Pregnant Joker Was the Silliest Batman Controversy

For as long as DC has published Batman comics, there have been silly, Dark Knight-related controversies. But easily the silliest of all was the hubbub around the infamous “Pregnant Joker” tale.

Matthew Rosenberg and Carmine Di Giandomenico’s story was wildly divisive when it dropped back in 2023. Plenty of fans saw the funny side of Joker getting knocked up — but others didn’t get the joke.

Pregnant Joker Was the Silliest Batman Controversy

Of course, the idea of the Joker — a canonically straight, male character — falling pregnant is ostensibly outrageous. It’s at odds with decades’ worth of DC continuity, and it’s only fair that fans should question it. Yet the furor surrounding “Pregnant Joker” stemmed from a fundamental (and, in some cases, wilful) misreading of the story itself.

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Some news outlets and online pundits described Joker’s condition in The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing #4 as a conventional pregnancy, when that’s demonstrably not the case. There was also grumbling that Rosenberg and Di Giandomenico had recast Batman’s arch-nemesis as trans — again, something that’s not supported by the comic itself.

Instead, Rosenberg and Di Giandomenico’s backup story, “Knocked Upside Down!”, sees the Joker zapped with a magic spell that renders him “pregnant.” What’s more, the Joker’s “baby” is made from enchanted mud and is “delivered” during a fit of vomiting. The barfed-up baby isn’t a newborn in the truest sense, either. It’s somewhere between a homunculus and a mini-clone.

Whether any of this chicanery is actually canon is up for debate, however, Rosenberg and Di Giandomenico clearly didn’t intend us to take “Knocked Upside Down!” too seriously. As Rosenberg himself has noted, this story isn’t a fiercely progressive, permanent retcon to the Bat-mythos that changes the Joker’s gender identity (or even his parental status). Rather it’s harmless fun in the Silver Age tradition.

“I will say, so this doesn’t come off as some sort of backpedaling, I believe trans rights are human rights… With that said, it has nothing to do with this story,” Rosenberg wrote in a Substack post. “This is a story about magical food poisoning.”

Why People Complained About Pregnant Joker

This was lost on the “Pregnant Joker” naysayers, though. These folks were mortified at the prospect of the Joker carrying an actual child to term — which, again, he didn’t. Conservative influencer Nick Adams led the charge, calling for a boycott of the Joker “until further notice.”

Meanwhile, one-time Republican congressional hopeful Robby Starbuck pushed the trans angle, declaring that “Joker is trans now.” Regardless of how you feel about a pregnant Joker, the character isn’t depicted changing his pronouns, much less his gender, in “Knocked Upside Down!” — which suggests Starbuck either didn’t read the story or strategically cherry-picked panels to support his claims.

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And that gets right to the heart of the “Pregnant Joker” controversy: most of the people complaining about the story probably didn’t read it. Instead, they reacted to out-of-context material and slanted plot recaps that framed “Knocked Upside Down!” as far more “woke” than it really was.

Negative sentiment towards the Joker’s “pregnancy” lingers to this day, despite the Clown Prince of Crime’s faux-mpreg status having zero lasting effect on wider Batman continuity. Indeed, DC’s detractors still trot out pages from the story as evidence of DC’s perceived moral and creative decline.

So, no: Joker wasn’t really pregnant — but he still managed to give birth to a monster.