The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing

The Joker is up to his old tricks again, and more of Gotham’s mob bosses are dead as a result.  While the Clown Prince of Crime thinks that this will clear the way for him and some of his fellow supervillains to rule Gotham once more, they’re not having it.  The likes of Two-Face, the Riddler, and Black Mask are tired of his antics and tell him to get the hell out of town.  Which he does – all the way to Los Angeles where he issues an ultimatum to the country about how he plans to bring humor and joy back to it.  This is all well and good, except for the part where someone who looks just like the Joker stumbles into a Gotham bar and goes, “Who do I have to kill to get a drink around here?”

So begins the saga of two Jokers and another twelve-issue (and change) DC series written by Matthew Rosenberg.  You’d think I’d have learned my lesson after the last one, but this one is leaps and bounds better than “Wild C.A.T.s.”  It actually has a good deal of the smartass irreverence I like seeing from the writer and lots of genuinely funny bits throughout.  The art from Carmine Di Giandomenico in the present-day sequences is frequently spectacular while Francesco Francavilla never fails to kill it in the Silver Age-inspired sequences.  

Those sequences are the loopiest parts of the whole package and the best thing about it.  That’s because the whole exercise in escalating chaos starts to wear thin after twelve issues and Rosenberg doesn’t have a killer idea to tie the whole thing together.  We do get something of an explanation as to why there are two Jokers, so that’s something at least.  It all adds up to an experience that I didn’t hate but one that ultimately felt like seeing a decent joke stretched past its breaking point.