with Batman’s wealth, elite training, resources along with making those allusions to Joker being a vaguely supernatural entity canon and you get Absolute Joker. A calculated trillionaire serial killer who sees chaos and inequality as the natural order of things. He’s so cold that he earned the nickname “The Man Who Doesn’t Laugh” (at least not in public).
When he does laugh, he turns into a terrifying demon monster with rows of razor-sharp teeth. Aside from his obsession with Batman and his love for terrorizing people, he has almost nothing in common with Prime Earth Joker. But the lack of commonalities is why Absolute Joker is the massive threat that he is.
How It All Began
When Darkseid forged the Absolute Universe, he made sure to strip the heroes of the advantages their Prime Earth counterparts have. Which meant that Joker got the money and lifetime of training while the Absolute version of Bruce Wayne grew up in a working-class family.
In 1885, a blood-soaked orphan boy showed up at Arkham Asylum covered in blood. The asylum director, Amadeus Arkham, took him in and treated him like a son. The boy seemed eager to carry on Arkham’s work. Whenever times got tough, he would reassure Arkham by saying, “Tomorrow is a new page”.
But it was all a sick act. In 1886, a notorious inmate named “Jack Doe” supposedly kidnapped and killed the boy during a breakout. What actually happened was that the boy masterminded the whole riot just to destroy Arkham’s ideals. He murdered Jack Doe himself, bricked the body behind a furnace wall, and pinned a note to his chest reading, “Tomorrow is a new page.”
From there, the boy would perform on the street as a clown under the name “Jack Grimm”. His popularity grew to the point where he was recorded in one of the first films ever shot in 1888. By the time Jack was forty, he was a rich and respected member of Gotham’s elite class.
How did he get famous so fast? He secretly dosed his audiences with nitrous oxide to make them laugh hysterically and hand over their cash. He then poisoned his fellow actors with strychnine and funneled his earnings into silent films and Vaudeville.
You see, Jack Grimm never really died. Over the decades, he used the children from his corporate-funded orphanages to extend his own life. He kept passing himself off as his own descendants (Jack Grimm Jr. through Joseph “Jack” Grimm V). In 1945, he bought the failing Arkham Asylum and taunted the aging Amadeus Arkham with his old catchphrase. Arkham found Jack Doe’s body behind the wall, realized the horrific truth, and burned the asylum down with himself inside.
Jack turned the “Just Kidding” theater he owned into his empire, J.K. Holdings. He expanded into television, cable, video games, software, and microchips. Through secret front companies named after famous clowns, he funded opposing sides of every conflict. This included both sides of World War II, right and left-wing media, and international aid alongside the warlords who stole it. He built weapons of mass destruction, ran human experiment facilities called Arks, and trained under master fighters like Henri Ducard before slaughtering them.
His Relationship with Harley Quinn
In the Absolute Universe, Joker’s relationship with Harley Quinn is even darker than what their Prime counterparts had.
Seventeen years ago, Joker dated Dr. Sharon Quinzel under a fake identity. After she was pregnant, he staged a bitter breakup so she would leave without telling him about the baby. Shortly after Harley was born, he secretly arranged for Sharon to be hired by J.K. Holdings’ pharmacology division. He dropped little hints for Sharon to learn about awful things happening in the company to make her obsessed with bringing J.K. Holdings down. She moved young Harley right next to J.K. headquarters, living in a small house on an island built over the old Arkham site and the secret underground lab known as Ark M.
When Harley grew up, she took a DNA test to find her father. Joker played along online, pretending he had no idea she existed. While comforting Harley over the internet, he revealed himself to Sharon. He showed her the sick experiments being conducted under her home, breaking her mind until turned into the unhinged “Doctor Arkham”.
On Harley’s thirteenth birthday, she discovered the elevator in her closet leading down to Ark M and saw the horrific experiments happening below her house. Her mother, now completely brainwashed, told her that Ark M was their home now. Harley ran back upstairs only to find Jack Grimm waiting for her, casually announcing he was her father. She fled in terror, horrified to realize her whole childhood was just another twisted experiment.
Joker’s Role in Project Batman and The Straw Man Arc
When it comes to his enemies, the Joker prefers to break them mentally and emotionally.
Decades ago, he used Scarecrow to crush the Court of Owls through propaganda. Later, he took on Bane as his lead enforcer, promising to keep Santa Prisca safe in exchange for his loyalty. But after Batman defeated Bane, Joker nuked Santa Prisca, forcing Bane to watch so he would be “free” of distractions.
When Batman kept interfering with his plans, Joker went on the offensive. He made “Jack Grimm V” a beloved media figure to manipulate the public. After figuring out Batman was Bruce Wayne, the son of a former Court of Owls member, he launched “Project: Batman”.
Working alongside Scarecrow, he tricked Bruce into believing that every tragic moment in his life was orchestrated by J.K. Holdings as a sick joke. They framed Batman for Jim Gordon’s death and launched the “Robin Program,” a paramilitary force made up of radicalized youths from Joker’s orphanages.
Things reached a boiling point in Absolute Batman #21 when Joker visited a construction site where Bruce was working. Standing thousands of feet in the air on a steel girder, Bruce threw a punch but Joker caught it without even trying. He admitted that Bruce’s life was originally just a side project, but he loved how it turned out and wanted to “do this dance forever”. To make his point, Joker briefly transformed into his demonic form, scaring Bruce off the beam. He grabbed Bruce by the wrist, pulled him back up, and casually walked away, letting Bruce know that only he gets to decide when the experiment ends.
Absolute Joker is a Dark Parallel to Batman
In most adaptations, Batman is a billionaire with infinite resources, state-of-the-art tech, and peak physical abilities, while the Joker is the wildcard who likes to unleash onto the city of Gotham because he thinks it’s funny.
The Absolute Universe flips that dynamic on its head by making Joker the billionaire industrialist. He controls the media, law enforcement, and secret military facilities. He operates out of a massive manor with a secret cave hidden behind a grandfather clock. He spent over a century mastering martial arts and funding scientific research into a wide variety of experiments. Meanwhile, Batman is the working-class underdog fighting from the shadows.
What happens when the ultimate force of malice holds all the power, and the hero has nothing left but a determined attitude? Absolute Joker isn’t just a monster. He’s a terrifying example of what happens when systemic privilege and pure evil merge into one unstoppable entity.
