WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Dark Nights Metal #6, written by Scott Snyder and drawn by Greg Capullo and Jonathan Glapion and Batman: White Knight #7, written and illustrated by Sean Gordon Murphy, both in stores now.


Two recent major comic books by DC Comics featured Batman deciding to team up with the Joker to fight a worse enemy. In the world of comics, there are certain plot ideas that are, in effect, low hanging fruit. They are just too tempting to resist eventually using them. For instance, once you establish that Superman has entrusted Batman with a piece of kryptonite to be used in case of emergencies, you would be a fool to never do a story where Batman needs to use that kryptonite ring. Similarly, Batman and Joker are such polar opposites that the idea of having Batman be willing to team up with him for the greater good is an incredibly appetizing concept.

Therefore, these two recent comics might have been two of the more notable instances of these sorts of team-ups occurring, but they are far from the first time that it has happened. Here, we will take a look at the comic book history of Batman and the Joker teaming up.

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The first team-up between the two arch-rivals occurred in 1973's Brave and the Bold #111, by Bob Haney and Jim Aparo. It had the following amazing cover by Aparo...

The issue opens up with a whole family being murdered seemingly by the Joker because the father of the family testified against a criminal and saw him sent to prison. There was a note with the dead bodies saying that it was the Joker who killed them and it was not even because he knew the criminal who was sent away, but just as a general deterrence to other people to testify in the future. Batman, naturally, was really torn up about this and obsessively hunted the Joker down.

When he cornered him, he discovered that the Joker was seemingly hunting another criminal down! Batman pieced together some clues and realized that the other criminal was the real killer of the family and had just framed the Joker for the murders. So Batman decided to team up with the Joker to take the real killer down...

However, here's a fascinating thing about Bob Haney's Batman. He was all in favor of Batman being human, in that he screwed up a lot, so as it turned out, the Joker was behind the murders all along (the guy who did the physical crime did so at the Joker's orders) and just went along with Batman's team-up to trap him and kill him. Batman, of course, managed to escape and arrest both the Joker and the "real" killer.

Nine years and 80 issues later, another issue of The Brave and the Bold, #191, saw Batman and the Joker team up once again. Check out another amazing Aparo cover...

In this instance, in a story by Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn (with art by Jim Aparo), the Joker is framed for the murder of the Penguin and he teams up with Batman to prove that he didn't do the crime.

What confused Batman was that he could investigate it without the Joker's help. He was confused as to why the Joker cared so much, but as it turned out, the Joker

This time around, though, the Joker actually was telling the truth. The Penguin faked his own death as part of an elaborate scam to get a Catholic Cardinal to perform his funeral service, at which point the Penguin (dressed as a nun) planned to kidnap him...

We share this page not just to show how awesome it is (the Penguin dressed as a nun is hilarious), but also to note the Easter Egg in the page. Aparo, you see, would often hide little hints in each issue as to who Batman would be teaming up with in the next issue. See if you can figure out who Batman teamed up with in the following issue, based on this page.

Batman has proven the Joker innocent of other charges in other instances, but we don't necessarily count those as "team-ups." Like the graphic novel where the Joker is declared sane and thus is about to be executed, but Batman realizes that the murder that he is going to be put to death for he didn't actually do.

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In the 1996 Batman/Captain America crossover by John Byrne, Byrne used a bit popularized in The Rocketeer movie by having the Joker not only refuse to team up with the Red Skull, but actually stop the Red Skull's final plan, even though it resulted in the Joker dying with him in a nuclear explosion...

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In 1998's Detective Comics #726 (by Chuck Dixon and Brian Stelfreeze, with Scott McDaniel also helping out a bit), a criminal who had a cell next to Joker at Arkham Asylum kidnapped a little girl and trapped her with only a few hours of air left. He then killed himself. Thus, the only way that Batman could solve the crime was to work with the Joker...

While an excellent issue, this probably shouldn't count as a team-up, since the bad guy only kidnapped the girl because the Joker manipulated him into doing so, as the day was the anniversary of the time that the Joker beat Robin to death. In the end, though, the Joker does give Batman enough information that Batman is able to save the little girl before she dies.

When he goes to visit the Joker again to ask why he helped him, the Joker coldly explains that he knows Batman well enough that he knew that Batman assumed that the girl was already dead. This way, though, Batman will always have to keep a little bit of hope alive in future cases like this and that will torture him in all of the instances when it turns out to be too late. Boy, the Joker is messed up.

In 2001, as part of a crossover event, alien invaders planned on invading Earth (as alien invaders are wont to do) and they worked with a being known as the Advance Man, whose talent was that he would soften up worlds prior to invasions. The Advance Man realized that the biggest threat to the invasion would come from the Justice League of America. So he used Hector Hammond's telepathy to erase the existence of the Justice League of America from the memories of everyone on Earth. Hammond, though, then realized what was going to happen next and he tried to warn the heroes, but was cut off before he could finish. All he could do was to explain to restore the phrase "Justice League of A..." in their minds.

Each of the different members of the League interpreted it differently, with each hero forming their own Justice Leagues, with the A being different for each one. Wonder Woman had a Justice League of Amazons. Superman and Martian Manhunter had a Justice League of Aliens. Batman, oddly enough, formed a Justice League of Arkham, breaking out a few of his old villains, including the Joker, to help save the world...

In a three-part storyline in Legends of the Dark Knight #143-145 (by Chuck Dixon, Jim Aparo and John Cebollero), the Joker teamed up with Ra's Al Ghul. Ra's betrayed the Joker and had him shot and left for dead, before Ra's headed off to unleash a terrible contagion on the Earth. Batman had to use the Lazarus Pit to save the Joker's life to find out where Ra's went, but in the process, the Pit made the Joker temporarily sane!

The temporarily-sane Joker helpd Batman take down Ra's.

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In 2004, there was going to be a miniseries called Batman: Europa by Brian Azzarello and Jim Lee. It eventually saw print, but a decade later, and a whole bunch of other artists and writers were involved before it finished. The concept was that Batman and Joker were both infected with the same deadly virus, so they had to team up together to find the cure, traveling all over Europe in the process...

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Finally, most recently, during the Dark Nights Metal crossover, the DC heroes had to fight against Dark Multiverse versions of Batman. You know, the most evil versions of Batman in the world. One of them, The Batman Who Laughs, was essentially "What if Bruce Wayne turned into the Joker?" That made him by far the most dangerous of the Dark Batmen, since he had all of Batman's know-how, but the Joker's insanity.

So, in Dark Nights Metal #6 (by Scott Synder, Greg Capullo and Jonathan Glapion), the only way Batman could figure out how to stop him was to team up with, well, the REAL Joker.

Finally, most recently, in the pages of Batman: White Knight (by Sean Murphy), the Joker has been "cured" and become Jack Napier, the true "White Knight" that Gotham City needs. However, the evil version of Harley Quinn (the woman that the Joker had turned into his second Harley Quinn) has become the Neo-Joker, trying to get the "real" Joker to return. Jack realizes that the only way that he can take down the evil Harley is to team up with Batman...

These team-ups are so much fun that it is likely that we'll see a lot more of them in the future!