The clown prince of crime, the harlequin of hate, the Batman’s number one rogue (according to clown himself which is a valid news source!) the Joker has arrived to the scene!
Please, please hold all applause and horrified screams until the end of the performance!
Now you see, unlike DC I wanted to give the Joker an actual set identity. I mean 99% of rogues have an identity so why not Joker?
Murder is actually very rare for him. He’s definitely reflective of his more campy, not completely murdery counterparts. Sure he may threaten to kill people or blown them up but it’s not part of his punchline.
Dead people can’t laugh at his jokes after all. Unfortunately accidents happen and tempers can flare.
Plus I like to believe a core part of Batman, or at least the story/ au I want to tell is: anyone can be redeemed. No one is pure evil. It’s just a matter of IF they want to be better. There is always a person under the monster.
So many villains get sympathetic moments, backstories, motives. Yet we’ve strayed from the fact that in the end Batman isn’t just for breaking bones, he’s trying to help his city.
But I’ll get more into that when I post about the Bat. For now, it’s time for the clown!
Buckle in this is a long backstory cuz I got a whole lot to cover here!
A trigger warning for implied child abuse, murder, drugs, and overall darker themes with Bailey’s past.
Lucas Bailey had a mother and a younger sister and lived in a shoddy apartment in the Narrows of Gotham. It was paycheck to paycheck, but the three were happy together.
They would go to church every Sunday. Older women would gush about how polite he and his sister Juliet were, despite everything that happened to them. Their mother always seemed to bring home a casserole for them to eat.
Some of them would coo that God made Bailey extra special with his different pupil sizes, so he could be a better big brother and son. Sure he didn’t know how but he enjoyed the compliments!
Doors may have been double checked, locked, and Bailey keeping an eye out for any suspicious figures. But it was perfect.
Even if their apartment leaked when it rained, or at times had a roach problem. It was home. It was away from him.
She and him still had nightmares about him. But Juliet didn’t. She never knew him, which was perfect.
Perfection can never last.
Bailey was only 12 when he lost everything.
The butt of the shotgun smashed into his head.
Blood filled the air, red was everywhere. His ears rang as the world went dark.
When Bailey woke up he was an orphan. The case ruled a murder- suicide with him the only survivor.
The news was met with laughter, earning him such dirty looks despite the devastation. The doctor diagnosed him with pseudobular affect.
All he could do was laugh at the funeral, tears rolling down his face.
Growing up, he stayed with foster families, barely. He poured himself into his school work while others in his schools were introduced to drugs made by Daggett.
Cheap, addictive, deadly.
He lost friends, and others lost family.
Still he worked tirelessly throughout his school career, he’d make Gotham a better place. For himself. For others.
As a young man, Bailey was head chemist at ACE chemicals. He was revolutionary! Sure his team only tolerated him, but it was fine. They all got paid, and plenty of freedom from the higher ups. Which was great!
He was creating a new drug. A revolutionary anti-depressant. It’d have less side effects. It could be used for a variety of mental illnesses, even physical aliments to reduce pain! It was going to be perfect.
In its pure liquid form; the chemical was corrosive enough to cause burns on the skin. It also caused manic euphoria to the point of psychosis, heightened aggression, and was highly addictive.
What was worse was he was running out of funding, before human trials. He had everything ready but the funding was cut before he could blink! But Bailey was smart outside of chemistry, he knew one way to get money back.
He begged his boss to let him and his team go to Wayne Tech, to get funding from the richest man in Gotham. After all, everyone knew Bruce Wayne was a bleeding heart! A revolutionary anti-depressant ( plus more!!) would have him throwing money at the project!
His boss reluctantly agreed after a day of agonized waiting.
The day arrives; he and Asha Stewart are the first to set up before the meeting begins.
He frets, and frets to Asha about how this will go; what if he can’t stop laughing? What if the board kicks him out? What if he gets fired? Asha just sighs, and tells him to stay calm. If he stays calm he won’t ruin this, after all he’s already taking a risk.
The meeting begins. The room filled with stifling suits and black ties, and at the head of the table? Bruce Wayne himself. Slicked back hair with those faint waves styled in and grey-blue eyes like a November morning.
He’s so nervous, and his throat keeps forcing out bouts of laughter and laughter and laughter he can’t sTOP—
Asha has to pause the presentation to lead Bailey out of the room so he can stop interrupting.
He has to wait outside until it’s all over, and face the music that he ruined everything! His project would never get funding, he’d never change the world, he’d be fired and thrown into the streets and—
Bruce Wayne himself speaks to him. Interrupting his spiraling with a question; he asks Bailey if he knows who funds ACE. His voice is like warm butter, and it takes everything Bailey has not to melt then and there.
He answers, no, he doesn’t, Mr. Wayne.
Wayne informs him, grim, but not harsh.
The man who single handedly ruined his mother’s life. If it wasn’t for him raising the rent and making his mother choose that over extra locks, they’d be alive. If his drugs didn’t flood the streets of his high school; he’d have friends who hadn’t overdosed before graduation. If his greed hadn’t caused his father to be fired, maybe his mother would’ve been able to escape his abuse sooner; under his nose.
Daggett now had his hooks in Bailey, in his product. If he got the formula, he’d ruin Gotham even more than before.
Bailey fights back his cackles as he thanks Mr. Wayne for this information and opportunity, he hopes they meet again under better circumstances.
He quits his job the moment he gets back to ACE. He will not let them use HIS product to addict the people of Gotham.
The high doses that no doubt would be sold would be addictive, and destroy the person’s body and mind. With the wrong amount of acid? One dose could be fatal if drank; limb losing if injected.
His chemical was too dangerous to go out into the streets without care.
He wouldn’t let ACE have such a dangerous chemical.
He was a puppet being played.
All his documents, paper and digital he destroyed. Even his teammates' notes were all gone, torn apart as he burned those bridges to. They must’ve known, and didn’t care!
Was he the only one with morality here?
It took hours upon hours for his tirade to end, all the notes destroyed but the ones inside his head.
He was alone. The outside of his lab was dark, everyone home and relaxing as his world fell apart.
One beaker of his chemical remained. The sample he’d take to Wayne Enterprises, to prove he was on their side. Not Daggett. He’d rather gouge the man’s eyes out, slit his throat, drown him in a bathtub.
Anything to prove he hated him.
He could hear people. There shouldn’t be people. He should be alone.
Two men, bulky and dressed in black came in. Tall as they were wide, and masks obscuring everything but their eyes. Hired thugs. Bailey stood no chance.
He tried to run. To fight back. He kicked, he screamed, no one heard. He was alone.
He was beaten to a pulp. Within an inch of his life. They were going to kill him.
If Daggett didn’t get the drug? It’d die with Bailey.
Good. He’d rather die than let that fucker get his secret.
He couldn’t stop his laughter, even as tears spilt down his face. He was bleeding, face swollen to the point he looked unrecognizable. But he grinned. Full of teeth and blood.
“What a freak.” One grunts, popping open the beaker.
His world was bathed in colors he couldn’t begin to describe. His skin was melting, he was being reborn and killed all at once. It was heavenly agony. His formula tasted like sour candy and blood.
It was poetic that his skin would be burning with his own chemicals.
The last thing he saw were white eyes in the dark.
How beautiful is the night, when it sweeps through his lab and shrouds his eyes in the lull of black.
Bailey awoke in the hospital days later, jobless, in withdrawals, and his face bandaged from his chemical burns. Even the inside of his mouth ached.
His crimes started out small, just enough money to get by while he waited for an interview from anywhere he applied.
But Wayne Tech reached out for an interview. It wasn’t head chemist but… it was a job. He needed money. And alibis.
He was fine with it. Even if he saw a familiar, backstabbing face. Asha, as the head chemist! Laughable!
But he also made new friends on the other side of the building! Or well friend— well, Jervis was fun to be around! An absolute hoot!
Eventually his little crime sprees get a proper… persona. A proper gimmick, a look, a passion beyond survival. He had a point to make.
The Joker was dead set on running Roland Daggett out of Gotham. Along with being Batman’s main foe, compared to the likes of Penguin or The Riddler or God forbid those stuffy mobsters.
For the most part The Joker isn’t actively trying to kill people, instead focusing on dismantling Daggett’s empire and stealing Mob territory to expand his own power. Though he mostly targets Daggett, he’s not opposed to stealing from others. Penguin and Two face are really the only rogues he’ll hear out about compromising territory… sometimes.
His Joker Venom isn’t intentionally deadly, but is very painful as your face is paralyzed into a grin. Usually it’s temporary, only a few hours a maximum… unless you’re unlucky.
Like this, his relationship with the other rogues is stable. Sometimes he decides to help them out if it benefits him, sometimes he double crosses them for the sheer thrill of it! What does he know? He’s crazy!
The only that makes him truly dangerous is the fact he cannot share Batman. Batman is his, and his alone. During a partnership, or hiring help; Batman is his to destroy! He will backstab metaphorically and literally if it means he can get Batsy to focus on him alone!
For now, Lucas Bailey and the Joker aren’t suspected of being the same person.
Of course this isn’t the end of Joker’s story, no no! But what kind of writer would I be if I didn’t keep y’all on the edge of your seats?
He LOVES making friends with those who are clearly deeply uncomfortable with his presence ( Edward and Darius).
Even when Jervis becomes the Mad Hatter, Bailey considers them still friends- and they are! Though they don’t team up as Joker and Hatter almost at all, the two can be seen at the lounge together happily chatting.
He is not immune to Fear Toxin, despite all the chemicals in his body. But his reaction to the toxin makes it seem like he’s unaffected ( hysterical laughter and violence).
He’s going to stab Scarecrow one day when he catches that goddamn cryptid. Stab it in the face.
He’s regularly banned from the lounge because he steals territory or cargo from Oswald, but the bans are temporary.
One time to appeal to the Penguin, he bought a giant stuffed animal of a Penguin.
Both were acceptable apologies.
Two-face meanwhile once got a single, authentic two dollar bill.
He doesn’t know why Joker was trying to apologize to him and a part of him is scared to ask why. The other part still wants to hit the joker with a car. Twice.
Bailey tries so hard to keep himself and the Joker separate, no one knows he’s the Joker until his first stay at Arkham. Even then it took weeks for his identity to be found, because he refused to tell anyone his real name or take off his makeup.
He and Harley are unhealthy, but together they’re unhealthy! Extreme codependency on each other, until Harley herself decides to step away because of how toxic their relationship is. Even if it’s not romantic.
After being revealed that Joker and Lucas Bailey are the same person… Joker definitely misses having a civilian identity to go back too. So he makes new ones! Surely that’ll fill the void!