On the surface, the Joker might not look like much more than a bad Halloween costume. However, his simply clown makeup and bright suits hide one of most fearsome villains in the DC Universe. Since he debuted in Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson and Bob Kane's Batman #1 in 1940, the Clown Prince of Crime has built an enduring legacy of spreading chaos around Gotham City and the rest of the DCU.

While DC's other iconic villains have cosmic powers or super-strength, the Joker's abilities are far more subtle, which makes them that much more dangerous too. Even though the Joker's unique mental state might seem like a compelling explanation for his fearlessness, he has a surprising amount going on under his red hood -- so to speak -- to make him a danger to heroes who seemingly outclass him in every way. Now, we're peeling the skin off of Gothams greatest villain and see what makes his sense of humor so lethal.

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Outside of the rictus grin that's permanently etched onto most versions of the Joker's face, the villain's most striking feature is his alabaster white skin. Although some of his live-action appearances have simply reduced it to clown make-up, the genesis this unhealthy glow usually comes courtesy of a fateful dip into a vat of chemicals that warped his mind as much as his body.

Aside from being one of his most identifiable features, the skin that peels off of him is often topped with green hair, which completes his signature appearance. While providing no inherent advantages of its own, the look provides an unsettling aesthetic for anyone looking to cross him, and it instills fear and commands respect from anyone in Gotham.

While it could be argued that the Joker's most defining gadget consists of acid sprayed through a pin on his jacket, a cloud of his famous Joker Toxin seems to follow him everywhere he goes.

The gas asphyxiates by forcing the victim to laugh themselves to death all the while contorting their face into a morbid laugh. Thanks to decades of exposure, his famous dip in a chemical bath and his own self-experimentation, the Joker is now immune to its effects. In Frank Miller, Klas Janson and Lynn Varley's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, he's shown as being completely capable of breathing it in as if it were air.

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As if he wasn't already toxic enough, the Jokers blood itself is also poisonous. In the Batman: Arkham Asylum video game, the Joker injects himself with Titan, a formula developed with an intent to turn the citizens of Gotham into rampaging, hulk-like monstrosities. The Joker's body was an incubator for Titan Disease in Batman; Arkham City, and after mixing in with the various properties already in the Joker's bloodstream, it became a deadly disease that could kill anyone within a day, even the Joker himself.

Ironically, the only cure for the condition caused by the Joker's blood was Batman's blood, which had the antibodies needed to mitigate the disease's most lethal side effects.

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As one of Batman's most usual punching bags, the Joker knows how to take a hit, and he has an incredibly high pain tolerance. Mixed with his own sadomasochistic tendencies, the Joker has even enjoyed some of his most brutal injuries, and he's given one of them to himself.

In Tony Daniel's Detective Comics #1, the Joker hired the Dollmaker to cut off his face as part of his plans to get under Batman and his allies' skin in a very literal sense. Taken with his long history of broken bones, concussions, drops and lacerations, the Joker is just as comfortable taking as a serious blow as he is at receiving one.

While he may tout the virtues of chance and uncertainty, randomness and luck could never account for the success that Joker has had against Batman over the years. As Grant Morrison and Howard Porter's JLA #11 revealed in 1997, the right hemisphere of the Joker's brain is smaller than the analytical left hemisphere, which means that his thought process is incredibly difficult for anyone else to understand.

As a master of strategy and forethought, many of the Jokers seemingly haphazard and half-baked schemes actually contain immense forethought and contingencies that have been shaped by the totally unique way his brain works. In the Emperor Joker crossover, he was shown as being clever enough to outsmart an extra-dimensional deity like Mister Mxyzptlk and turn the entirety of reality on its head.

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