What Happened To Everyone Who Dated Joker?

Is that... Thomas Wayne?

Emperor Joker Empress Lois
DC Comics

For an unhinged homicidal monster, the Joker has a surprisingly varied dating life.

While you'd presume the opposite to be true - half because Harley is so iconically his love interest, and half because it seems like his obsession with Batman would get in the way of pursuing anyone romantically - there's a fair collection of comics that show just how much the Joker has gotten around in his time on the page.

Between dead wives, Empresses, and even Atlanteans, Joker has wooed more characters than any person with a shrine to the Dark Knight rightfully deserves to be able to romance. While these relationships literally never end well, it's clear that the Clown Prince of Crime is uncomfortably good at making people fall in love with him - even when he's completely open about how little he cares for whatever poor unfortunate has fallen for him. Combine this with several completely surreal alternate universes, and the Joker's list of exes becomes something that has to be seen to be believed.

Taking the old cliche that 'girls love bad boys' to it's logical, nightmarish conclusion, here's the Joker's entire sordid romantic history - for better, or for worse.

10. Jeannie - The Killing Joke

Emperor Joker Empress Lois
DC Comics

Jeannie is perhaps the Joker's most famous romance aside from Harley, as we learn about her in the iconic comic cornerstone that is The Killing Joke - where she is admittedly a part of the Joker's origin story, and so may only theoretically exist, given the villain has no single concrete backstory.

In a series of flashback that appears throughout the entire comic, we see a young, well-meaning Joker trying to support his wife, Jeannie.

Despite the failed comedian's intense self-loathing, Jeannie seems to genuinely love the soon-to-be villain, making it perhaps inevitable that his fall to costumed crime involves her tragic untimely death.

Because - in an accident involving a baby bottle heater overheating - Jeannie dies the day that the Joker agrees to rob a Chemical Plant in order to support her and their unborn child. This creates a suitably ironic set of circumstances for the Joker to be born into, where the robbery that results in his transformation is done by a man who now has no motivation to actually commit the crime.

Contributor
Contributor

I like my comics like I like my coffee - in huge, unquestionably unhealthy doses.