By Brian Azzarello & Lee Bermejo, with Mick Gray and Patricia Mulvihill (DC Comics/Titan Books Edition)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-983-3
I’m going to voice what is probably a minority opinion here, so please be aware that this is possibly one of those books that you’ll need to make your own mind up about – but then again, aren’t they all?
Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo have, singly and in partnership, created some of the best and most popularly received comics tales of the last decade or so: tough, uncompromising, visually memorable yarns that explore the darkest facets of human nature, yet with a deep core of sardonic wit – thoroughly readable, always-challenging.
So a book dedicated to the grotesque antithesis and ultimate foe of the coldly logical Dark Knight would seem like the ideal vehicle for their talents and particular world-views…
The Joker is getting out of Arkham Asylum. Incredibly, the Clown Prince of Crime and undisputed ruler of all Gotham City’s rackets has been judged sane. He’s coming out, and he’s going to want his old position back. The mobsters that now run the city are terrified but resigned. He’s coming back, so somebody has to go get him…
Made Man on a downward spiral Johnny Frost volunteers to be the guy, becoming his chauffeur and bodyguard in the process. The Joker is murderous time-bomb everybody expects to explode at any moment, and as soon as he hits the City he recruits Killer Croc as his enforcer, and begins to work his way back to the top of the heap, using his reputation and horrify propensity for Baroque bloodletting the way a rattlesnake uses his tail.
Many of Batman’s rogues’ gallery (Penguin, Two-Face, Riddler and so on) are in attendance in various uncharacteristic positions of nefarious authority, and the events – narrated with growing desperation by helpless witness Johnny Frost – spiral towards an inevitable and bloody climax of madness and conflict, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was just another post-modern take on the classic gangster plot of a ruthless thug reclaiming his territory.
No matter how beautiful or well executed (and it is), nor how much overlap there is with the Dark Knight film (despite company denials it seems like lots to me, at least in terms of look and feel) this just does not work as Joker story. Scar-Face, Blackmask, Maxie Zeus, even a real criminal like Al Capone perhaps, but the Joker isn’t a “Goodfella” with a grudge and some gory peccadilloes: he’s the ultimate expression of random, bloody chaos, a bundle of “Impulse Issues” wrapped tight in a spiky ball of psychosis…
Apparently devised as a miniseries and “promoted” to a high-profile original hardback before release, this is a taut and nasty thriller, immaculately illustrated: but there’s very little Batman in there, and no Joker at all…
© 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.
I bought the hardcover edition when that came. I was expecting something extraordinary and ended up with, in my opinion, what was a trifle better than mediocre. And I wasn`t that impressed with Heath Ledger either.