Joker had a daughter apparently

Daddy’s Girl - William F. Nolan

The next story in Adventures of the Batman is called Daddy’s Girl. This was one of the few stories in this book that I distinctly remembered. This was the story that pulled me in. Where the first story made me think, maybe Batman short stories weren’t for me, this one showed me that the writers were going to express their creativity in this. Not only that but it stared Robin as the initial protagonist. I nice reminder that this franchise character roster expands many perspectives available to explore. We got to see an exploration from the perspective of birdman’s view.

To Sum it Up

After failing to catch someone called the Tomcat. Who I never heard of so I had to look him up. Couldn’t find anything so I guess the author made him up for only a few paragraphs. Apparently this thing hisses and is a jewel thief. Will we ever hear of him again? Probably not.

Anyways back to the story, Robin falls into this mansion with robots and this little girl named Sue-Ellen, a pale face girl with big eyes. I’m assuming she’s the same age as Robin. She’s a sheltered girl surrounded by robots with a traveling clown as a father. Robin feels uneasy as her father has traveled to DC, which Wayne had also gone to for reasons I can’t recall. This made Robin’s gut start to feel uneasy. Robin by the way is unmasked. He requests her to bring his clothes back to him so he can gain access to his watch with a built-in “television”. I forgot this was written in the mid-90s, so I assume in the author’s mind they were thinking of it as a shrunken down CRT, not an LCD. Wait! I was wrong the Sega Game Gear had an LCD… still looked like a shrunken CRT from my perspective.

Upon retrieving his mini CRT he sees the Joker in DC. Lo and behold The girl confirms her father is the Joker… So the Joker has a kid now… At that instant the Joker comes home and sees Dick Grayson. You know Batman and Robins friend. I’m not a fan of that. Dicks association with the duo should be something unexpected not a direct association, but whatever. Joker forces the girl to kill Dick to bait Batman. 

She tries to retaliate but he mantras her into listening. I thought of this as, he is the only person she has ever learned from. He tells her what is right and that is what she understands. So when he forces her to repeat her mantra, she is in effect remembering that Joker is the carrier off all facts. Unfortunately we discover that it wasn’t that psychological, but instead he was simply hypnotizing his daughter to obey.

The story shifts to Batman’s perspective just so we can experience him seeing Dick dead. He rushes over just to instantly find out Dick is in fact not dead. And the hypnotizing was all just an act. Robin wakes up, it’s his perspective. They all escape for a brief encounter with the Clown Prince of Crime. He get’s away. Sue-Ellen, who at until this point I thought was a robot, dies with a poison injected into her that only activates when she leaves. This pushes Dick to breakdown and admit his love for her, but it is too late.

My Take Away

The Joker was a father that for some reason kept the kid when he separated from her mom. He kept her locked in and kept her away from all external forces. No media just servant robots. He was so extreme that if she left she’d die instantly. This could be a story about a father’s overbearing control but this the joker we’re talking about. So it’s a little hard to separate his random ultra-violent acts from his obsession with father-hood control. Did she allow him to believe he always had hypnotic control over her? Was that her deranged thin slice of parental bonding time with him.

This story left me thinking, if these are the type of acts the Joker will enforce on his own daughter. Acts that are identical to the overbearing processes of an over-protective father.  An all or nothing sort world view. Are they not the same. Sure, the Joker had her die the moment she abandons the robotic paradise he created, but couldn’t you say the same to a parent who’s adolescent kid they cut-off due to a first time romance? They must be a homicidal clown, if the moment their daughter drifts away form their bubble she must now fend for herself.