Batman Beyond #29

[cyberghostface]

 

Comments

[cygnia]

Cut the head off to make sure.

[joetuss]

Yes... then set fire to the rest of the body, and shoot the ashes into the sun...then blow up the sun.

[cypherfdp]

Is this series set in the DCAU?

[cyberghostface]

No.

[raiden29o9]

Bruce.. Double tap.. Just Double tap, make sure, if anyone would be a slasher movie villain it would be the joker so just make sure

[raveninthewind]

Salt and burn, Brucie Baby.

[mastermahan]

"Yep, Joker's dead. Sure, he may be one of the most dangerous, unpredictable men of all time, and I personally know loads of ways to fake one's death.

"Nevertheless, I'm so certain he's dead I'm not even going to check his pulse. Robin, help me carry him to the unsecured morgue next to the display case where I store all the really deadly weapons."

[silverhammerman]

The Return of the Joker was much stronger for avoiding having an Old Man Batman versus Old Man Joker. I keep saying this, but this comic is redoing literally the first story we saw from Batman Beyond and doing it in a vastly less interesting way.

Also, Brett Booth really doesn't work for me as the artist here. Batman Beyond should be slick and futuristic, Booth's art doesn't feel that way.

[ayasugi_san]

I keep saying this, but this comic is redoing literally the first story we saw from Batman Beyond and doing it in a vastly less interesting way.

What do you mean by that? Do you mean the entire comic in general, or the current arc? Are you referring to Matt as Robin? If it's Matt, I wouldn't say it was redoing "Rebirth", IMO that would be giving the Matt-as-Robin story too much credit.

[silverhammerman]

I mean this arc specifically in having the Joker come back. The Joker's return in the Batman Beyond movie was literally the first Batman Beyond story, but the comics have gone back to the well on the idea repeatedly and it's just not as interesting.

I understand the temptation, but Return of the Joker was good because it was novel and did the concept in a unique way (What with Tim Drake getting possessed by a Joker microchip) and having the Joker actually show up alive and well and get into a fist fight with old Batman doesn't have that novelty.

[ayasugi_san]

The Joker's return in the Batman Beyond movie was literally the first Batman Beyond story,

Oh. That confused me, because RotJ wasn't the first Batman Beyond story. It's arguably the last one of the cartoon before "Epilogue", but IIRC it was released right in the middle of the cartoon's airing, and definitely after the series debuted proper with "Rebirth".

For the first half of this arc I thought it did a lot of what RotJ did, only with less depth. The heroes missing Jokerz activities that are actually part of the Joker's return, the Joker choosing to crash Bruce's party celebrating his accomplishments with Wayne Enterprises as his big return, the Batfamily in shock and disbelief that the Joker could still be alive. The third issue even had a romantic interlude, but unlike in RotJ, it didn't do more than establish that Terry is dating Melanie now; it didn't further the plot or flesh out the characters at all. But then it veered away from RotJ for the worse, because where RotJ started giving answers and having the heroes go on the offensive and make gains, the comic just had them floundering while the Joker stayed well ahead of them. Nothing they do touches him, and it's his own sudden health issues that haven't even slowed him down enough to be shown previously that does him in.

[silverhammerman]

That makes perfect sense, for some reason I've been remembering Return of the Joker as featuring an abbreviated version of Terry's origin, when that's not the case. Sorry about the confusion.

[ayasugi_san]

RotJ does feature an impassioned speech from Terry about why he's Batman, so while it's not his origin story, it's central to the sort of Batman he is.

[smileriot]

THIS, Spot on,

It’s a real flat, basic retelling, hoping to do better or get famous because of its connection with the original.

[tripodeca113]

Next issue Ghost Joker!

[ayasugi_san]

And so it ends, not with a bang but with a wet fart. We're not even going to address the mystery of how the Joker's still alive and spry, we're just gonna pretend it was never a pressing question at all. Just like how we pretended the Bruce being sure he heard the Joker's voice in the first arc never happened, or how Joker referring to Bruce as "old friend" also didn't.

I think I felt more for the Jokerz the Joker press-ganged into being his henchman more than I did for any of the Bat-family in this issue. Everything between the heroes and the Joker was just so predictable and by the numbers if you assume they've all lost their critical thinking skills. The Jokerz however had a possible moment of realization and redemption by choosing not to follow the script- and then Terry and Dick stopped that in its tracks.

[icon_uk]

I have to say i think that the Joker dying a mundane and ordinary death is pretty much perfect. It would be absolutely the last thing he ever wanted, no drama, no panache, no big finish and so is exactly what he deserved. Let his long anticipated grand finale be a literal wet fart and he knows it as he dies.

That being said. I'd still put two bullets into the corpses heart, three into the skull, sever the head, dunk head and body into separate acid vats and boil for a week and a half, dessicate the remains and the put into two missiles, one heading into the sun, the other heading down from the plane of the ecliptic so it never comes near Earth again, and then salt the Batcave, just in case.

But I might be overthinking things

[ayasugi_san]

I wouldn't mind the Joker's death being anticlimactic if the entire story wasn't a wet fart. He was two steps ahead of the heroes at all times, because they never took the initiative beyond "let's patrol and maybe we'll find something", and while he talked himself up, he was mostly just repeating "remember when I killed Robin? With this crowbar? Remember that? I'm totally gonna do it again! Also I shot Barbara but the important thing is killing Robins with a crowbar!"

You don't need to go through all that trouble to get rid of the Joker. You just need to bring in DCAU!Terry to tear his act to shreds.

[raveninthewind]

BTW, that variant cover by Shawn Martinbrough is fantastic!