Ranking Every Joker Origin Worst To Best

7. The House Of Hush

Batman House of Hush Joker Origin
DC Comics

The House of Hush actually features a somewhat overlooked origin of the Joker's - or at least a story from his past. That sort of makes sense, given how Paul Dini, Dustin Nguyen and Derek Fridolfs' series was and still is today one of the more underrated comics of DC's recent past, but that's all the more reason to highlight its brief foray into the Clown Prince's genesis.

As the title may already suggest, House of Hush is all about Batman's history with Hush, aka Thomas Elliot. The final and third arc in the Streets of Gotham series delves deep into the past and extracts all sorts of dark and disturbing moments, but by far the most revealing pertains to a young boy named Sonny, who is hospitalised at Dr. Leslie Thompkins' clinic.

The story goes that the child, named Sonny, is infected with a virus by ruthless property developers determined to use the low-income area as a plot for their own businesses. The mobster responsible was named Sallie Guzzo, and - years later - the Joker kills Guzzo after repeating the words he told Sonny when they infected him with the virus all those years ago.

While it's unlikely said virus resulted in the creation of the Joker, this origin feels more genuine than others. Dini himself claims that Sonny was the Joker, and who are we to question him?

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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.