Much to Batman’s dismay, the Joker has no shortage of dastardly schemes up his sleeve with the means and intelligence to pull them off, but one criminally underrated skill is what truly makes the Joker so deadly.
The Joker is something of an enigma within DC lore as he doesn’t have an origin or a secret identity. The Joker is simply a being of pure chaotic evil who seemingly sprung from the depths of hell with the sole purpose of tormenting Batman in an endless struggle for the soul of Gotham City itself. However, in his early days in comic book history, the Joker wasn’t so much an unstoppable force of nature like he is today, but a much more tangible supervillain with very clear and understandable motives for his crimes. While his origins were just as unclear then as they are now, the Joker was more of a master thief who wasn’t afraid to kill when it suited him rather than a full-blown twisted sadist whose reasoning is beyond that of normal understanding.
In Batman #1 by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, the Joker hijacks Gotham City’s radio signal and delivers a terrifying message to the city’s residents, saying that he will murder certain people at specific times and steal their valuables. So, one-by-one, the people the Joker named are dropping dead, all with a twisted smile on their faces from the poison he used to kill them, with each of them having their precious diamonds stolen from them. While each of these men died exactly when the Joker said they would, the Clown Prince of Crime killed them all through different methods of attack. One person was killed by the latent reaction to the poison the Joker secretly delivered the previous night and another died after the Joker found a way to infect him through a device implanted in his telephone, just to name a few. However, there was one murder in particular that stood out above the rest as it really put one of the Joker’s most forgotten-about skills on full display.
When the Joker set his sights on murdering a judge who was responsible for sentencing him to prison some years back, the Joker used a method of murder he hadn’t tried before. Amid the teams of police officers watching over the judge and working to keep him safe, the Joker snuck in among them, disguised as the police chief himself. When the judge learned the truth, he was shocked and horrified, but the Joker told him that he shouldn’t have been as the Joker boasted that disguise is one of his greatest skills–making him incredibly deadly. The Joker can disguise himself so well that he can infiltrate any environment without anyone thinking he’s out of place. The Joker proved this to be true in storylines such as Batman RIP and Death of the Family to name a few, where he pretended to be other people just to eventually trick the Dark Knight.
Not only is the Joker skilled at disguise, but his insanity (or super-sanity depending who one asks) allows him to fully take on the character he is playing without doubt or restraint, giving off the impression that he truly believes he’s the person he’s pretending to be, causing others to do the same. While this ability is one of his greatest and most useful–especially when the Joker is battling Batman–the fact that the Joker is a master of disguise is usually put on the back burner as his most striking characteristics surround his cruel tricks and twisted plots–but even though it’s underrated, the Joker’s mastery of disguise is a skill that truly makes him deadly.
