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Do you know the Joker was never meant to see 1941? Yes, you read that right. Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson created him, and he first showed up in Batman #1 in April 1940. He was a murderous master criminal who threatened the public through the news and killed with a poison gas that left his victims grinning. According to SlashFilm, the issue’s opening page promised: “a battle of wits with swift death the only compromise.” And that death was meant for the Joker.
Who Saved the Joker From Dying in 1940?
In Joker’s second story in the issue, he trips and stabs himself with his own knife after Batman steps out of the way. As comics historians tell it, the original ending left him dead from the wound. The Grand Comics Database says the editors decided he was too good to kill off, so the last panels were redrawn to show him alive.
People disagree about who wanted him gone. One popular version says Finger wanted the Joker dead because he worried that recurring villains would make Batman look weak. Comics writer Steve Englehart later described the change in a 2008 NPR interview. In his telling, a panel was added in an ambulance, where a doctor is amazed that the Joker will live. All of this comes secondhand, and the original script isn’t public, so the exact decision is still partly comics lore.
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The man credited with the reversal is Whitney Ellsworth. He had worked at National Allied Publications, which later became DC, since 1934, and he went on to edit titles like Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and Superboy. By one retelling, he had more faith in the Joker than the three men who made him, and he thought it was madness to drop him so fast. His call reportedly came after the art was already done (per Gamesradar), which is why the survival fits into a single frame.
The timing explains why the fix feels so rushed. It was a patch on finished pages, not a planned twist. It paid off fast, though. The Joker went on to appear in nine of Batman’s first twelve issues.
Why the Joker Became Batman’s Greatest Villain?
Robinson, for his part, had always wanted a villain who would last. In a 1984 interview, he said he “felt that Batman needed a supreme arch-villain to test him.” He wanted a long-running fight like the one between Holmes and Moriarty. Ellsworth’s edit gave that idea room to grow.
The character didn’t stay the same afterward. In those early stories, he was a plain homicidal maniac, and over several appearances, he seemed to die more than once, such as falling off a cliff, but his body was never found. Later eras turned him into a prankster, then back into a grim figure.
Ellsworth’s own view of comics was quite different. In DC’s 1985 anniversary book Fifty Who Made DC Great, he is quoted as saying, “We made the villains comic so they wouldn’t frighten the kids.” Still, by saving the Joker, he helped create a villain who scares readers more than most.
So, was the Joker supposed to die in Batman? By the best accounts, yes. The ending was changed, probably after the art was finished, by an editor who saw a franchise where his creators saw a finished story. Eight decades of comics, films, and Oscar-winning performances came from that one panel.
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