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| “ | It's your fault. And mom's, and dad's, and the television's, and all of that. We grew up with all of you whispering in our ears that we could be anything we wanted. But you never realized the downside to all of that. Some of us don't want to be the good guys. I mean, this whole great world you left us is falling apart, and you teach us about the people who actually had the balls to throw some chaos into the mix. I don't want to live in the slow decay of your world. I want my own world, and I guess I don't really care if that means hurting lots of people or whatever. This whole world you built is the joke. I'm the Punchline. | „ |
| ~ Punchline explaining her philosophy to Dean Bob. |
Alexis Kaye, better known as Punchline, is a villain in the DC Universe, and a major antagonist in the Batman franchise. A psychopathic fanatic who was devoted to the Joker, Punchline serves as his right-hand woman and girlfriend after Harley Quinn left him.
What Makes Her Pure Evil?[]
- Even before meeting the Joker, Alexis Kaye was already a rather twisted woman, creating a "hit list" of people she didn't like in school and presumably killing them, possibly obscuring it and making people think they were just switching schools or dropping out. And from what Kelly says to Bluebird, it didn’t take much to end up on that list.
- While the fact that she encountered the Joker at her high school field trip and she witnessed her teacher being murdered would usually make someone sympathetic, she decided that this was a sign that she should be like the Joker.
- Unlike Harley Quinn, who did not understand that the Joker was evil, Alexis was well-aware of how evil he was but sided with him anyway.
- Unlike the tragic Harley, Alexis has a simple reason for being evil. She claims it is because everyone around her kept telling her that she could be whatever she wanted. And she only pretends to be a sympathetic pawn of the Joker.
- While investigating the Joker in hopes of finding him after he held her hostage at a news station, she commits several crimes (while she does this presumably to get his attention, the comic establishes that she does enjoy it), such as murdering a random mouse, filling letters with her replica of the Joker toxin leading anyone who opened it to brutally die, killing an entire train's worth of people with the toxin, and testing said toxin on hundreds of homeless people. According to Kelly, it felt like "everyone in the tri-state area" had lost someone to these, to the point it became normal for them.
- Attacking a restaurant, Punchline shows anger her serum failed to make a man laugh, so she kills him with a knife.
- Upon meeting the Joker, she stabbed him to show she isn't a pawn and then demanded to work with him to cause even more death and destruction.
- Unlike Harley Quinn, who genuinely loved the Joker, Punchline, while obsessed with him, does not truly love him, instead viewing him as the embodiment of her nihilistic desires. In other words, she loves the Joker for what he does, not who he is.
- While not necessarily out of standards Punchline has also shown distaste in some aspects of the Joker’s personality, further alluding to the fact that she does not truly love him. She also hates the Joker’s obsession with Batman when she herself is obsessed with the Joker, which makes her come across as somewhat of a hypocrite.
- Hiding the Joker in her closet, she kills her dean by blowing smoke with Joker toxin inside in his face, causing him to slowly convulse to death, partly because he protested her wearing a Joker shirt and partly because she wanted in on the Joker’s latest plan. She also decides to use her phone to record his death, and leaves his body in her roommate’s bed because she feels like she wasn’t taking the Joker seriously.
- Unlike other villains in Gotham who have villainous friendships, the comic makes it clear that it is more dangerous to be her friend than her enemy.
- When Kelly Ness tried to hide out in Gotham, Punchline tracked her down and, ensuring she couldn't be safe, used Joker toxins to massacre a bunch of "street sleepers" who gave her tips that Kelly planned to stay with.
- Donning the Punchline persona, she comes after Harley out of spite, as she was so close to him yet "tried to fix him", which Punchline takes great offense to. Upon being mocked by Harley, she angrily slashes her throat, leaving her to be thrown into the sewers as she chokes on her own blood, only narrowly surviving.
- Tracking down Catwoman, she shoots her and leaves her hospitalized, before stealing one billion dollars from Bruce Wayne to fund the Joker.
- Fighting Batgirl, she nearly slits her throat before she, a brainwashed Dick Grayson, and the Joker took her away and forced her to fight Dick in a ring.
- Mid-fight, Punchline leaves to go to the Alfred Pennyworth children's hospital, having had her henchman plant a bomb in an attempt to destroy the building and kill hundreds of innocent children, and uses Batgirl's transceiver to lure Tim Drake and Jason Todd to her, pretending to be Batgirl and screaming about how the Joker has planted a bomb at the children's hospital.
- When one of her henchmen calls her "ma'am", she threatens to disembowel him.
- Punchline kidnaps Lucius Fox and brutally tortures him, sticking several needles full of Joker venom in his head and forcing him to tell her how to find Batman.
- Ambushing Batman, she uses a special blend of Joker toxin, which is combined with the fear toxin of the Scarecrow, specifically designed to be unable to kill so that he'd have to suffer. Using this to leave the city defenseless, she and the Joker drive the city into chaos, taking over and instituting anarchy.
- Punchline continues to create more of this advanced, more painful formula of toxin, delivering it to the Joker for his own uses.
- Upon being granted permission by the Joker to kill Harley, Punchline tracks her to a garden of Poison Ivy's, burning it down with a flamethrower while endangering Harley and Batman's lives.
- While trying to kill Harley, she remarks on how she wants to bring the Joker "city to city, until everyone has heard his message", meaning she wishes to take the horrors she and the Joker have inflicted on Gotham and go even further beyond that. Her reasoning for killing her is that she was making the Joker a better person and she wanted the Joker to remain monstrously evil.
- Even after her arrest, she completely refuses to own up to what she did, instead faking remorse and pretending to be a victim of the Joker who "committed no crimes on her own", all while gathering a legion of fans who will defend her to the ends of the earth. And she essentially finks on the Joker to the GCPD.
- She manages to manipulate enough people to create a large protest of her trial, all the while using her subscribers to have witnesses for the court case killed.
- One witness was even found dead in a river the moment the trial began.
- When the Queen of Spades leaves a calling card in her cell, Punchline brutally beats her. While the Queen of Spades is also a horrible criminal, she hadn't yet done anything that bad to Punchline, making the ordeal unwarranted.
- The Queen of Spades tries to get revenge, but Punchline turns her minions against her, having them kill her all while she grins.
- Seizing control of the women's prison, Punchline demands to find Kelly Ness, the final witness to her crimes, to kill.
- Intentionally provoking Harper Row, Punchline riles her into trying to attack her, while filming it to make it look like a random act of violence and that Punchline is a poor victim of the prisons. Afterwards, she orders the other prisoners to pursue Harper, and if she doesn't lead them to Kelly, to kill her.
- Finding Kelly and Harper, Punchline nearly slits Kelly's throat before Orca stops her.
- She plans to use her influence to frame Orca for starting the riot that took place when hunting Harper and Kelly, while also remarking he "won't even notice" the time going by the life sentence he'd get for that, as she injects a syringe into his IV bag.
- Punchline, working with the Royal Flush Gang, sends an agent to deal with Kelly, presumably killing her.
- Contacting her friend Aiden Priest, she convinces him to kill himself so that she can have "no loose ends", having him jumpy out a window.
- She has Bluff of the Royal Flush Gang force his boyfriend, Cullen Row, Harper's brother, to testify and confirm Harper assaulted Punchline in the video she filmed in prison. He refuses, much to her fury.
- She manages to get herself a not guilty verdict through all her lying, escaping justice to go commit even more crimes.
- She rips Harper's nose piercing out of her nose, causing Harper to beat her, while Bluff secretly records it, attempting to slander Harper's reputation further.
- Taking out a gang and saving a young streamer called Knavy_Seal from them, she immediately kidnaps him and plans to experiment on him for her own pursuits, morphing his body and causing it to become unstable.
- Creating a hyper-addictive drug called XO, she began to sell it to everyone she could, including young children, ignoring the obvious risks at play for her own gain.
- Hunting Eiko Hasigawa at Ace Chemicals, Punchline attempts to take it over to further improve her drugs.
- When Batman stops Hasigawa from killing Punchline, Punchline stabs her in the hip before tossing her off the building, forcing Batman to jump after her as she taunts them sadistically.
- When Catwoman comes to stop her, she sprays toxic gas into the vents to attempt to force her out or kill her.
- To heal King, she takes him to Professor Pyg, leading to him doing it in a gruesome and haphazard manner, scarring his face, which Punchline laughs at, much to the horror of even her own allies.
- Hallucinating a corpse in her home talking like the Joker, she's quickly annoyed, so she butchers it and stuffs it in a briefcase before tossing it off a bridge into the river, solidly proving that she would kill the Joker if he annoyed her enough.
- When Harper tries to stop her again, she tosses another briefcase, which body parts fly out of, implying Punchline has butchered many bodies this way and disposes of them regularly.
- Punchline sadistically laughs while trying to run over Harper with her car, nearly hitting her.
- Using Bluff to lure Cullen out again, she kidnaps him and has him tossed in a cage to use as leverage against Harper.
- After receiving Cullen, Punchline congratulates Bluff, before angrily asking why he didn't tell her this sooner and pulling out a knife to threaten him, reminding him not to mess with her or try to keep secrets from her.
- Punchline heads to the port, announcing to those addicted to her XO that the crates she wants have the drug inside, causing them to furiously grab them to try and find the XO.
- She helped the Joker kidnap and torture the Riddler so that everyone could believe that he's dead while the clown donned his green suit out of spite. She helped Joker trap Edward in a freezer for weeks while he barely had clothes on, and she even pointed a gun at his head when Edward rightfully called Joker psychotic.
- As revenge for Bluff trying to take over after Black Mask shot her, Punchline has Queen electrocute the skin off his face, killing him.
- After losing her factory in an explosion, Punchline creates a new type of XO called XO Punch, marketed as an energy drink, using a replica of Poison Ivy's mind-control hormone to slowly brainwash all who drink it so she can convert them into "avatars" or "targets" for her game, Trigger Warning, where people remotely take control of those already under her thrall while also gaining benefits from drinking XO Punch themselves, creating a cycle.
- At that, it seems those brainwashed are still self-aware, and capable of feeling pain. A brainwashed wolf is shown looking sad over another's corpse and White Rabbit manages to snap out of her control and feel rage. This implies that, since Punchline's main gimmick is using these avatars to hunt people down, the people feel the pain of dying yet get revived by the nanotechnology Punchline has in their systems. Considering one of the ways people are shown to die is having their eyes blow up when the user controlling them "logs off", it's more than likely an incredibly painful process.
- Using people brainwashed by XO Punch, she uses those not to be "avatars" or "targets" as slave labor, manufacturing more of the drink or completing simple tasks.
- Brainwashing White Rabbit, she plans to use her as eye candy for her elite tier subs, as they found her attractive.
- When Ivy, Harley, and Catwoman try to sneak into her base, she gasses them along with several of her own minions.
- Locking Ivy, Harley, and Catwoman in a cage, she gives them no drink other than XO Punch in the sweltering heat, leading to Poison Ivy nearly dying due to lack of sunlight and water due to her being partially a plant.
- Locking up a bunch of exotic animals, she places her nanotech inside of them, allowing them to be hunted over and over again and then quickly repaired by said tech.
- When the Gotham City Sirens escape, Punchline unleashes a bunch of catcus-human zombie hybrids on them while having her elite tier subs hop on a helicopter to escape.
- Calling Harley a "whore", Punchline demands she pull her back up into the helicopter, and when she doesn't oblige, Punchline tries to send her hurtling to her demise.
- When Dumb Bunny kills the only investor of hers who survives the helicopter crash, Punchline, furious at losing her money, shoots her in the arm.
- Tossing Harley and calling her a slur, she soon pulls out a rocket launcher and fires at Harley and Ivy wildly, starting to collapse her own factory, endangering all the people and animals inside.
- While presumably being mauled by animals is brutal, she had it coming for all she did to them, and more likely than not survived the encounter anyways.
- Her actions are bad enough that her evil rivals the Joker himself.
- Despite the high heinous standard in the DC universe (due to sheer dirt of how many villains were made) she ultimately stands out due to not having the resources to do much worse, as well as for the fact that several of her crimes are downright petty and cruel, with planting bombs in a children's hospital being a rather uniquely vile crime in the universe anyways.
Trivia[]
- She has been described by James Tynion IV, her creator, as the "anti-Harley Quinn". Ironically, their natures reflect that, as Harley is incredibly sympathetic and nowhere remotely near Pure Evil, while Punchline is just that.
External Links[]
- Punchline on the Villains Wiki
- Punchline on the Batman Wiki
- Punchline on the DC Database Wiki
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 Pure Evils
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