Perhaps the most alarming thing about Ledger's Joker in TDK was how plausibly someone like him could exist. He had no superpowers, nor was he even physically intimidating and yet his presence on screen was menacing and terrifying. A lot of comic book villains lose some gravity due to their inconceivable natures such as Venom or Apocalypse. They are badasses but not very frightening because we know their powers could never exist on Earth. So as a tribute to Ledger's Joker, here is a list of five comic book villains and their possible real life manifestations.
Poison Ivy
Sure this choice may seem peculiar at first, but just let the logic simmer for a minute. As a male, what could be more terrifying then a beautiful woman coming onto you only to poison you with her deadly chemicals? Besides simply being a metaphor for women in general, this actually happened when an "attractive girl" named Patches seduced a couple of men in a Los Angeles parking lot and used a poisonous cologne to screw with them. Their symptoms included dizziness, shortness of breath, numbness in their extremities, and it also rendered them unconscious! How much does that suck? Poor guys. Perhaps the strangest part of this is the fact that the cops were unable to determine a motive. Upon further realization however that this is a woman we are dealing with, maybe it's not so strange after all.
The Penguin
For Mr. Cobblepot, I'm going to ask that you focus less on his physical gimmicks and more on his actions and what makes him a criminal. The Penguin is often depicted as a psychopathic mass murderer who kills with no regard. He is a master criminal strategist who uses his cunning intellect to gain wealth and power throughout Gotham City. He is also the man who plans the crimes, but usually does not physically commit them. A large reason Cobblepot is such an interesting character in Batman's rogues gallery is that he is one of the only sane criminals Batman deals with. With Penguin considering himself a gentleman, his interactions with Batman are usually very civilized and different from other criminals. And like most real-world criminals, Cobblepot basically just wants to be rich and realized that he was good at crime. Now if any of these characteristics sound familiar, it's because the Penguin is basically a real life mob boss akin to the likes of Al Capone. Here are some facts about Capone that could plausibly fit into any Penguin origin story.
- Al Capone left school at 14 because he punched a teacher.
- As a bouncer at a Brooklyn club, Capone got in a fight with a man who fucked him up. He later hired the guy as his bodyguard.
- After an assassination attempt on his rival failed, Capone had himself put in prison for a year which helped him successfully avoid any of the backlash.
- Capone murdered a lot of people, he bought cops by the precinct, he bootlegged liquor, and he personally ran Chicago like the Penguin ran Gotham at one point.
- Capone acted as a gentleman to the public, he was a ruthless leader, and he lead with style.
Lex Luthor
One of pop culture's most iconic villains, Luthor sure has the credentials to back it up. After moving to Metropolis at the tender age of 21, Luthor received his Ph.D from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in addition to starting LexCorp; the company that would eventually become the world's largest defense and software firm. With his vast amount of wealth and intellect, Luthor is also a master inventor and has developed many gadgets involved in space travel and for fighting the Man of Steel. For example, he once cured cancer simply to earn Superman's trust before predictably backstabbing him once again. As if all of this wasn't enough, Luthor can also add President of the United States of America to his resume although his term only lasted for one year.
With these kind of characteristics, it's almost impossible to compare Luthor to a single person in our world, so I'm going to compare him to the George W. Bush regime of the United States. With the same unlimited wealth, intelligence, and righteous attitude towards the world, their similarities are uncanny. The regime even employs the same fear politics towards the Middle East that Luthor uses on Superman; to represent him as a dangerous and uncontrollable entity. Michael Caine once said that America views itself as Superman, while the rest of the world views it as Batman. I believe the more accurate comparison is Lex Luthor.
Ozymandias
Hailing from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' masterpiece, The Watchmen, Adrian Veidt is perhaps the best exploration of the psyche of a dictator ever written in comic book history. While he shares similarities with Luthor in that they are both master strategists, mind-numbing geniuses, and ridiculously wealthy, Veidt has no counterpart which drives his motivation. Instead, he believes himself to have no counterpart and he is convinced that his ideas of how to run the world are the only right ones. He doesn't consider himself the "smartest man in the world" for no reason. In fact, the most unsettling thing about the Watchmen is that somewhere deep inside all of us, we realize that Veidt's plan for a unified world almost makes sense. Now kids, when was the last time a man in an unchallengeable position of power convinced a bunch of people to do crazy shit and believed that he was doing something good for the world? And no, I'm not talking about Will Smith inexplicably convincing thousands of people to hand over their hard-earned money to watch Hancock.
The Joker
And of course, how could this list be complete without arguably the greatest comic book villain of all time. While there have been countless interpretations of him, the version that has garnered the most popularity is that of the mass-murdering, anarchistic, psychopathic maniac who makes bad jokes at inappropriate times and has no motives but to make Batman's life a living hell. Now who in our real world could possibly be that crazy? How about Joseph Konopka a.k.a. Dr. Chaos? If you are thinking that Dr. Chaos is an unbelievably trite and ridiculous name, you are certainly correct. But I guess Chaos was just trying to be direct and to-the-point with his self-appointed name which is certainly ironic.
While Dr. Chaos is currently looking at 21 years in prison, he had his run as a notorious supervillain. After becoming Dr. Chaos, he designated himself leader of the "Realm of Chaos", the group he formed out of bored kids in the neighborhood for the sole purpose of fucking shit up because let's face it; what kind of supervillain would Chaos be without henchmen? A list of Chaos' "accomplishments" include everything from selling warez to damaging television towers, power plants, disabling air traffic control systems, and even setting places on fire and knocked out power in 50 separate acts which resulted in power loss for more than 30,000 users! If this guy just happened to wear clown make-up and had a better name, I think we all would be a lot more terrified.
