Action Comics #765

[iamrman]

Harley Vs. Mercy. ‘Nuff said!

The Joker's jokes coming off more as annoying 'lol, random' humour. Then again, has the Joker ever been funny?

Comments

[cyberghostface]

lmao at Joker at the end

[blues32]

...so the camera is a device that removes all hair and causes them to mock Lex? How does that even work? The hair removal, sure...but getting them to say stuff like that...?

[metadronos]

Agree 100% on the Joker's dialogue. That's some awful writing there.

Harley fares somewhat better dialogue-wise here, but ugh, her face is all wrong. She's not supposed to look like her puddin's twin sister ffs.

[full_metal_ox]

…Maybe I had one too many of Harley’s caffeine, sugar MSG parfaits… (bolding in original)

…Did the Joker just invoke the turn-of-the-millennium Fanfiction.net Sugar High Defense?

[huntleyhaverstock]

I'm a huge fan of Joe Kelly's writing. When he's good, he's incredible. But this is definitely him at his most manic and try-hard.

[icon_uk]

I'm not sure I've read much Joe Kelly where he didn't strike me as trying too hard.

[phantomfo]

It's hard not to read this Joker without hearing Kelly's Deadpool.

[mastermahan]

Impressive that Harley can go toe-to-toe with a literal Amazon.

[icon_uk]

IIRC Ivy gave her a dose of some sort of super anti-toxin (So the could spend time together without Ivy accidentally killing her) back in the mainstream DCU comic version of "Mad Love", and a side effect was it left her effectively super-agile, much faster than the norm and a lot resilient.

[tcampbell1000]

The Joker has absolutely been funny. Joker's Millions, that "boner" story, the Cesar Romero portrayal, big chunks of the Mark Hamill days, and I'd say the recent Man Who Stopped Laughing series managed it.

It is true, though, that he's often not funny or just kinda "funny in theory" (e.g., Heath Ledger, Killing Joke, DKR. Jack Nicholson feels somewhere in the middle). The people who write comics and their adaptations often yearn to be taken seriously more than they want to compose an enjoyable romp balancing real laughs with mayhem. This feels like it has potential as an essay, even though I've already got too much on my plate. Will I defy common sense and do something with it anyway? I guess we'll all find out together.

[metadronos]

Occasionally, although it takes a skilled writer to pull it off, a villain's dialogue will be sufficiently clever such that it would be funny to the non-villainous characters, and of course the work's audience, if only the content weren't so vile. Done well, this can enhance the villain's characterization.

An example would be the Joker just after he's shot Barbara in The Killing Joke. He makes a number of library/book-related puns about her condition, puns which we're not meant to laugh at, for obvious reasons.

Nevertheless, his wordplay there does have an undeniable cleverness to it -- he isn't simply being "lol, random" (as iamrman puts it re the current post). It's clever enough that we could imagine the amateur comedian the Joker might once have been, might well have made it big in mainstream stand-up, if he'd had any self-confidence.

[shadur]

Yeah. For me what defines the Joker is when he does something horrible, but in such a 'funny' way that you start to chuckle almost despite yourself -- right up until you realize that you're laughing at something objectively horrible and you feel like a worse person for it.

Ledger's Pencil Trick, the nonchalant flicking of a match onto a pile of money (that you almost had forgotten had someone tied up on top of it, out of camera, until you hear the screams in the background), even the hospital scene.. Hilarious, until you realize what you're laughing about.

[icon_uk]

Wholehearted agreement, the Joker should make you laugh, then shudder as you realise at what you're laughing at.

I think this is where his old "theme crime" focus worked better, you could see the sort of jokes he's making, and so be in the right frame of mind. Like the classic...



If it's just random death for the sake of making the Joker seem dangerous (and it so often is nowadays), then there's no underlying basis for the humour to work for apart from James Bond level quips when looking at someone he's just killed, and those rarely work.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Beat me to it, re: Hamill.

[icon_uk]

Yes, the BTAS Joker via Hamill was mercurial, he'd make jokes one minute, then kill someone the next, then make jokes again, without brekaing his patter.

[superfangirl1]

Look at those hyenas with their little business suits. I am surprise the fight end in a draws. Lol