Rachel Lang
The best thing about comic books is their ability to take you on adventures in worlds where the impossible can really happen.
Superman can change time by flying around Earth and mucking with the planet's orbit; Wonder Woman flies in an invisible plane; a male supervillain can get pregnant and give birth to a child somehow.
*record scratch* Wait, what?
That last one is exactly is DC's most recent release and one of the first DC Comics for 2023.
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In the latest issue of The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing, the iconic Batman villain falls pregnant despite not having a womb or ovaries.
Also, it's not a comment on transgender pregnancies.
It's literally a guy who gets knocked up when a magic spell goes awry.
Basically, The Joker attempts to convince Zatanna, a stage magician with actual magic powers, to have a family with him.
She's not keen, and casts a spell that ensures that 'no one else will ever have [The Joker's] baby'.
So that's how The Joker wound up with a bun in the oven. And no, the baby doesn't come out of the southern region like in, you know, reality.
Because that would be weird.
In the comic, The Joker is looked over by evil genius/actual medical professional Doctor Phosphorous, who makes an observation that everyone else is thinking.
He states: “I don't even know where the baby is going to come out from down here.”
Well, that’s a pickle. The Joker attempts to push (as is the normal way to birth a baby) but that doesn’t work.
So he vomits up a brown mud-like substance and his child just sort of forms from that.
Yep. That’s what happens.
At one point, The Joker and his son do take a moment to make a mental note of how handsome the other is, despite the fact they look identical.
Aw, that's so wholesome. In a wild and wacky sort of way.
We won't give too much more away, but the odd comic has fans asking the same thing on social media: what the hell?
One Twitter user said: "Bruh this is how you know DC is out of ideas."
A second added: "Man, wonder why people think comics are dying."
A third commented: "I can honestly say that I didn’t expect 2023 to begin with a [male pregnancy] Joker story arc."
To be fair, neither did we.
But this is coming from the comic book publisher that once turned Superman into a man with trees for arms and legs.
Anything really is possible in the DC Universe.