8 Comic Book Characters Who Broke The Joker

4. Harley Quinn AND Batman - Mad Love

Batman Mad Love Puddin
DC Comics

Mad Love is another animated classic, but one that originated on the page before heading to the small screen in The New Batman Adventures. It was written by BTAS writer Paul Dini and drawn by fellow animated series creator Bruce Timm, and it just so happens to include one of the all time great 'Joker loses his rag' moments ever.

Mad Love revolves around Joker and Harley Quinn, or more specifically the pair's relationship. It had clearly been portrayed as abusive throughout Batman: The Animated Series, but Timm and Dini showed its most awful aspects in their comic. The Clown Prince actually throws Quinn out of his hideout, but rather than take this as her cue to leave him behind for good, Harley decides to win her puddin's affections by doing what he never could - capture and kill Batman with a gag trap to end all gag traps.

And she very nearly succeeds. Batman's duped by Harl' after she fakes her surrender, and is thusly suspended above a tank of flesh-eating piranhas, who to Batman are all smiling, as he's suspended upside down.

Elated, Harley calls over Joker, who is infuriated by the fact she's done what he never could. His own hubris causes Batman's escape, which the Dark Knight makes sure to remind him of during his escape.

Smirking, Bats tells the Clown Prince Harley came closer than he ever did to killing him, and caps it all off with a patronising 'puddin' to add insult to injury. The look on Joker's face says it all.

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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.