10 Comic Books Where Evil Won

8. Joker

Joker Comic Lee Bermejo
Marvel Comics / Lee Bermejo

Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo's Joker released in the midst of The Dark Knight and that's pretty apparent once you read it.

Bermejo's Clown Prince seemingly takes a number of cues design-wise from Heath Ledger's depiction, while Azzarello's script casts the character in a less comedic light. This version of Joker is brutal, uncaring and exists in a version of Gotham that is bleaker than bleak, and that naturally translates into the comic's finale, which ends with small-time crook and reader surrogate Johnny Frost taking a tumble into the Gotham river after being scarred by his chaotic associate.

Joker may still be a Batman comic at the end of the day, but the Caped Crusader doesn't stand in the way of his arch-nemesis' rampage until the final act, where he's able to manipulate the clown into having one of his trademark outbursts.

Sadly, said outburst is what leads Frost to his doom, capping off a thoroughly miserable and exploitative journey that involved Joker flaying a man for looking at Harley Quinn too long, and also raping Frost's ex-wife.

Truly, we live in a soci-edgy.

Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.