10 Times Joker Was Actually The Real Hero

When it comes to comic book villains, The Joker is in the upper echelon of the most sinister, the most vicious, and the most despicable of the bunch. When it comes to being outright nuts, few can match the famed Clown Prince of Crime.

Despite all of that, mind, are you aware that The Joker hasn’t always been positioned as the no-good nefarious bad guy that we’ve all come to known and somehow love?

Since debuting in the funny books way back in 1940, there have actually been some rare occasions where, rather than being the cause of comic-book chaos, the Harlequin of Hate has actually been the one rushing in to save the day.

It may surprise you, but these instances aren’t merely one or two occasions; instead, Mr. J has proved himself to be, well, a hero multiple times throughout the character’s history across the various different mediums.

To get you up speed on some of these times, here are some of the most notable times where The Joker really, really wasn’t all that bad of a guy.

The ‘90s was a strange decade for Superman. While this period of the Man of Steel’s history is famously remembered for the high-quality mullet that Kal-El adorned throughout much of the decade – well, and the small matter of his death and subsequent resurrection – one Super-story that many may have forgotten about is 1998’s Distant Fires.

Now, this may well have been a Superman tale, but one person featured predominantly in the arc is The Joker. After a nuclear war renders many superheroes either dead or powerless, one other side effect of all of this is that The Joker regains his sanity.

As the majority of survivors make their way to a city called Champion, it’s there that we see the Clown Prince of Crime turn over a new leaf and start to create plans on how to maintain and protect the city from a bunch of mutants and, eventually, a deranged Billy Batson.

Joker, pillar of the community; who’d have ever believed it? And to think, all it took to achieve this was literal Armageddon.