In 1976, Robin encountered a bizarre and enigmatic young woman who introduced herself as The Joker's Daughter. She's decked in a costume that resembles the one that Joker typically appears in, and taunts Robin relentlessly. Though she's presented as a villain, she seems more intent on simply taunting our hero and declaring that she's going to figure out his secret identity!
To find out more about this bizarre character (who is still appearing in DC stories to this day), drop your fare in the meter, grab a seat, buckle up, and enjoy the trip!
The Joker’s Daughter made her very first appearance in Batman Family #6 (August 1976), kicking off a mystery as playful as it was dangerous. Hudson alum and acclaimed author Christine Ariande has passed away, and the campus buzzes with rumors about her final, unfinished work, The Last Case, the supposed last adventure of her famous fictional detective, Ulysses Pylate. Reporters push to have a sealed room opened where the manuscript is said to be stored. When the door finally swings open, the room is empty, and there is no manuscript!
Enter the Joker’s Daughter, who leaps into the spotlight and loudly announces that she’s the one who stole it. Dick Grayson doesn’t waste a second; he ducks away and returns as Robin, ready to take her on. She overwhelms him with popping gas bubbles, then coolly knocks aside a batarang using nothing more than a powder puff.
The two cross paths again later, and this time she drops a bombshell of her own: she lied. She never stole the manuscript in the first place! Before Robin can press her for answers, she whips out a lipstick case and fires a barrage of “lipstick bullets” straight at his face, making a clean getaway.
In the end, the truth comes out... there never was a manuscript at all. What’s left behind instead is a message just for Robin: “A reminder that while you’re trying to figure out who I am… I’m going to be tracking down your identity*!” An editor’s narration box quickly follows, promising, “*As will be revealed in a forthcoming issue of Batman Family!” And with that sly tease, the strange and stylish saga of the Joker’s Daughter officially begins.
A couple of issues later (Batman Family #8), a new villain shows up at Hudson University. This time it’s a young woman calling herself Catwoman’s Daughter, aka Catgirl. She’s rocking a costume similar to what Catwoman wore in this era, complete with the signature whip.
Robin ends up clashing with Catgirl, but he can’t quite take her down. Later on, the two of them cross paths again in Gotham City and, surprisingly, team up to stop some of Catwoman’s henchmen. When Catgirl tries to make a clean getaway, Robin reveals the truth: she’s really Joker’s Daughter. Since no real crime was committed, Joker’s Daughter bids farewell to Robin and disappears as Batman arrives with an apprehended Catwoman.
Scarecrone and Batgirl have quite the battle, but suddenly the Scarecrow's Daughter tells Batgirl she doesn't really want to fight at all; it's Robin that she's looking for. She reveals herself to really be the Joker's Daughter and tells Batgirl to let Robin know that she and Batgirl have "tangled". And off she goes!
Later in the issue, Robin goes head-to-head with the Riddler's Daughter! But if you’ve got a sharp detective’s mind, you probably already clocked the truth: she’s actually the Joker's Daughter in a new mask. She manages to slip through Robin’s fingers during their scrap by dropping a gas bomb and vanishing into the fumes.
As this tale reaches its climactic conclusion, Batgirl and Robin team together for one more skirmish, this time it's with the Penguin's Daughter! The Dynamic Duo is well aware that the Penguin's Daughter is really the Joker's Daughter.
Duela let's Robin know that she has no intention of sharing his identity with her father. She despises who her father is and wants to be a superhero to make up for some of the evil he's brought upon the world. The entire time she's been taking on Robin (and Batgirl) in all the many disguises, it was to prove to him that she has the detective skills and hand-to-hand abilities to be a Teen Titan. She wants Dick to recommend her for membership in the team!
Shortly after joining the Teen Titans, Duela comes face-to-face with her real father, who captures both her and Robin (Teen Titans #48, June 1977). In this issue, Harvey acknowledges his former wife and admits to having a daughter, effectively confirming Duela’s origin.
In the letters pages, readers gave the plotline some flak, mostly over the idea that Two-Face couldn’t realistically have a child Duela’s age. Time-wise, it doesn’t line up very neatly. But this is also a world where an 18-year-old took in an eight-year-old and put him in tights to fight crime. It’s a world where people fly, and where Dick Grayson has somehow been in college for eight years already! Comic book timelines have always been flexible, to say the least.
Even though Duela and Harvey Dent had already affirmed their relationship, Duela promptly plays coy, tells Robin he is right, and announces that he now has a brand new mystery to solve. One can only assume this is meant to feel clever rather than careless.
To be fair, with the New Teen Titans riding high in DC’s sales charts, creators Marv Wolfman and George Pérez clearly had no intention of spending much time on a character they did not plan to use. Still, that means nearly everything previously established about Duela is casually tossed out the window. Adding further insult, she is one of a very small number of DC characters who didn't merit even a single panel appearance in the all-encompassing epic Crisis on Infinite Earths maxi series that soon followed this tale.
Her next appearance was eight years later in Team Titans #13 (October 1993). She’s still depicted as older, and she spends a good chunk of time waxing nostalgic about her days with the Teen Titans… or at least the version she remembers.
Some sources note that this incarnation of Duela was eventually meant to be revealed as a time traveler (like the rest of the Team Titans), with the temporal displacement helpfully explaining her apparent descent into insanity. Time travel: ruining lives and continuity since forever!
The series itself wrapped up with issue #24. In that final issue, the letter column closes with a mock promotional blurb for the next issue—an issue that, of course, was never published:
“NEXT ISSUE: It’s finally here—the comics epic that Titans fans have been clamoring for for years! Duela Dent is back—and she’s going to take full advantage of this pesky ZERO HOUR business (and the Time Commander’s hourglass) to transform the entire island of Manhattan into a zany copy of the world she remembers—a world of Star Wars, The Brady Bunch, and land sharks; of Village People, Donna Summer, and bell bottoms; of the Super Friends, Big Wheels, the Sex Pistols, and Afro Puffs—a world of the ’70s aplenty: disco is back, and so is that queen of funk—the HARLEQUIN!”
Just a little Zero Hour humor!
It took another six years before Duela showed up again. This time, it was in the JLA/Titans three-issue crossover miniseries (1998/1999).
All former Titans are called in to help, and Duela is found living in a mental institution, her age unclear. Her role in the story is pretty small, but it does mark the first of many post-Crisis moments where she once again claims to be the daughter of a super-villain—just like she did in her original debut. In this case, she tells Pantha that she’s Wildebeest’s daughter!
Following her adventure with the Titans and Justice League, we next see Duela a few months later when she appears in a backup tale in Titans Secret Files #1 (1999). She now appears to be young again, the same age as her former fellow Titans. In this story, she regales a stranger in a bar with stories of her past, this time claiming to be Doomsday's Daughter!
Harlequin returns onto the scene in 2005, this time in Titans and Outsiders Secret Files and Origins. She’s just casually hanging out at the former hideout of the Injustice Gang... because of course she is.
Still fully embracing her loony side, we learn she’s previously claimed to be the daughter of Punch and Jewellee. She then spirals into an argument about her actual age and whether she might be Two-Face’s daughter instead. Things take an even weirder turn when Dr. Light shows up on TV and Duela suddenly shouts, “Daddy!”
The whole thing wraps up with Duela wondering aloud why no one seems even a little curious about who her mother might be, and nervously asking if her mom has attacked the Titans recently. Classic Duela chaos!
Duela remains a prominent presence throughout the 2007 Countdown crossover event. In Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer: Crime Society, readers are finally given a revised origin that reframes her place in the multiverse.
She hails from Earth-Three (where heroes and villains are reversed) and is the daughter of Three Face and the Jokester, with the Riddler serving as her stepfather. Three Face is revealed to possess three distinct personalities, and it was the weakest of these that became involved with the Jokester, leading to Duela’s birth.
Duela is described as an anomaly in the current DC universe. Her fractured mental state is attributed to her constant and seemingly unconscious shifts from one Earth to another, leaving her unmoored from any single reality.
Beginning with The New 52 continuity in 2011, DC introduced a new version of Joker’s Daughter, who first appeared in 2013. She played a central role in a storyline that ran through 2016.
Unlike some earlier iterations, she was never given the surname Dent, though her first name remained Duela. After a troubled upbringing, she discovered the Joker’s face (which had been surgically removed)and began wearing it as a mask. Eventually, she chose to have it permanently grafted onto her own face.
Personally, I feel this version did a disservice to a character I had long admired. It felt like an exploitative move to capitalize on the Joker’s notoriety during a period when villains were taking center stage in DC’s publishing, such as in Forever Evil. I like to think of her as the darker, Earth-One counterpart of the original heroic character, who was later revealed to be from Earth-Three. 😉
Following the Infinite Frontier (2021) and Dawn of DC (2022), two events that rebooted the DC Universe (yet again!), readers learn that the original Joker's Daughter was still a member of the Teen Titans in the past.
In Titans Annual (vol. 4) #1 (July 2025), Donna Troy's history is retold as she finally discovers who her birth father was. At one point, Donna reflects on her pre-wedding get-together, which was attended by her closest friends and her Titan Teammates, and Duela was among them.
Whether she was the teasing trickster at Hudson University, a hopeful recruit for the Teen Titans, or the Earth-Three anomaly navigating an endless multiverse, one thing is clear: Joker’s Daughter isn’t just a footnote in comic history; she’s a symbol of unpredictability, resilience, and the thrill of reinvention.
Joker's Daughter, Harlequin, and the Teen Titans, and all related characters, names,
and elements and the distinctive likenesses thereof are trademarks of DC Comics, Inc.
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