Thread:Tearface/@comment-1762629-20140611014708/@comment-4048025-20140613093810

After some thinking I have come to a decision. While a few versions of the Joker (The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Returns) are more vile because of his humor, some of them are actually humorous here there. Sometimes he is a harmless goofy prankster, sometimes he is a violent psychopath.

For example, The comics version was a goofy trickster (similiar to the Joker from the 1960s Batman TV series) in the Silver Age that would pull petty acts of villany such as rigging vending machines, turning the water supply into jelly, or stealing a report card from some kid. By the Bronze Age (1970s and 80s), he became a homicidal maniac whose actions are not seen as humorous. Did we laugh at Joker when he beated Jason Todd with a crowbar? No. Did we laugh at what he did to Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke? No. Although he has done funny things here and there, the Joker manages to be comedic and a complete monster. And just because he is insane does not really mean he is excempted.

Same goes for Aku, he switches from a humorous villain to a mass-murdering dictator depending on the writer much like the Joker (some of his versions anyway). One episode might have him telling funny stories and the other shows him destroying or enslaving civilizations. Like you said about the Viking, there were other heinous actions that he caused and most characters in the story fear him because of that. While he might be humorous sometimes, he still manages to be menacing enough to be a text-book example of the term.

As for Demongo, he is not really comedic and his action is quite heinous so I suppose he counts.