Slayride: Tim Spends Christmas With the Joker!

[espanolbot]

From Paul Dini's Detective Comics run...

It begins with Tim on the run from some gangsters, crashing his bike in the process. He tries to get a passing motorist to give him a hand, only for it to turn out to be the Joker... oops. Mr Jay gasses Tim and ties him to passenger seat so they could have some bonding time.







The Joker drives around some more but a slow operator in a drivethrough causes him to get in a bad mood by not following his very long, complicated order in one go, and while he's distract Tim tries to find a way to escape: sawing through his bonds with a toy car he found wedged in the seat...









Tim and the Joker fight, making the car crash in the process. Eventually Tim manages to gas him with his own gas, making the Joker get get hit by a semi and thrown off the highway bridge thing. This naturally puts him out of commission for a while, though it's not really certain how this lines up with Batman RIP. Maybe after the next storyline featuring his return takes place immediately before it or something, I don't know.

This issue is collected in the trade called Batman: Detective, and I recommend reading it in full personally.

Comments

[protogarrett]

This is the Joker done right.

[grazzt]

Yeah, it's hard to mix funny and scary together properly, but this just does it perfectly. I might even go so far as to rate it my third favourite Joker story, after Joker's Five Way Revenge and The Laughing Fish/Sign of the Joker.

[kirayoshi]

I'd go with ranking it 4th. Between Five-Way Revenge and the Laughing Fish arc, I'd insert "Trust", Dini's next Joker story after this one. Not only the Joker at his best(worst?) but a very nice bit of backstory where we learn that Bruce knew Zatanna when they were kids(she managed to get him to open up a little a few months after his parents' murders by pulling a coin-behind-the-ear trick). Dini loves his Zatanna.

[icon_uk]

I'd have to throw "Dreadful Birthday Dear Joker" in above "Trust" just because of the theatricality and simplicity of the Joker's insane plan.

[robinzegblu]

"Trust" just makes me think of the big parade scene from the '89 movie. That can't be a coincidence.

[joeyconqueso]

yeah, it's one of my all time favorites

I love that it was a one and done as well.

[shadur]

Yeah, the best Joker stories are the ones where you can't help but chuckle at the gag before you're horrified at the realization of what he just did to someone...

[filthysize]

Joker to me should be black humor personified. He does things that you really shouldn't find funny, but do anyway. Like watching someone do a hilarious pratfall into a wood chipper (but cleverer and funnier), or the "magic trick" in The Dark Knight. That made me gasp in horror for about half a second before I started laughing my ass off.

I liked the GCPD attack scene in Snyder's Batman, but I don't think it's nearly as good as a similar scene in Gotham Central where Joker goes on a shooting spree inside a police station while screaming, "Oh my god, somebody call the cops!" Precisely because the former is just creepy, while the latter made me giggle like an idiot.

[venatosapiens]

You know it's a well written Joker when you can hear Mark Hamill bubbling under every line.

[icon_uk]

I've posted this before (surprise, surprise), but pleased to see it again.

Always an absolute classic, not just as an inspired piece of seasonal bondage for Robin, but as the Joker being a gleefully sick bastard as only the Joker can be (as was noted when I first posted this, the Joker never intended to kidnap Robin that night, so all this is him IMPROVISING!)

And of course, since it's Dini dialogue, it can be heard in Mark Hamill's Joker voice, which makes it even better.

This is the story that Paul Dini pitched to DC which got him the gig writing Detective Comics in the first place, and you can just imagine this as being a crackerjack BTAS episode.

[ghosty732]

Dini's Batman: Detective is almost impossible to find now! Same with Batman: Death amd the City.

[majingojira]

It's Paul Dini writing Batman. Of course it's amazing!

[whoha]

Unless It's arkham city (the game), which is the worst thing relating to batman that he has written.

[majingojira]

He also worked on Countdown. Just goes to show that even great writers can still produce crap.

[whoha]

THAT, I don't blame him for. He and the other writers were just hand puppets to editorial for that story. They can't be blamed for having the floor constantly shuffled around from under them.

[espanolbot]

Yeah, it was moved about beneath them while they were trying to write it, and were told just connect the storylines in with other series in an attempt to get the audience to by literally every other DCU book in order to understand what the heck is going on.

Dan Didio was said by Mark Waid to HATE 52 as it was a story written by the creators as opposed to something that editorial had more control over, and Countdown and the new 52 show just what happens when you let people more interested in marketing the properties dictate the stories instead of letting the creators write them themselves.

[espanolbot]

I liked Arkham City. :(

[whoha]

I didn't say the game was bad, just that the story he wrote wasn't that good. One glaring problem is with how pointless Hugo strange was and all the build up was pointless just so we could have a finale with the Joker. plus Hugo never did a damn thing when he said that he would reveal to the world that Bruce was Batman, Even when batman was straight out coming to get him.

[grazzt]

It's also collected in "The Joker: Greatest Stories Ever Told", for those who can't find Batman: Detective, or who simply haven't read some of the other great Joker stories. And Crime-of-the-Month Club. Zing!

[maseiken]

"Sir, we really must raise the Tax!"
"I'll do you on better we'll raise the carpet."
"I must insist on raising the Tax!"
"He's right, you gotta raise the tacks before you raise the carpet...."

[zapbiffpow]

Ah, this issue. It's the It's a Wonderful Life of Batman comic books.

[rdfox]

'Tec #826, for the record.

[bariman]

This issue is one of the few singles that I own, since I mostly get TPBs. Creepy as hell, especially when Tim realizes where the toy car must have come from.

Though that fast food guy was pretty dumb. When the Joker drives up and demands to see the manager, run the hell away!