Character Name: Donnie Clark a.k.a. Prank

Character Age: 16

Hero or Villain: Villain

Description: Donnie Clark is a fairly short, thin, weasley looking young man with buck teeth, thick eyebrows, triangle ocean blue eyes and rough messy medium-length blond hair. He has an oval face with a narrow chin, slightly large ears and a cauliflower nose. He walks with a bit of a slouch and wears over-sized clothes, usually a big short-sleeved button down shirt and large baggy cargo pants. He isn't anyone that someone would expect any athleticism from and would be a pretty easy target for bullies

In his costumed persona he wears an oversized red shirt with rolled up sleeves, long black fingerless gloves and loose black pants tucked into knee-high red and black boots. Over his head he wears a black jester hood with bells on both the collar and the end of long tip of his hood. On his upper face he wears a red mask with large black circles around his eyes which are hidden behind white screens and a long yellow beak nose. The costume very much conveys him being a court jester.





Personality: Donnie is an attention seeker, plain and simple, and he really does not care if the attention is positive or negative, so long as he makes an impact on people and has them notice him. As a result he goes out of his way to engage in destructive behavior or tries to humiliate others with juvenile pranks expecting others to also find it funny. His sense of humor can be odious, but that does not prevent him from constantly trying to tell jokes. His embrace of super villainy is simply because that was the first time someone noticed him, supported him and believed in him-- even if things turned out badly in the end. And once he saw that he could grab news headlines and get tons of people to pay attention to him by scaling his pranks up to the largest scale possible, how could he possibly resist the call for fame?

Although he is a bit of a failure of a proper villain in one respect-- its not like he actually wants to severely injure or kill anyone, at least he hasn't lost his humanity to that degree. He'll happily disrupt people's lives or humiliate them, but he isn't out to end lives. On the other hand, as his pranks become ever more extreme and he chooses to align himself with those who have little qualms about ending lives, it is almost inevitable he'll find himself doing more and more harm. And at that point-- will he see the light or will he choose to forsake what vestiges of humanity bind him, just like the Joker attempted to do to him with the Joker venom?

Skills and Powers: Donnie has surprisingly acrobatic and athletic ability all considered, although its probably mostly the affect of the plot armor one gets by putting on a costume in the DC world. However he has no powers beyond plot armor and perhaps some minor level of whatever the Joker and Harlequin to thrive despite similarly having no actual combat or survival training prior to dressing up as a clown and taking on the best martial artist and detective in the world.

He can create prank-themed devices that can break the normal rules of physics such as a rocket-powered pogo stick, a giant gumball cannon and whatever else the mission might call for, but its all basic mechanics. He doesn't have any computer or technological abilities. He can copy items used by the Trickster or the Joker such as itching powder, jacks used as caltrops, exploding rubber chickens or gas bombs, but he would specifically avoid using Joker Gas as he had a trauamtic experience involving that.

History: Donnie was an obnoxious class clown in Gotham City High, in the same class as Batgirl (or was it Spoiler? Or... Robin?). He constantly pulled pranks on the other students and teachers and endlessly disrupted class for his bad, juvenille jokes in order to garner attention-- actions that caused him to end up in detention. After school he would practice a stand-up routine at a comedy club, not that his rather poor sense of humor. In fact, the only person who seemed to appreciate it was The Joker.

You see-- it just so happened that The Joker was getting tired of having to deal with Batman's teenage sidekicks and decided that what was good for the Bats was good for the Clown and sought out to recruit a teenage sidekick of his own. Desperate attention-seeking Donnie was the ideal candidate. And, in typical fashion, once given his own costume and codename of "Prank", Donnie showed extreme aptitutde to create his own jester-themed super technology such as a rocket pogo stick or a tank that fired giant wads of bubble gum (can turn those annoying police into real gum-shoes!)

Unfortunately there was one flaw in Prank to make him a proper Joker apprentice. While he had the piaz and showmanship, the creativity and imagination to create havok and vandalism-- he lacked an important element, the killer edge. On the cusp of victory he just wasn't willing to put a gun to his rival's head and pull the trigger. Although it might be hypocritical for The Joker to find fault with this given just how many times he has avoided killing Batman when he had the chance-- it was enough to leave The Joker dissatisfied.

And so the Joker came up with a solution! To make Donnie a proper Joker, he simply needed to be subjected to the same Joker venom that made the original. The Joker dragged Donnie off to the same Ace Chemicals factory where he had fallen into the vat and created the same concotion. Donnie tried to fight back, but was no match for the Clown Prince. However just when it seemed that all hope was lost, Batman and Batgirl (or, again, was it Spoiler? Or Robin?) came in and saved him.

One would think that Donnie would have learned his lesson from this traumatic event, but as it goes-- once you are biten by the super bug, its got you for life. He later worked for The Trickster, probably a more fitting role-model for him. And he was a natural fit for any super villain team that would have him, although lacking any meta-human abilities he wouldn't have been a priority.