Monday Makeover: Duela Dent, The Joker's Daughter

There are no bad characters, just characters that no one has spent far too much time thinking about how to make work. I intend to fix that.

Duela Dent, best known as the Joker's Daughter (and also known as Harlequin, Card Queen, Riddler's Daughter, Two Face's Daughter, Penguin's Daughter, Scarecrone, and Catgirl) first appeared in 1976's Batman Family #6.  The Batman Family title existed to tell the adventures of Alfred on his day off, Batgirl as a Congresswoman, and Robin as a college student at Hudson University.  Unfortunately for the Joker's Daughter she was introduced in a story focusing on the least interesting of those three premises, Robin in college (I would never stop reading a comic about Alfred on his day off or the adventures of Batgirl in Congress).  Being a nemesis of the bottom half of Batman and Robin is never a good way to rise through the ranks of the rogues and the Joker's Daughter proved to be no exception.  Over the course of a few issues she reappeared to confront the Boy Wonder claiming to be the daughter of a series of different Batman villains, commit some bizarre crime, and then try to unmask Robin.  I want to stress that even by the standards set by comics in the 60s and 70s Duela Dent's crimes were weird.  She stole a book from the school library that didn't exist, tried to steal all the catsup from the local airport, and then an award being given to Congresswoman Gordon.  She does deserve credit though for actually achieving her ultimate goal which was to unmask Robin and then blackmail him into letting her join the Teen Titans.  She appeared in that title as a good guy for several years before eventually fading away before ultimately being revealed to actually have been the daughter of a superhero Joker from a parallel dimension and then being murdered by an interdimensional Monitor for crossing universes.  Poor Duela Dent, it was painful to type that part and it gave me a headache.

I think the Joker's Daughter may be the single biggest case of wasted potential of any of the characters I've examined so far for the Monday Makeover.  She's the supervillain groupie in Gotham City, home of the most twisted and insane freaks and rogues to grace any comic book universe.  It's surprising it's not more common really, in the real world Charles Manson became a cult leader, the Insane Clown Posse's juggalos have been labeled a gang by the FBI, and death row inmates are bombarded with marriage proposals.  If they existed, people like Calendar Man, Signalman, and Killer Croc would be rockstars to a very broken segment of society long before you even get to the truly terrifying A-Listers like the Joker and Two Face.  What does that kind of twisted obsession look like in a superhero universe, and how would the villains respond to that kind of adoration?  That's the implicit storytelling potential of the Joker's Daughter.

Which is not to say that her obscurity at this point isn't fairly well deserved.  Being actually mentally unhinged and at least amoral with an obsession with supervillains is not the basis for a good superhero even if it's clear from her introduction she was meant to become a Teen Titan.  Which kept her away from Batman's rogues gallery, when interacting with them is almost certainly her best chance at being an interesting and compelling character.  By the time they added the interdimensional aspect and killed her off, it seemed about the only way to fix decades of bizarre characterization (apparently her creator actually intended to have her be revealed as a Teen Titan sent back from the future who was driven mad by the experience, which might have worked but is far too little too late since it was never published).  Writers have also had an unfortunate tendency to actually try to make her the daughter of one or another of Batman's villains, which may work with the soap opera-ish aspects of comic books but ultimately can't be allowed to stick leading for the repetitive story of "she's BLANK's real daughter, no she's not, she's really BLANK's real daughter." Thematically she works best as simply a broken individual drawn to even more broken individuals.  At it's core, Batman's story is about unintended consequences and inspiration.  A random violent crime created Batman, whose appearance drew out the freakish criminal element like the Joker, while also inspiring a new generation of heroes like Robin and Batgirl.  Why shouldn't the appearance of the Arkham Asylum crowd inspire a new generation of criminal madness?

Duela never knew who her parents were.  She was found abandoned in an alley as an infant and spent her child home bouncing from group home to group home in the Gotham City foster system.  When she was lucky no one paid any attention to her, and when she was unlucky they paid all too much.  More than anything she dreamed of the day her real parents would come and rescue her from the nightmare, make it all go away.  She knew she was special, she was smarter and more athletic than all the other kids in the homes, her parents must be special too.  But they never came and she started to despair.  Why didn't they love her?  Why wouldn't they save her?  Where were they?  And then one day she realized that her parents would never abandon her like that, someone must be keeping them away.  But who?  Who could keep them away from their daughter?  And in Gotham City there was only one man powerful enough to keep away parents who loved their special daughter so much. Batman.  In that moment it all came together, her parents must be one of the Batman's so called "villains."  That's why they didn't come for her, they were locked into eternal combat with a monster.  Duela wasn't sure which of the Batman's enemies was her parent but she knew she needed to find them....and help them destroy the Batman.