Every week, we will be examining comic book stories and ideas that were not only abandoned, but also had the stories/plots specifically "overturned" by a later writer (as if they were a legal precedent). Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of The Abandoned An' Forsaked. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.
Today, as suggested by my pal, Bill Walko, we examine the mystery of the parentage of the Joker's Daughter...
Enjoy!
The Joker's Daughter first showed up in Batman Family #6, in the Robin feature written by Bob Rozakis..
She began appearing in other guises, like Catgirl, daughter of Catwoman...
Scarecrone, daughter of Scarecrow...
the Riddler's Daughter...
the Penguin's Daughter...
and eventually the truth is revealed in Batman Family #9...
So she moves over to Teen Titans, then written by Rozakis, and she meets her REAL father, Two-Face...
And we learn her history...
In the issue, she also decides to drop the Joker's Daughter routine...
When that Teen Titans team ended, so, too, did her time in the DC mainstream. She next appeared roughly eight or so years ago at the wedding of Donna Troy and Terry Long, where Marv Wolfman not only abandons and forsakes the Two-Face idea, he also has her aged...
This sort of makes Dick Grayson a pretty dumb guy, no? "I never noticed she was way older than me. And way too old to be the daughter of Two-Face."
That's it for the abandoned and forsaked aspect of her character, but just because I know you folks love to get extra information on top of the actual purpose of the column, I'll show what happened to her post-Crisis.
She appeared a few times and in more recent times, she was once again pushing the Joker's Daughter routine (even though going by Duela Dent still)...
When Deathstroke put together an evil team of Titans, she joined up, but changed sides easily as she just wanted to be a member of a team of Titans! She'd prefer the good guys...
She next appeared in the first issue of Countdown to Final Crisis...
She is then hunted down and killed by a rogue Monitor...
You see, as it turns out, the Joker's Daughter was actually from a different Earth in the Multiverse. Specifically, she came from an Earth where the Joker was a GOOD guy, known as the Jokester, enemy to Owlman...
Here, the Jokester learns of her identity...
So she was leaping in between her world and the "main" DC Earth, and she legitimately believed that she was the Joker's Daughter because she WAS! In a way...
And then she was killed.
Thanks for the suggestion, Bill!