The Joker Is Scared Of One Thing And It’s Not Batman
For longtime Batman fans, one of the weirder qualities about the Joker is that he seems to be almost entirely fearless. On one memorable occasion, Scarecrow even blasted the Clown Prince of Crime with fear gas, and the only reaction was Joker asking what other “flavors” the former professor had. However, it turns out there is one thing the villain deeply fears, and it’s most certainly not Batman. Instead, the Joker is like millions of Americans and utterly terrified by the IRS.
Joker Is Terrified Of The IRS
One of the most prominent examples of the Joker fearing the IRS comes from Detective Comics (vol. 1) #80. In that comic, Joker is bequeathed a huge sum of money from a dead gangster and begins almost immediately going on a spending spree only to discover that the cash is counterfeit…a kind of prank that would leave the Joker looking foolish. When the IRS comes calling asking Joker to pay his inheritance tax, he ends up going on a decidedly non-Joker-like crime spree to get enough money to pay the government back.
Joker’s Millions
If some of that plot sounds familiar even though you haven’t cracked open that issue, you may be thinking about the The New Batman Adventures episode “Joker’s Millions.” It adapted the comic storyline and gave fans a now-famous scene where Joker happily gathers together the money he owes to the IRS: $137 million. As if anticipating audience questions about why he would even care, Joker tells us that he’s “crazy enough to take on Batman” but when it comes to the IRS, “no, thank you.”
Why Would Joker Fear The IRS?
The fact that the Joker is terrified of a governmental institution, even one as scary as the IRS, brings us to the natural question: why? Certainly, the colorful villain has never shown any fear of Commissioner Gordon or any other police force, and he once struck an insane deal to become an Iranian Ambassador, all for diplomatic immunity and a chance to kill as many United Nations members and visitors as possible (in Death In the Family #4). In short, if the Joker isn’t afraid of angering all those world governments all at once, why the heck would he care about the Internal Revenue Service?
The IRS Won’t Back Down
There’s a variety of theories, including that the Joker is worried that the insanity defense won’t be sufficient for financial crimes. This would leave the Joker facing the prospect of a real prison rather than say, Arkham Asylum, where he can seemingly escape at any time.
More realistically, though, it seems like the Joker just doesn’t want the nonstop annoyance of trying to get the IRS off his back. It’s also worth considering how often the villain ends up in Arkham and that he doesn’t want a powerful governmental agency to aggressively liquidate him before an escape, thus ruining his next caper.
Bruce Wayne Should Work For The IRS
We may never know why the Joker is so scared of the IRS, but the fact that he worries about getting busted for tax evasion has been a part of the Batman franchise since 1952. This just serves as one more reminder that if Bruce Wayne really wanted to fight crime, he wouldn’t have to dress in a Halloween costume and abuse the mentally ill.
Instead, he would just use his massive wealth and influence to help out the various organizations that already exist to stop all forms of crime, including (sorry, Joker) tax evasion.
