15 DC Characters Who Know They're in a Comic Book

Comic book superheroes s are stories where the reader must heavily suspend their disbelief. There are superpowers, there is spandex, there is earth-quaking devastation, and in regards to DC specifically, there is a whole lot of continuity changes. Sometimes, however, comic books go the extra mile by fashioning a character that can’t suspend their own belief – and decides to break the fourth wall.

Comic book characters with meta-awareness are often fan-favorites. Making inside jokes directly to the readers as well as altering the story to better suit themselves, they are a fantastic storytelling device that also bring a load of laughs every time. The first character to come to mind under these stipulations might be Deadpool, but DC is replete with just-as-meta characters with these 15 characters that know they’re in a comic book.

15 Harley Quinn

The Iconic DC Siren Often Wonders About Her Role in the DC Universe

There’s no better place to start than the famous Harley Quinn. A trickster through and through, she’s been known to break the fourth wall for years. And in “Harley’s All the Way Down” by Bruno Redondo, Harley Quinn shows off her ultimate power as she monologues to the reader about her history, and questions her modern role in the DC Comics Multiverse.

It’s truly an understandable question, considering just how confusing her journey has been so far, from evil sidekick, to an anti-hero, to a hero in her own right, with dozens of stops along the way.

14 The Joker

The Clown Prince of Crime Loves To Perform For His Invisible Fans

As Harley’s original partner, it’s no surprise that Batman’s greatest enemy, The Joker, has shown signs that he knows he’s existing inside a comic book, merely playing the part for laughs. Every once in a while, the Joker’s eyes falls directly on the reader, almost as if he’s looking at them, breaking the fourth wall like an actor trying to see if the audience is enjoying his show.

In Batman 80-Page Giant by Peter Miriani and Szymon Kudranski, Joker admitted to having imaginary fans, who are insinuated to be comic book readers. Nothing would make more sense for such a complicated mind as the Joker’s and to fit Grant Morrison’s so-called “Super Sanity” than for Joker to reach a stage of psycho-consciousness that would allow him to realize he’s fictional. Just like Harley, he puts on a show. Only this one is much, much darker.

13 Nite-Mite

The Imp Pranks Dick Grayson With The Wedding Fans Have Been Begging For

On a lighter side, Nite-Mite is a magical imp hailing from the fifth dimension, as a counterpart to Nightwing, as with Bat-Mite and Batman. To Nite-Mite, the entire DC reality is simply a comic book he’s been reading, speaking like a typical comic fan given the chance to converse with their favorite characters. For Dick Grayson, thast means “shipping Nightwing with Starfire,” and even taking it upon himself to move Nightwing’s relationship with Batgirl forward.

Manifesting a full wedding, he plays the role of a comic fan writing fan-fiction, only it’s happening in real time and messing with the character’s lives. It’s a great moment of meta-dialogue for Nite-Mite to suddenly rise to the rank of DC Editor, and try to fix all the issues he sees with Nightwing’s ongoing series. He also majorly teases a plot point of a wedding for which fans have been patiently waiting for decades.

12 Mr. Mxyzptlk

This Famous Imp Takes His Tricks To The Next Level

Taking the fun of the fifth dimension to more ludicrous places, Mr. Mxyzptlk is one of Superman’s most dangerous villains. A mischievous imp, his powers far exceed Nite-Mite and even cause catastrophic scenarios for the Man of Steel. But right from his debut in Superman #30, he acts like a cartoon character, breaking the fourth wall and commenting on the efficacy of Superman’s comics (and just how well they are selling).

Nite-Mite and Mr. Mxyzptlk are just two of many fifth dimensional imps across DC. They have often appeared in cartoons and animated films with the same meta-awareness, as if they’re the same character popping through different media at their leisure.

There’s even evidence that he makes cross-cultural jokes about Marvel, like when he referenced the Infinity Stones. To not only make comments about the meta-nature of comics but to bring in other industries and be aware of them too is fantastic power. The implication here is that any being from the fifth dimension is not just a part of DC but is from a world outside of all comics, popping in and out of a franchise at will (or at random).

11 Lobo

The Main Man Went As Far As Pulling A Volunteer Out of the Audience

While breaking the fourth wall can be used by hero and villain alike, it’s never been used as strangely as DC’s anti-hero parody Lobo, created by Keith Giffen and Roger Slifer. With occasional asides to comic readers as well as meta-references, Lobo has had a long history of being fully aware he’s in a comic book since his debut.

The most specific example comes about in Lobo: Bounty Hunting for Fun and Profit, a one-shot by Alan Grant and Frank Gomez, where Lobo begrudgingly describes how to become an interplanetary bounty hunter just like him. To this end, he pulls a comic reader named Leslie out of his world and into the panels of comics, only for him to meet his end in a particularly brutal way. Meta-awareness powers, it seems, can be deadly for real people, not just the characters in comic books. Never meet your heroes.

10 Darkseid

The Lord of Apokolips Forgoes The Anti-Life Equation… To Become a DC Comics Editor?

Lobo isn’t the only DC killer on the list that has played with the real world. The ruler of Apokolips, Darkseid, has gone to impossible lengths to rule the DC Universe through the Anti-Life Equation. One attempt was the most random, however, as he pulled himself into the real world and became a DC Comics Editor.

Apparently, if Darkseid couldn’t conquer the universe the old-fashioned way, he was okay with cheating a bit, going through the back door and tweaking the story. As editor, he suggests that the other writers let Darkseid win this time, which only blows his cover (who would wish the Justice League dead?).

9 Psycho-Pirate

The Broken Fourth Wall Nearly Shattered Roger Hayden’s Mind, Too

Not all fourth-wall awareness powers means gags and references. With a powerful mask that allows him to manipulate people through his emotions, Psycho-Pirate hasn’t really been able to hold himself together since the very first DC Crisis changed the comiocs game. Once he discovered that the DC Universe was made up of infinite parallel realities, including one where he’s just a comic character, he lost control of his sanity.

Since then, that burdensome knowledge has been a key component of his character. Unfortunately, it only drove him to be more of a villain. Constantly influencing this fictitious world from the sidelines, Psycho-Pirate refuses to become a main part of any story, but is continually plagued by what he can’t un-see.

8 The Outsiders

The Heroes Visited The Literal DC Purgatory For Retconned Characters

In a bleak meta-narrative piece, one DC comic answers the question of what actually happens to all the abandoned ideas and overwritten continuities, revealing the graveyard of DC’s constantly shifting timelines. It seems there is a world in-between the comics where all DC’s erased characters go, making the entire comic itself the fourth-wall break, in The Outsiders #6, by Jackson Lanzing, Collin Kelly, and Robert Carey.

While some characters liken the “Place Between the Pages” to a prison, some characters of the “recently erased” try to put a positive spin on the world. This is a fantastic subversion by DC: instead of pretending that things don’t fall through the cracks, the writers acknowledge just how many times they erase characters. More than that, they found a clever way to bring the erased characters back into the continuity: by breaking the fourth wall.

7 The Flash

Wally West & Dr. Fate Need YOUR Help To Stay Alive

Jeremy Adams and Fernando Pasarin deliver a storyline involving readers as active participants in The Flash #776. when Doctor Fate pulls the blinds back from Wally West’s eyes, to show him the readers reading his own comic. From there on, comic readers are enlisted in a fantastic way to help their heroes get to the end of the comic in one piece, by turning the book physically on its side, or flipping the page at the right time.

At its best, a comic book tells a story that can only be told in that illustrated medium. To show Flash and Doctor Fate crawling across panels on the page is something that can’t be replicated in any other medium. So not only do the Flash and Doctor Fate break the fourth wall, they make pure art out of it.

6 Eternity Girl

Caroline Sharp Faked Her Entire Publishing History

For a meta-take on meta-fiction in general, Eternity Girl comes into a fictional world from another fictional world. Spawning from the “Milk Wars” event, Caroline Sharp, or Eternity Girl, is a shapeshifter that glides between DC and the Young Animal imprint, seemingly with no place to rest her head and no true backstory behind her. Before she got her own series, she had been seen in Milk Warslooking directly at the reader and telling them that the wrong page had been printed.

In her own self-titled miniseries years later, by Magdalene Visaggio and Sonny Liew, she reinvents her own publishing history (the previous one expsoed as fake). In a meta-twist, she was a character that burst into comics, practically gaslighting readers that she had been a part of DC since the 1950s. Considering her shapeshifting capabilities, she could be anywhere in DC now, and no one would know.

5 Ultra Comics

Grant Morrison’s Meta-Hero is The Living Comic Book in Your Hands

Coming from the many halls of the mind of Grant Morrison, whose work in these entries numbers more than a few, Ultra Comics is a character that doesn’t just break fourth walls: he is the fourth wall. During Morrison’s most bizarre crisis event, Multiversity, the hero Ultra Comics is created as the very pages of the comic book being read, and the essence of storytelling.

More meta than even Eternity Girl, Ultra Comics is the hero of our world, Earth Prime, in the only way he can exist – on paper in a comic book. With the reader’s help, he tries to stop the Gentry, a Lovecraftian entity from beyond the Multiverse, from destroying comics. Ultra Comics is the prototype for the Doctor Fate and Flash duo, albeit a prototype with more cosmic horror, that involves a team-up between the hero and you as a reader.

4 Superboy-Prime

The Alternate Kal-El Gets Stranded On Our Earth

Hailing from Earth Prime, Superboy-Prime is one of the most complicated villains in the history of DC. Originally coming from a background where he is the only superpowered meta-being in a universe of normal people, he took a swiftly dark turn as the entire strength of DC was needed to stop him during Infinite Crisis, by Geoff Johns, Phil Jimenez, George Pérez, and Ivan Reis.

The Flash Family couldn’t stop him, the Green Lantern Corps couldn’t stop him, so the only choice was to trap him back in his own universe, Earth Prime, without his powers and as a regular boy. After having seen the world of comics, Superboy-Prime reads about the very Crisis that destroyed him, and has a fourth-wall breaking moment that shocks readers to this day. Not only does he have to live with himself as a villain, he has to read about it, too!

3 Mr. Nobody

The Doom Patrol Villain is the Absurdist God of Fourth-Wall Breaks

Grant Morrison returns for one of the most omniscient, most omni-powerful characters in the history of DC. Mr. Nobody is the Joker with god-powers to the n-th degree, and if the Joker had too much fun joking around to really get anything done. Mr. Nobody is the main antagonist of the Doom Patrol, though his plan was never to kill and destroy, but render everything meaningless in the style of ’90s dadaism.

Mr. Nobody does just that as an absurdist villain whose powers are beyond definition as he can quite literally do whatever he want. He is bound by no comic books rules. Consistently making jabs at the comic book itself, ruining panels, and all around making a mess while having a good time, Mr. Nobody stands out as the most interesting villain DC has ever created. He would certainly be its most powerful if his nihilism allowed him to care enough. But he saw beyond the veil, and it all just became an absurd game to him.

Grant Morrison’s gut-wrenching ending of
Doom Patrol
also ends up in the real world, where one of the characters, Crazy Jane, is convinced she had made up the whole thing. With an ambiguous ending, the reader is left to decide whether she slipped realities or dreamed it all.

2 Ambush Bug

DC’s Answer to Deadpool, Before Deadpool Even Debuted

While some characters break the fourth wall at their own peril (or sanity) and others are simply too powerful to have their own title, the teleportation-powered Ambush Bug blips onto the screen, useless and hilarious. Ambush Bug is DC’s answer to Deadpool. Ccreated by Lobo’s creator, Keith Giffen, as an troublseome, meta-aware Bugs Bunny meant to annoy Superman, he turned a new leaf and became a Deadpool-like anti-hero.

Everything about him is silly. Even his reason for fourth-wall-awareness is a joke in that there is no reason at all. He shows the capability of warping comics with pliable physics, and his luck is likewise incredible. He’s shifted in and out of superhero teams (if anyone can stand him for long enough), and when he’s not needed, he poofs away like a cartoon character. Even in a tense DC crisis, it’s nice to have someone make a joke, knowing it’s all just a comic book.

1 Animal Man

Buddy Broke The Fourth Wall Before It Was Cool (And Met His Maker, Too)

Grant Morrison returns one final time for his landmark work on Animal Man. Buddy Baker is a C-List superhero that has an affinity for animals and can summon an attribute of any animal at a time. His arc starts off dealing with animal rights activism and vegetarianism and soon falls into the realms of aliens. Then it’s only a short hop for Animal Man to take ayahuasca in the desert and discover that he’s in a comic book. Not only that: after his family’s death, Animal Man travels to meet his own writer, Grant Morrison, to have a conversation with him about why his family had to die and the very nature of comics.

This is the ultimate example of meta-fiction – while other characters may joke and break the fourth wall, Animal Man fully enters into the real world and converses with his own god-like creator. From then on, Animal Man had a secret – and if a reader were to look closely during a crisis, they would find Buddy Baker (and a few other characters) glancing through the panel to look at their fans reading about them. Because these fourth-wall breakers are nothing without their fans laughing at their jokes and cheering them on.