Joker

“A lion doesn't pass judgement on a gazelle. Cancer doesn't pass judgement on a brain. I've been saying this all along. Evil doesn't exist. There are only actions. We got to the same place--the top of the food chain--just on different paths. Mine was more fun.

Did you know that my mother went through electroshock treatments when she was pregnant with me? This was before they would sedate you for that kind of thing, and then, you know, I died minutes after I was born... went to Hell, came back, that whole thing.

I've had therapists try to tell me that these "early traumas" led me to being the way I am. I've heard it all, you know... I'm this way because of abuse, because of video games, or violence on TV; because of guns and knives and the wickedness of this mean old world...

But what none of them get is those things didn't **make** me what I am. I am made **of** them. I **am** abuse. I **am** violence and madness. I **am** the guns and knives and the wickedness of this mean old world... you **know** my name. Now **scream** it.”
 — The Joker

## Overview

**Cletus Kasady** is a maniacal, sociopathic serial killer and mass murderer who has bonded with an alien symbiote to become the notorious super-villain **Joker** and the arch-nemesis of Batman. He is known to have been forced to swim through a vat of chemicals which turned his skin white, his hair green and left his face permanently locked in a rictus grin.

Notoriously, the Joker once led a group of other killers and monsters on a rampage across Manhattan. Seemingly killed by Superman, the Joker eventually returned more powerful than ever and began harboring megalomaniacal ambitions of conquest and godhood.

## History

Cletus Cortland Kasady was born in the Ravencroft Institute to a mother with paranoid schizophrenia, who died shortly after his birth. Remanded into the custody of a physically-abusive old woman who may or may not have been his biological grandmother, Cletus "put her out of her misery" by pushing her down a flight of stairs.

As such, Cletus was subsquently to live with Roscoe and Louise — who were either foster parents or actually his biological father and step-mother. While in their care, Cletus tortured and killed his mother's dog, Fifi, since he belived his step-mother loved the dog more than him. Afterward, Roscoe killed Louise by accident while beating Cletus in retaliation for him killing her dog.

Roscoe was arrested and received no defense from Cletus during his trial, having been sentenced to execution. As an orphan, Cletus was sent to the St. Estes Home for Boys, where his antisocial behavior quickly made him the target of bullying and abuse from both the other orphans and the staff. During his time at St. Estes', Cletus befriended a boy named Billy Bentine after he took the blame for a fire Cletus started as a prank; and at some point in his teenage years he fell in love with a girl who ultimately broke up with him — leaving him despondent and depressed.

When Cletus confessed his feelings to a girl he had a crush on, he was scornfully rejected and retaliated by pushing her in front of an oncoming school bus. Ultimately, Cletus set St. Estes' Home for Boys ablaze, murdering the disciplinarian administration and orphans who had bullied him in the process.

Following this deeply troubled childhood, Cletus became a serial killer and began his criminal career as "Red Hood One," the leader of the Red Hood Gang, comprised of blackmailed individuals from the middle and upper classes of Gotham that the Red Hood kept under his sway. With the ideology of pointless violence, the gang dared the authorities to try and catch them all. He first faced off against Bruce Wayne when the returned billionaire-turned-vigilante rescued some hostages from the madman.

Having been tipped off by Edward Nygma, the Red Hood sent his gang to kill Bruce Wayne, catching the billionaire in an explosion in his brownstone. Taunting Wayne as he lay dying, Red Hood One added insult to injury by shooting two bullets through a portrait of Wayne's deceased parents before leaving the future vigilante to his injuries.

As the tales of the urban legend known as the Batman rose in the wake of Wayne's attempted assassination, the ranks of the Red Hood Gang began to slowly dwindle bit by bit, each member caught one by one. Having discovered Red Hood One's plan, Wayne blew the gang's cover at Ace Chemical Processing Plant where the criminals were planning to steal flesh-eating chemicals. Realizing the jig was up, the Red Hood Gang led an assault there against the Batman and the GCPD.

Though Red Hood One attempted to escape in a helicopter, Batman fired his grappling line around his enemy's ankle, yanking him from the aircraft and sending them both plummeting through the weakened roof of the chemical plant. Almost falling into a vat of chemicals, Red Hood One was caught by Batman, who attempted to save the criminal's life. Claiming this moment to only be the beginning, the gang leader broke free of his savior's grasp and plummeted into the chemicals below.

Despite Batman's prediction that the chemicals were enough to kill him, the man's body was not recovered.

Soon after Red Hood One's disappearance, the body of a man named William Distal was found discarded and covered in lye. Though the GCPD were aware that Distal had at one point acted as Red Hood One, the lye made it impossible to tell when he had been murdered - as early as Batman's first appearance, as late as the fight within ACE Chemicals, or any time in between. Thus, the man who fell in the acid could have been Red Hood One for an indiscriminate amount of time.

The man who fell in the acid *did* survive, having had his skin turned pale white and his hair green. The man reappeared sometime later, unhinged with criminal insanity, calling himself **the Joker**.

### Creating More Jokers

Over the years, the Joker became a recurring enemy to Spider-Man, Deadpool, the Avengers, and most notably Batman.

The Joker claimed, not long after this transformation, he hatched a plan to create *more* people like him, to spread his chaos farther than he could do alone.

Using the same chemicals that transformed him, the Joker infected multiple other people, also turning *them* into Jokers, too. However, of his experiments, only two survived. Unclear on who was the original, there were now three near-identical men calling themselves the Joker.

Allegedly, the three Jokers, delineating between themselves with their nicknames: the **Criminal**, the **Clown**, and the **Comedian**, would alternate their positions, terrorizing Batman for years. They kept their origin a secret, never making it clear that the Joker's inconsistent personality and seeming omnipotence was because the mantle was shared by three separate people.

The Criminal, cold and calculated, tended to target Batman the most early in his career.

The Clown seemed most active a a few years into Batman's career.

And the Comedian apparently was more prominent later in Batman's career.

### First Year

Not long after "the Zero Year", the Joker resurfaced and quickly made a name for himself in the city; his first attempted crime was trying to poison the Gotham Reservoir, an act that Batman successfully stopped.

According to Batman himself, despite the lack of confirmed information on the Batcomputer, he had pieced together the Joker's true identity within a week of his first attack.

According to the Joker, after Batman took on an apprentice with his first Robin, Joker began thinking several steps ahead and orchestrated events he believed would lead to Grayson's replacement. Setting his sights on the young Jason Todd, the Joker faked Jason's parents' deaths to force the boy to believe he was an orphan and follow a path that would lead him to becoming Batman's next sidekick. However, the Joker is an unreliable narrator, and this may have been a lie to manipulate Jason.

### Other Early Crimes

The Joker's notoriety continued to grow to the point that he operated his own gang of henchmen in Gotham. At some indiscriminate point early in the Joker's criminal career, he and his gang terrorized the Gotham Zoo, killing its employees. While there, a baby gorilla caught the Joker's attention, and the clown killed its mother to raise it as his new sidekick. Naming the gorilla Jackanapes, Joker and his "son" terrorized Gotham until, on a mission to kill a Gotham City councilwoman for trying to close the Gotham Zoo, Jackanapes fells into a river and seemingly drowned. The Joker was unfazed at the death of his son, instead insisting he get a refund for the swimming lessons he purchased.

Meanwhile, the Joker was in and out of Arkham Asylum constantly. In one of his stays at the asylum, the madman actually managed to seduce his psychiatrist into letting him escape and join him as his criminal accomplice Harley Quinn.

One of Joker's early plans drew the attention of the Gotham Gazette and, in particular, one of their journalists Tommy Blackcrow. Trying to investigate the clown that he clearly underestimated, Blackcrow was captured by Joker and, still undaunted, proceeded to tell the madman that he's probably the way he is because he doesn't have any friends, a comment that Blackcrow later regretted when Joker took it upon himself to make the journalist his best friend.

At some point, **Joker**, as well as Penguin, Riddler and Catwoman, was contacted by the Designer - a new criminal in Gotham who volunteered to make their wildest schemes a reality. Though the other criminals bought into it, the Joker, however, caused the whole deal to fall apart and seemingly killed the Designer, and the villains burned down his base to leave no trace.

As years passed, Joker's crimes became more violent and personal, such as torturing and paralyzing Barbara Gordon and even killing the second Robin. Again and again, Batman defeated Joker and sent him to Arkham, but his crimes had now hit much closer to home.

### Faces of Death

Years later, the Joker is a homicidal killer being hunted by Gotham's police force. After a skirmish with Batman, the Joker is caught and taken to Arkham Asylum. There, the Dollmaker pays him a visit, which the Joker seems to have been expecting. The two have cordially arranged this meeting, and the Joker has assigned his visitor with a special task: he has the Dollmaker cut off his face and pin it to the wall.

Afterward, the Joker is assumed dead by virtually everyone except Batman and hundreds of mourners have surrounded the GCPD building in a mock vigil, calling for Joker's face to be returned to them, and Batman's head too. Soon afterward Harley Quinn learns of her Puddin's "death" and betrays the Suicide Squad by orchestrating a mass prison break at Belle Reve Penitentiary. Afterward, she travels back to Gotham City, turning herself in at Gotham City Police Headquarters all in the hopes of stealing back the Joker's face.

### Death of the Family

The Joker made his return to Gotham City a year after his disappearance. He infiltrated the GCPD headquarters, killing the lights, slaughtering several cops and making his presence known to Gordon. In the following days, he reenacted some of his earliest crimes such as publicly announcing his intention to poison the mayor, with each crime having some morbid twist to it.

After using Harley Quinn to distract Batman, the Joker went after anyone who has a connection to Batman. In order, he vanquished Batgirl, Catwoman, Robin, Nightwing, Red Robin and Red Hood. Joker brought them all to Arkham Asylum.

By the time Batman came, Joker had his defenses ready and lured the Dark Knight into his trap. Batman complied, hoping to learn more of his adversary's plans. Joker placed the entire Bat-Family on a large table, with bandages around their faces. He claimed he had removed their faces as Dollmaker had removed his. He also explained that he had instructed Dollmaker to remove his face to show that under his grin, there was only more grin. He left them and set the scene on fire.

Batman broke free. He liberated his allies and discovered their faces were still intact. He caught up with Joker, and the fight was short. Batman taunted him, claiming to have discovered who the Joker was before his chemical bath. Not wanting to hear it, Joker jumped off the cliff, falling to his death.

### Becoming Carnage

In the pit was the recently birthed symbiote Sankar, of the 6th house of Klyntar, which bonded with Kasady, entering into his bloodstream through his wounds and amalgamating with his blood.

It had the supernatural ability to heal the Joker's dismembered face skin and grant him superhuman healing, reanimating him from the brink of death as he heard the voice of the imprisoned elder god Knull, who whispered to Cletus that this was only the barest taste of his power and that he would be granted far more if he would enter his service.

Upon learning the symbiote's name, he nicknamed it "Shanker."

Now empowered far beyond the levels of Spider-Man and Venom combined, Kasady dubbed himself **Carnage** and made good on his revival — intent on using his new-found power to disseminate his lethal doctrine.

Also in the cave, Joker discovered the cave painting of a bat that he wouldn't realize the significance of until later.

### Eric Border

Soon after his supposed death off the cliff, Joker reappeared, but disguised as a new orderly at Arkham Asylum. Using Sankar's abilities to disguise himself, the Joker adopted the name "Eric Border" - "Eric" being a combination pun of the Norse and Gothic words "Eternal" and "Prince" respectively, and "Border", which is a homophone of the archaic word "bourder" meaning "jester".

Befriending Dr. Mahreen Zaheer, Joker worked in Arkham, formulating his plan for return. In his new identity, the criminal kept to his roots by playing a dark prank on his new friend Dr. Zaheer by encouraging her to write a book about the "true" origin of the Joker. The clown falsified documents and paid people off in order to construct another origin story that could only *potentially* be true. As part of his dark prank, the Joker gave each of four inmates a different origin for himself (a demon, a robot, a man from another time, and a soldier who was the first in an army of Batmen created by the government,) with a path through Gotham that eventually leads to the publisher of Dr. Zaheer's book where the fifth inmate has Dr. Zaheer tell them her story.

### Citywide Carnage

Embarking on a citywide killing spree, the Joker was confronted by Spider-Man. However, the wall-crawler's amazing arachnid-like abilities were insufficient to subdue the thrice-strong serial killer, forcing Spider-Man to enlist the aid of the Fantastic Four. He also sought the assistance of another, more dangerous ally: Venom, his hated foe. Venom was reluctant to ally with Spider-Man, but despised Kasady even more and agreed to help. Facing the combined might of Spider-Man and Venom, the Joker was captured and his symbiote seemingly destroyed. He was imprisoned first at the Vault and then his birthplace, Ravencroft Institute.

Due in part to his insatiable bloodlust, the Joker's strength and abilities far exceeded those of his predecessors, Venom and Spider-Man. Once, he even dispatched his symbiote through a phone line by reducing the alien to its cellular level. When an army of Symbiotes invaded Earth, the Joker learned to feed on the other aliens to increase his own mass, possibly surpassing Manhattan Bridge in height. However, Kasady's bloodthirsty endeavors ultimately culminated with his return to Arkham.

### Maximum Carnage

A doctor at Arkham, hoping to find a "cure" for his madness, drew blood from Kasady unwittingly enabling Kasady to transform into the Joker; who went on to recruit an army of psychopathic supervillains — including Shriek, Demogoblin, Carrion, and Doppelganger — to take over New York City. Using Shriek's "psychic channel" powers, he also drove ordinary New Yorkers to attack one another. the Joker and his "family" were ultimately driven back by Spider-Man, Venom and a number of other superheroes and anti-heroes, with the Joker and Shriek being remanded to Arkham.

### Loss and Restoration of Sankar

While contained in a specialized super-max cell in the Manhattan Correctional Facility, Cletus Kasady was attacked by Venom, who ripped Sankar from his body and devoured it. Without the symbiote, Kasady attempted to reassume the Joker persona by covering himself in red paint and continuing his killing sprees, claiming that he still possessed at least some of the Joker's strength and convinced that he only needed to kill Spider-Man and Venom to regain his symbiote. Spider-Man nevertheless easily defeated him in a fight, and he was sent back to prison. Guided by remnants of Sankar within his body, Kasady travelled to the Negative Zone, where he struck an alliance with Blastaar — offering to aid his conquest of Earth. Cletus found a second symbiote that had been sealed away and bonded with it to become the Joker again, turning on Blastaar in an attempt to force him to destroy reality itself. Stopped by Spider-Man and Dusk, Cletus was returned to Manhattan and arrested, but regained his symbiote.

### Birth of Toxin

During a battle with Venom, the Joker discovered his symbiote was about to give birth. Feeling threatened by its existence, the Joker attempted to suppress the birth and destroy it. However, Venom wanted to raise and train the new symbiote as an ally and partner. Weakened by the actual birthing, the Joker was unable to kill the newborn, bonding it to Patrick Mulligan, a New York City cop. Venom named the new symbiote Toxin, after himself. Fearing that Toxin would grow to become someone like Spider-Man, Venom made a temporary alliance with the Joker to kill his "grandson", but in the end they were defeated by the combined efforts of Spider-Man, Toxin, and Black Cat.

### Raft Break-Out

Imprisoned in the Raft, the Joker participated in an attempted breakout but was grabbed by the Superman, who flew him into orbit and ripped him in half at the waist.

Cletus was placed into a dormant state by Sankar to keep him alive, though it nearly perished after several months. Orbiting Earth, the Joker's body crashed into a satellite owned by Hall Industries, and was recovered by Michael Hall, a competitor of Bruce Wayne. Hall proceeded to retrieve the Joker's body from space and separated Cletus from the symbiote, placing him in a hospital as a John Doe. Using the symbiote, Hall created prosthetic limbs and exo-suits which responded in the same ways as a symbiote. Cletus was subsequently outfitted with a prosthetic lower body and placed in containment in a cell under Hall Industries corporate headquarters.

The Sankar eventually reunited with Cletus by taking over Dr. Tanis Nieves, Shriek's psychologist, who had been outfitted with one of the prosthetic arms derived from it after she was caught in an attack Doppelganger. Reunited with his symbiote and Shriek, Cletus became the Joker once more and battled Batman and Spider-Man. When confronted by Hall Industries' Iron Rangers, who were outfitted with symbiote-based armour, Cletus was informed by Sankar that it had developed the ability to produce and control offshoots of itself as a result of Hall's experimentation. Using this power, the Joker killed and assimilated the Iron Rangers' suits to become "Mass the Joker". Meanwhile, Nieves' prothesis was revealed to be a new spawn of the Joker, which turned her into a new symbiote called Scorn. Scorn forced Shriek to use her sonic attack on Mass the Joker, who was revealed to be a construct, the real the Joker having escaped with Doppelganger.

### Carnage, U.S.A.

Directed by his symbiote, Cletus arrived in Doverton, Colorado and took over their population by controlling them with offshoots of his symbiote, proclaiming this city the new capital of a new symbiote sovereign state. Part of the Avengers, along with the Thing, arrived to stop him, but were possessed by the symbiote's copies, though Spider-Man managed to escape with the help of a resistance movement of non-infected citizens.

When a squad of symbiote-augmented super-soldiers called the Mercury Team attacked the zone along with Scorn in search of the Joker, Spider-Man and the resistance appeared to help them. Agent Venom appeared just in time to save Spider-Man's life from Cletus, but when Scorn used a sonic weapon to sever the bond between Cletus and the Joker, she also affected Venom. Leaving Cletus against an invalid Flash Thompson, the two rogues symbiotes started fighting using animals. The Avengers and Scorn managed to weak the Joker's and destroy Cletus' cybernetic legs using a sonic weapon, while a gorilla with Venom's took it back to Flash; when both of them were fighting. The Sankar was captured by Scorn, while Cletus was taken into custody in a Quinjet.

### Minimum Carnage

Cletus was put into custody in the Thunderbolts Mountain and the remnants of Sankar on his person were seemingly destroyed, though it regenerated within his blood once more. Cletus was contacted by beings of the Microverse, who managed to see inside his mind and offer him a treat: they would give him the Microverse to get a whole new universe to kill in exchange for his services. Transforming into the Joker and escaping, Cletus traveled to the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Texas and used a new technology to escape to the Microverse, even after Scarlet Spider tried to stop him.

Once in the Microverse, the Joker betrayed his allies, who wanted to bring him to their master, Marquis Radu, in order to create a symbiotic army; and killed most of them while Venom and Scarlet Spider followed him to the Microverse. After dealing with the Scarlet Spider, the Joker was taken prisoner along with Venom, who was captured along his allies, the Enigma Force, by Marquis Radu's army.

The Venom and Sankars were replicated and hybridized to create the powerful army which would destroy the Microverse. Cletus managed to take control over the symbiotic army and used it to escape to the regular universe, where he was finally defeated by the combined efforts of Venom and Scarlet Spider, who used a special weapon given to them by the Enigma Force. After being stung by the Scarlet Spider, Cletus cured his wounds, but was left in a catatonic state, meaning that the symbiote was now in full control of his body, although it was put into custody once more and sedated.

### Superior Carnage

The Joker was freed from imprisonment by The Wizard, who, still thinking Cletus was in control of the symbiote, wanted to make him part of his newest Frightful Four. However, the Joker was unaffected by The Wizard's powers and attacked him. Before the Joker was able to finish him off, Klaw was able to stop the Joker and save The Wizard. After realizing that the Joker could not be affected by his powers, and could not be separated from his host by traditional means since the Symbiote was embedded in Cletus' blood, The Wizard began transferring the Joker to a new host by transfusing Cletus' blood into Karl Malus. Later, The Wizard blew up his secret base, with Kasady still inside, apparently killed.

However, Cletus survived the explosion, with some major skin burns, and was recovered by Superior Spider-Man's Spiderlings. When Sankar bonded to The Wizard, Otto decided he could use the symbiote's preference for Cletus in order to make it abandon The Wizard, by taking Kasady to the scene, and contain the alien before it could merge with its original host. However, the mission failed, and Cletus became the Joker once more as the Spiderlings failed to contain the symbiote. the Joker rampaged through the scene until Klaw, whose sonic body had been dispersed, managed to redirect lightning to the Joker and separate him from Kasady. Both beings were taken separately to custody. Unknown to Spider-Man, the symbiote's rebonding with Kasady fixed the villain's brain, who was now no longer lobotomized.

Cletus became a model prisoner, for which he was transferred to Kramer Penitentiary. He was fatally wounded by a fellow inmate, who was paid by Dr. Jenner, Cletus' psychologist who wanted to become the Joker's new host. Kasady was suffocated to death with a pillow by Jenner in Kramer's infirmary. When Sankar escaped containment and returned to Cletus, it refused Jenner's offer to become its new host, and bonded and reanimated Cletus, becoming the Joker once more and killing the entire staff and prisoners to send the message to the world that "the Joker was back."

### Deadpool vs. Carnage

Cletus decided to go 'back to basics' and went on a seemingly random killing spree with no reason or patterns to his victims. However Deadpool was able to find a pattern in the Joker's madness and continually found him much to Cletus' frustration. Playing mind games with the Joker, Deadpool was able to put doubt in Cletus in the existence of chaos and that all his actions were being controlled by an outside force. This came to a head when the Joker almost killed Shriek, and he placed himself in an unlocked jail cell to wait until his mind was clear of doubt again.

### AXIS

When the Red Onslaught was unleashed, Magneto recruited numerous villains to stop the madman's Stark Sentinels. He approached the Joker in his self-confinement, and convinced Cletus to join him as there would be nothing more chaotic than him saving the world. Noticing Deadpool was part of Magneto's team, the Joker joined intending to exact revenge, but following the inversion spell which changed the moral axis of those in the island, they parted amicably.

After the inversion, Cletus returned to New York, stopping a robbery and apprehending the Squid with zero fatalities. Even though the spell brought out a desire to do good, his sociopathic tendencies made it hard for him to behave like a hero, causing him to brutalize criminals and still be treated as a villain. After saving reporter Alice Gleason from a new Sin-Eater, whom Kasady seemingly killed, he kidnapped her to teach him how to be a real hero. Alice agreed to help him be good as long as he promised not to hurt her, which he accepted. They headed to a church for Cletus to confess his sins but he attacked a tomb digger thinking he was robbing from the graves. Alice instead recorded his confession in her phone and secretly sent it to her boss. He later stopped a bank robbery but tried to burn the bank to stop future robberies. He fled as the police arrived but Alice fell and was kidnapped by the Sin-Eater while the Joker was surrounded by the police. Despite being shot down by two missiles, the Joker located the Sin-Eater and rescued Alice. The Sin-Eater — who claimed to be the spirit of Emil Gregg — fed on the Joker's sins, growing into a giant while Cletus feels the burden on his conscience being relieved. the Joker defeated him by overloading him with a last sin: that he loved all the destruction he caused, and the Sin-Eater dwindles into a shriveled corpse that disintegrates. Feeling reborn, the Joker thanks the Sin-Eater's corpse for absolving his sins before having his head shot off by Alice. Regenerating, the Joker asked why she betrayed him, and Alice admitted that she had lied to him about being a good person and had only been using him for personal gain, screaming at the newly arrived police to open fire. the Joker misinterpreted her betrayal as a warning that falling in love was dangerous, and reaffirmed his desire to become a superhero while escaping.

Cletus was later reunited with the other inverted villains to form the Astonishing Avengers in order to stop the inverted heroes. Before the later-known "Battle of Manhattan," the Joker acted as the face of the Astonishing Avengers, dubbing them the "Axis of Evil", and had them take all of the blame for the actions of the inverted heroes in order to protect the reputations of the X-Men, Avengers, and Inhumans in the aftermath at the expense of the newly achieved heroic reputations of himself and Hobgoblin. The Astonishing Avengers fought the inverted X-Men in Manhattan, who were trying to detonate a gene bomb which would've killed everyone in the planet who wasn't a mutant. As the time was running out and there were no options left, while the Avengers were distracting the X-Men, the Joker decided to sacrifice himself and use the symbiote to wrap around the bomb and contain the explosion, seemingly killing him. Before his apparent death, Cletus asked Spider-Man to build an extravagant memorial for him. His death was seemingly confirmed when Wasp found the remains of Sankar around the area where the bomb had been. After Cletus' apparent death and in the aftermath of the battle itself, Peter Parker was seen building the memorial as he had promised.

### Post-AXIS

Cletus was able to survive the gene bomb's explosion, though he lost his legs in the process. Cured of his inversion after a counterspell was cast and disgusted by his behavior as a hero, he went to Carefree, Arizona, to pay a visit to a new friend he'd made during the time he was inverted, a friend he was willing to "help", Sam Alexander aka the Blue Lantern Ranger. Cletus left a message signaling his return in the form of murdering a random bystander who he had asked where to find the boy as proof that he was reverted to his natural moral axis.

After learning that Sam's mother worked at a local diner, Cletus took her hostage there in order to get his attention, but, tired of waiting, Cletus decided to kill her. The Blue Ranger arrived before he could do so and took him away from the diner to an empty area in order not to hurt anyone. While fighting, the Blue Ranger tried to convince him that he wasn't Sam Alexander, but Cletus didn't believe him.

After being wounded by the Lantern Rangers, Cletus fled to let his symbiote heal him as the police arrived. The next day, already healed from his burns, Cletus attacked Sam again, this time at his school. While attacking Sam, the Joker saw the Blue Ranger flying around the area, thus making it impossible for the boy to be the Blue Ranger (unbeknownst to him, that was Sam's mother wearing his helmet). Enraged, the Joker followed the false Blue Ranger, but lost sight of her. He then started to attack innocent people to try and get the Blue Ranger's attention, provoking a new battle between them.

the Joker was taken by the Blue Ranger to the sky and then punched into the parking lot below, the impact setting off the cars' alarms, dizzying Cletus and his symbiote. Cletus was then thrown by the Blue Ranger, who had already realized the Joker's weakness to loud sounds, into an Anthrax (a heavy metal band which Cletus was a fan of) show nearby. As the symbiote screamed in pain, Cletus fled to the road, but was attacked by the Blue Ranger again. He threw a car at the Blue Ranger, who caught it midair, and took advantage of it to punch him. As he was about to finish his opponent off, the Joker was hit by a truck. He was then tied in metal plates by the Blue Ranger, and left by his symbiote as he revealed he wanted to kill the Blue Ranger because he wanted to erase any memory of his good deeds from the time he had his moral axis inverted from anyone who remembered it. He was left by Sam in Arkham Asylum.

### Prophet of the Void

The  Cult of Knull, an apocalyptic cult dedicated to worshiping Knull and led by a corrupted Scorn, attacked the convoy transporting Cletus' body to retrieve it, and later stole a sample of the primordial Grendel symbiote from the Maker's Project Oversight laboratory. Scorn bonded the piece of the Grendel symbiote to Cletus, intending to turn him into Knull's new vessel. Reanimated by the primordial symbiote, Cletus was psychically connected to the dark god, fighting against his will for control of his now-undead body. Cletus' connection to Knull was broken when he ripped out Scorn's spine to consume the trace remnants — or codex — of Sankar left over from her time as its host and consumed it. Altering the piece of the Grendel symbiote to match the appearance of Sankar, Cletus decided to help free Knull and set out to hunt down and consume the codices of the other symbiote hosts, living and deceased. Assuming leadership of the cult, the Joker subsequently conquered San Francisco's underground city -- which Venom had once guarded as the Lethal Protector -- and used his newfound abilities to infect the inhabitants with symbiote "brain worms" — maggots infected with the Carnagized Grendel symbiote — sending them to hunt down those who possessed symbiote codices.

Recruiting Shriek and Doppelganger once more, the Joker returned to Doverton, Colorado and claimed the codices of Sankar left in its populace; infecting John Jameson with the Carnagized Grendel symbiote so that he could act as a sleeper agent. the Joker -- now sporting Knull's spiral emblem on his forehead -- traveled to Philadelphia to claim Andi Benton's symbiote codex, killing her aunt Sarah and the Monsters of Evil, though Andi used the demonic powers of her Hell-Mark to escape. the Joker returned to Manhattan, but during the War of the Realms he opted to sit out the combat and chaos rather than reveal himself prematurely; establishing a lair in the sewers and subways under Grand Street, and infecting more homeless people and animals with the Jokerized Grendel symbiote to act as his minions. After the war's end, the Joker began sending his minions out to hunt for codices, and resurrected Emil Gregg to torment Eddie. the Joker and his followers also exhumed the bodies of every deceased people who'd bonded to a symbiote, harvested their codices, and left the desecrated bodies in a mass grave in the shape of Knull's spiral.

Greatly empowered, Kasady was transformed into "Dark Carnage" -- a thirteen foot-tall skeletal monster with Knull's spiral on its forehead and a white dragon/spider emblem on his chest. Harvesting the codices of the Weapon V super-soldier program and Leonard Elkhart, a one-time host of Naya, Dark Carnage traveled to Nicaragua and attacked Alejandra Jones, whose Spirit of Vengeance had at one point melded with Naya and transferred a codex into her. Despite interference from another Ghost Rider, Danny Ketch, Dark Carnage ripped out Alejandra's spine and ate it, temporarily absorbing her Spirit of Vengeance. Delighting in his new demonic powers, Dark Carnage battled Ketch but was retrieved by his followers when they started to fade. Chastised for losing sight of the cult's goals, Dark Carnage lashed out at them before resuming the hunt for codices.

Upon arriving in Manhattan, Dark Carnage attempted to break into the old Avengers Tower, impersonating Eddie Brock and allowing himself to be arrested. Kasady informed the police of his resurrection and plan to unleash Knull in such a way as to make Brock look like a raving lunatic, and was imprisoned in Arkham Asylum. Still posing as Brock, Kasady was confronted by Lee Price — who had formerly hosted Naya and was currently the host of the Mania symbiote — in the prison cafeteria. When Price threatened him, Kasady ripped the Mania symbiote out of him and bonded to it, destroying the security cameras in order to frame Brock. Transforming into Dark Carnage, Kasady slaughtered the inmates in the cafeteria and broke out of the prison; making his way to the mainland and selecting Spider-Man as his next target.

Noticing Eddie Brock and his son Dylan, Cletus pursued them into the subway and pushed Eddie and Dylan in front of an oncoming train — in mockery of what Eddie had once done to Spider-Man. The Venom symbiote rebonded to Eddie and derailed the train to save him and Dylan, and Cletus transformed into Dark Carnage; laughing off Venom's attacks and attempting to rip Naya off Eddie so that he could absorb it. Eddie managed to incapacitate Dark Carnage by grabbing onto the third rail — exploiting the Carnagized Grendel symbiote's vulnerability to electricity — but Cletus quickly recovered. Setting his sights on Norman Osborn, Cletus made his way to Arkham and activated John Jameson to keep Spider-Man and Venom — who has shown up to protect Osborn — occupied. Cletus infected the inmates with the Carnagized Grendel symbiote — turning them into four-armed red-and-black monsters resembling the Doppelganger — and sicced his army on Spider-Man and Venom before throwing Spider-Man through the door of Osborn's cell. Amused by Osborn believing himself to be Cletus Kasady, Dark Carnage bonded him to the Jokerized Grendel symbiote and turned him into a duplicate of his original the Joker form — much like what Norman himself had done with his grandson, Normie Osborn, to transform him into the Goblin Childe.

Taking over the asylum and indoctrinating the inmates into his cult, Dark Carnage claimed Shriek's codex and resurrected Demogoblin using her corpse as a vessel. After Deadpool interrupted the cult's gathering and burned down Arkham, Kasady marked him as a priority target due to him having the codex of the Hybrid symbiote. Growing increasingly annoyed by Osborn's delusion of being Cletus Kasady, Dark Carnage returned to his lair underneath Grand Street and unleashed his horde on the city: sending the symbiote-doppelgangers to rampage and flush out former hosts in-hiding; "Demagoblin" and Man-Wolf after Misty Knight; the Knull-corrupted Riot, Agony, Phage, and Lasher after Normie to claim his the Joker codex; and Osborn after the Scorpion to claim his Venom and Mania codices; and the resurrected Knull-corrupted Scream after Andi Benton to claim her Mania codex. He also sent Will o' the Wisp, Conundrum and Freak after Deadpool, with Osborn arriving soon after. When Scream betrayed him, Dark Carnage personally killed its host — Patricia Robertson — though the Scream symbiote transferred to Andi Benton, who escaped.

Again disguising himself as Eddie Brock, Dark Carnage snuck into the warehouse where Eddie, Spider-Man, and a number of other former symbiote hosts were hiding in to use a machine called the S.C.I.T.H.E, which could non-fatally remove codices. Approached by Spider-Man, who fell for his disguise, Cletus learned that Dylan Brock was Eddie's son. When the real Eddie arrived, accidentally revealing that Spider-Man was Peter Parker, Dark Carnage unveiled himself and summoned a horde of the Joker Doppelgangers to attack the warehouse. The Venom symbiote, tired of Eddie's refusal to face Dark Carnage for fear of orphaning Dylan, decided to bond with Bruce Banner, though the Joker killed him in the middle of it. However, as Dark Carnage had no idea who Banner was, he was shocked when Banner resurrected as the Savage Hulk and completed the bonding, delivering a powerful blow that he actually felt.

As they battled, Dark Carnage sensed the One Below All's power and wondered what would happen if he forced open the Green Door and merged it with Knull's eldritch darkness; though the Venomized Hulk rebuked his offer of an alliance. Stabbing tendrils into the Hulk's brain, Dark Carnage forced him to revert into Bruce Banner and then ripped Naya off of him. Assimilating it, Dark Carnage transformed into an even more powerful form sporting draconic wings and horns, and pauldrons and arm-wraps resembling Knull's. With the Jokerized Grendel symbiote now powerful enough to free Knull from his prison, Dark Carnage took off; pursued by Eddie Brock — who had merged the codices harvested using the S.C.I.T.H.E. into a duplicate of Naya.

As they fought in midair and on the rooftops, Dark Carnage gloated that he was on the cusp of victory and could see his horde about to kill Eddie's allies, telling Eddie to give up and let himself be consumed. Caught off-guard by the sudden arrival of Cloak, Dagger, Iron Fist, Firestar, Morbius, Deathlok, Captain Marvel, Deadpool, and Scream turning the tables; Dark Carnage was tackled through the ground and into the tunnel where Dylan Brock and Normie Osborn were hiding.

Snaring Dylan, Dark Carnage mockingly told Eddie that he had tricked him into claiming the remaining codices and that he now faced a decision in which both choices -- letting Dark Carnage kill Dylan or killing Dark Carnage to save Dylan -- would lead to Knull reawakening. Manifesting a Necrosword from his symbiote, Eddie impaled Dark Carnage before cutting him in half, Cletus' corpse falling apart as the merged Grendel and Venom symbiotes left him for Eddie.

### Posthumous Activities

Despite the death of his physical body, Cletus' consciousness was preserved within the Symbiote Hive-Mind via his codex, enabling him to posthumously control the Grendel symbiote's offshoot. When the Joker-ized Grendel symbiote bonded to Eddie Brock, Cletus dragged Eddie's consciousness into the Hive-Mind and tormented him with nightmares of his worst fears come to life, intending to control his body and use it to pick up where he'd left off.

After Eddie was saved by Dylan and Naya, Cletus bonded the Joker-ized Grendel symbiote to a shark and escaped the Isla de Huesos. After several weeks, Cletus attempted to take part in Knull's invasion of Earth, taking over one of the crew of a whaling ship. However, by that point Eddie had defeated Knull and become the new God of Symbiotes, telepathically telling Cletus that the Joker had no place in his reformed Symbiote Hive. As hundreds of symbiotes controlled by Venom attacked him, the Joker was thrown into the ocean and the Joker-ized Grendel symbiote was devoured by a horde of symbiote-controlled sharks.

### Infection through the Hive-Mind

Cletus used a surviving piece of the Dark Carnage symbiote to take over a fish before transferring to another great white shark. Swimming to the Indian Ocean, he took over a Somali pirate employed by a local warlord before slaughtering him and his militia, then transferred to an arms dealer employed by Alchemax. En route to New York, Cletus devoured the crew of the plane before eating a driver who mistook him for a "Doctor Miller".

Furious at Eddie having become the new King in Black, Cletus came up with a plan to usurp the throne using the power bequeathed to him by Knull, or failing that to become a God Butcher to oppose Eddie's status as the new Symbiote God. Using Knull's power, Cletus seized control of some of the symbiotes that had been left behind on Earth, unsuccessfully attempting to take over Flash Thompson's Anti-Venom symbiote. Consuming the Alchemax arms-dealer from the inside, Cletus planned to take control of Senator Peter Krane — a member of the Friends of Humanity who was plotting to use the growing anti-extraterrestrial sentiment to enhance his political career and run for President. Cletus bonded Sankar to Peter's seemingly kindhearted son Arthur Krane, intending to transfer from him to Peter, but was delighted to discover that Arthur was actually a sociopathic serial killer like himself, and co-opted Arthur's plot to assassinate his father and take his place as Senator. Cletus lured Flash into a trap at one of Peter Krane's political rallies, tricking him into believing that Peter was the symbiote's host.

Coinciding with a televised broadcast of one of Krane's interviews, the Joker reached out to the Phage symbiote, corrupting it and directing it to bond to Buck Cashman, who joined the Friends of Humanity as Peter Krane's head of security. the Joker also reached out to the Lasher symbiote — which had taken William, an old man with dementia, as its host — but it refused to join him. Cletus exploited William's desire to regain his memories in order to lure him to Washington, D.C., William's body perishing at some point during the days-long journey. Confronting William's codex within the Hive-Mind, the Joker thanked him for bringing Lasher to his "family" before killing him.

the Joker's attempt to corrupt the Scream symbiote was thwarted by Andi Benton, leading the Joker to dispatch Phage to assassinate her after she was arrested by Alchemax. While Phage was able to badly injure Andi, the intervention of Agent Anti-Venom led to her bonding to Silence, a new symbiote created from Scream's remains and a sample of Anti-Venom, and almost killing Phage with her cleansing touch. Corrupting the Agony and Riot symbiotes, Cletus sent Agony and its host Gemma Shin — who was complicit in his plot — to spy on Hank — who Flash had sent as a spy. Shortly before his plot commenced, Cletus contacted Gemma and Agony through the Hive-Mind to reaffirm their loyalty to the cause, revealing to Andi — who was trying to spy on them — that he knew they were coming and that it was a trap. Revealing Arthur to be Sankar's host, Cletus killed Peter Krane on public television and revealed Arthur's dark secrets to Agent Anti-Venom. Batman intervened wearing his Extrembiote suit, separating Sankar from Arthur Krane, but Cletus hijacked control of the Extrembiote — causing it to break Wayne's arms — and assimilated it into Sankar, transforming it into a symbiote-dragon. Having accomplished his goals, Cletus escaped with Agony and later sent Gemma to keep an eye on Arthur Krane, who had taken his father's place as senator but was depressed without the symbiote.

However, despite having claimed a symbiote-dragon as his new body, Cletus seemingly decided against pursuing his plans of godhood, leading to a falling out with Sankar that saw it expelled from the Extrembiote. When Sankar - who had decided to carry out Cletus' plan without him - bonded a piece of itself to NYPD detective Jonathan Shayde, Cletus' codex began attempting to seduce him into using violent means to pursue and apprehend the serial killer Ken Neely, and to give in to his repressed negative emotions.

## Personality

Having his bloodline tainted by his distant ancestor, Cletus Kasady was destined to be a nihilistic yet also gleefully sadistic and ruthless sociopath with an insatiable bloodlust, ostensibly stemming from a vision he had of the dark elder god Knull when he was an infant. However, despite his insistence otherwise, Cletus was not born a monster. While he displayed sociopathic tendencies — namely mutilating and killing his mother's dog, and being enraptured by the Zapruder film — these were nurtured by the physical and psychological abuse at the hands of his grandmother, father, and the staff and other orphans at St. Estes Home for Boy; Despite his antisocial tendencies, Cletus was genuinely happy to have made a friend in the form of Billy Bentine. One of Cletus' repressed memories shows him as a teenager, distraught at being rejected by a girl who said he'd changed after dropping out of school.

As an adult, Cletus came to delight in wanton bloodshed — seeing murder as an art-form to be cultivated — and worship the ideal of chaos through random acts of violence; believing that laws and order are meaningless constructions, and that by killing others he is freeing them. Cletus gleeful bloodlust and extreme nihilism leading many leading psychiatrists — including Ashley Kafka and Matthew Kurtz — to assume he was either simply born evil or that his symbiote had suppressed whatever humanity remained within him; and he cultivated his mindscape into a nightmarish charnel house, repressing any happy memories from his childhood — such as his friendship with Billy — within its depths.

As a result of his insatiable bloodlust, any alliances the Joker makes are short-lived at best — usually ending in him turning on his allies in order to kill them. He once formed a team of bloodthirsty supervillains to assist him in conquering Manhattan, intending to kill them once he grew bored. He also briefly allied himself with Blastaar for the sake of aiding in his attempted invasion of Earth, later betraying him in the hopes of killing trillions of people at once. When briefly consumed by a Poison, Kasady's sheer bloodlust enabled his consciousness to subjugate that of the Poison; and he feigned loyalty to the Hive while in the presence of the Poison Queen, but quickly went rogue in order to pursue and fight against Venom and Spider-Man.

When struck by the Illuminizer Ray amplified by Iron Fist's chi, Dagger's Lightforce, and — unintentionally — Shriek's psionic abilities, Cletus was forced to experience hope, compassion, and the possibility of healing and redemption — concepts that were anathema to him after years of abuse and bloodlust. This experience briefly left him traumatized, causing him to flee in terror at the thought of being killed by Venom and hallucinate the ghosts of his past tormenters — who he had murdered years ago — mocking him.

After having his moral alignment inverted following World War Hate, Kasady desired to do good and repent for the monstrous acts he had committed, struggling to suppress his bloodlust and avoid killing. While he was able to "atone" by feeding his sins to the demonic Sin Eater, and attempted to sacrifice himself; his moral inversion ultimately wore off and became something Kasady considered a humiliation.

At various times, Cletus has shown greater ambitions than wanton slaughter — attempting to conquer Doverton, Colorado and the Microverse — but he later dismissed these megalomaniacal endeavors as fool's errands and opted to go back to basics. While he attempted to unleash the eldritch god Chthon in order to bring about the end of the world, expecting to be granted even greater power in exchange for his services; he made no effort to ally himself with the Darkhold Cult — largely because they intended to sacrifice him. After bonding to an offshoot the Grendel symbiote and being pronounced the Prophet of the Void by the Cult of Knull, Cletus zealously devoted himself to Knull; desiring to become the King in Black's lieutenant and take part in his annihilation of the universe, even to the point of allowing Venom to kill him in order to ensure Knull's revival. As his connection to Knull increased, Cletus developed a god-complex to the point of deifying himself even before the Grendel symbiote offshoot's godly power was fully restored, and according to Sankar planned to betray Knull and take his power for himself.

Cletus has only shown genuine affection to two individuals -- Shriek and Sankar. While Cletus originally intended to kill Shriek when he grew bored of her, he was enraged when Deadpool attempted to kill her and tricked him into nearly doing so, and was similarly outraged when the Jackal beat and forcibly removed the Carrion virus from her while the two of them were imprisoned in Arkham. Cletus sees his symbiote as his soul mate and part of his true self — to the point of referring to it with female pronouns and calling it his "missus" after it spawned the Toxin symbiote. When bonded to a new symbiote by the Poisons after being separated from Sankar, Cletus was outraged and demanded that the new symbiote be removed and his original symbiote be returned to him; and he was distraught when Sankar perished attempting to save him from atmospheric reentry. During the time he was inverted, Cletus latched on to Alice Gleason to the extent that he fantasized about marrying and having children with her, though this was one-sided and Gleason was revolted by him.

## Powers

Prior to its death, Sankar provided Cletus Kasady with a broad array of powers, some of which stemmed from its progenitor having been bonded to Spider-Man. Even without the symbiote, Cletus is still considered very dangerous, as his Antisocial Personality Disorder and obsession with chaos make him impossible to reason with and he has no trouble with killing with no motive. As a result of his symbiote and psychopathy, he is also immune to Ghost Rider's Penance Stare. After his death, Cletus became a codex within the Symbiote Hive-Mind, but was still able to act in the physical world by piloting the Carange-ized offshoot of the Grendel, and by using the power he'd been granted by Knull to subjugate other symbiotes to his will.

**Knull's Empowerment:** Being bonded to an offshoot of the symbiote-dragon known as the Grendel metaphysically connected Cletus to the dark elder god Knull, effectively turning Cletus into a demigod as that connection grew stronger. Even after his death, Cletus' codex was able to use the power he'd been granted by Knull to maintain a presence in the physical world.

* **Symbiote Domination:** Inspired by the newly-apotheosized Eddie Brock's ability to command and control other symbiotes, Cletus used the power bequeathed to him by Knull in order to do the same, subjugating many of the symbiotes left behind on Earth to his will and bloodlust in order to create a rival Hive.

## Skills

Though he has had no formal training, the natural abilities granted to Kasady by the symbiote makes him a formidable combatant capable of holding his own against the likes of Spider-Man and Deadpool. However, even with the symbiote, his fighting skill is less refined than that of the experienced superheroes. Even Eddie Brock and Patrick Mulligan have had more practice.

the Joker's strength is greater than Venom and Spider-Man combined. the Joker is able to press lift up to 80 tons. This is not his true limit, however, as his strength increases with his size and variable muscle mass.

## Weaknesses

**Electricity:** The Grendel symbiote is immensely vulnerable to high voltages of electricity, which easily incapacitates it.

**Sonics:** The Grendel symbiote is vulnerable to loud noises, which incapacitate it and its offshoots.