Three Jokers #2

[cyberghostface]

"When you’re dealing with the Joker, you want to do something new. You want to do something that’s both true to the character, and also showing a different layer and different viewpoint. He’s one of the greatest characters in all of comics, and he’s been interpreted so many ways, so well, in so many mediums." -- Geoff Johns

Comments

[alicemacher]

Scans 1 through 3: So... this Killing Joke-ish Joker takes after Clayface III?

(I'm assuming he's the TKJ-ish version because the wife he's imagining the mannequin to be looks like Jeannie from that story. If I'm right, then plush-toy "Junior" would be the child she'd been expecting.)

[cyberghostface]

Yeah that’s the Bolland TKJ Joker. The other one is supposed to be the ‘original’.

[alicemacher]

Looking at the scene again, I notice that "Junior" has brown hair styled somewhat like Henry from Eraserhead, just like the Young Man (as Moore's script calls him) before his transformation into the Joker. He's also wearing a bowtie as did the Young Man the night he lost his mind. Nice touches.

[cyberghostface]

Interesting, I didn’t see that.

[shadowpsykie]

It actually hurt to see Jason beat up again... god i hope we don't get a revisit of the killing Joke... I am glad they are using Bruce, Barbara, and Jason for this but please don't torture them (physically) anymore... please...

also the touch where Bruce had to recalibrate his voice when he thought he was talking to Chill was nice...

[nyadnar17]

I really hope this one of those "I actually really love the character and that is why I am presenting them in the worst possible light" things I keep hearing about.

Getting real sick of Jason being "the worst" Robin.

[shadowpsykie]

i don't think this is how he's being played here.... not exactly. the most raumatized yes.

[zachbeacon]

I mean technically Steph is the worst Robin but that run completely ignored her prior characterization so she could be editorial's punching bag.

Still, as someone who never particularly liked Jason, I have to admit he got a raw deal. He had a lot of the same negative tendencies as Damian but, unlike him, was never given a chance to overcome them.

[icon_uk]

" that run completely ignored her prior characterization so she could be editorial's punching bag."

Which is pretty much what the Bat-editorial did to Jason's history as Robin from the early-ish 90's onwards.

[zachbeacon]

I'll admit that my Batman knowledge from before Tim came along is pretty spotty but wasn't early Jason (before he was "the angry Robin") just Dick with a different natural hair color?

[icon_uk]

Yeah, but that was the 80's.

"Almost-but-not-Dick" Jason lasted from 1984 to 1987, and looked at aspects of what adopting a kid in the 80's was like... in a somci books sort of a way.

Jason 2.0 barely lasted a year and a half before he was killed in 1988.

And from pretty much 1990 onwards, Jason's reputation was constantly downgraded, he was "the angry Robin" (He mostly wasn't), the "failure" (No he wasn't) the one who died because he didn't listen to Bruce (Not remotely what happened in ADitF), the Robin who still smoked (We never saw him smoke after he became Robin in any of the comics before he was killed off, but it's used more than once in flashbacks ) and so on...

[kurenai_tenka]

I agree with shadowpsykie; I don't think there's any implication that he's bad at Robining (having read the whole issue).

It feels more like 'I hurt the character I like the most' to me.

[nyadnar17]

I hope you are right.

I legit love Jason Todd's "Hey why don't we make some common sense improvements to Batman" and I am sick and tired of watching him get shit over it.

EDIT: The fact that he is so often called the dumbest Robin really, really irks me.

[kurenai_tenka]

I feel you, I've been a staunch Jason fan for many many years and he does get treated like shit constantly, but I really don't think this is one of those instances. If nothing else, it's far more sympathetic and understanding of him than anything else in recent memory.

And I totally agree on the dumbest Robin thing, but I assume Joker's comment here is just because he's an asshole, not because he's implying that the other Robins would be 'smart enough'. But then you've got people like Tom King who believe that shit rme.

[delanna]

"When you’re dealing with the Joker, you want to do something new."

*Reads version #1,077 of the Joker hitting Jason with a crowbar*

Okay then...

[sabertoothlotus]

So which of these three is the one who had his face surgically removed for no apparent reason?

[cyberghostface]

Probably TKJ Joker.

[filthysize]

I can barely understand any of this story, but mostly, I'm confused why this is being treated as a hyped up Joker reveal when it seems like it's all just a bunch of copies running around.

[cyberghostface]

The big reveal is that there were different Jokers running around at different points in Batman’s history.

That being said this is way too convoluted to actually stick. As it is James Tynion IV already said he has no plans incorporating any of this with his run.

[janegray]

Not only is it convoluted, but fans of a character are generally not fond of being told that the guy in a story they loved was not really their guy.

[shakalooloo]

They are if it's a bad story. Doombots have been the saving grace of every time a fan has hated an interpretation of Doom, for example.

[janegray]

Good point.

[mastermahan]

Doomdots were the example I was thinking of. The thing is, the Joker already has a far simpler "Doombot" excuse - he's crazy. A Joker who acts differently between stories is expected, because being unpredictable is his entire thing. One of Grant Morrison's explanations of the Joker is that he's so crazy he's he's not even consistent in his craziness.

Which is why this seems like such a bad idea. It's a convoluted solution to a problem that was answered better long ago.

[lego_joker]

Someone should really ask Steve "The Laughing Fish" Englehart (if he's still taking interviews) what he thinks of this... IIRC he was the first to suggest (on some guy's podcast) that the Joker has been a long chain of different guys hiding under the same identity.

[janegray]

A long string of guys is one thing. It's simple enough, and useful to explain why they haven't shot the Joker yet.

But this is like "one group of Jokers work together as some kind of secret society and has some kind of plan/ritual to transform/indoctrinate potential new Jokers and collect dozens at a time without anybody noticing so that there are always a bunch of different Jokers acting simultaneously." This is a mess to incorporate in any existing status quo.

[thanekos]

" It's time to confess, Mr. Chill. Why did you really kill Thomas and Martha Wayne? "
" What're you looking for, here - indirect indictment of systemic evils and their consequent symptoms, or individual's impulse against which vigilantism is a necessary counter? "
" Let's try one, and then the other. "

[zachbeacon]

okay, I need a score card to keep track of these clowns.

did Jason at least manage to kill "his" Joker?

[kurenai_tenka]

Going by this issue, maybe/probably not. He seemed to have last issue, but as in the scans above, this one says 'this really is more fun than the first time' (during the crowbar bit), thus implying that he's DITF Joker. Plus there was the thing with the other one saying that the Hawaiian shirt wearing one (this one) was wearing his shirt.

So who the hell knows, maybe not even the Jokers.

[kurenai_tenka]

This issue (and the last) hurt me in the best possible way. SO painful and tense to read, but the most invested I've been in a DC story in a long time.

[super_fly]

Still waiting for one of the Jokers to have an obvious moustache covered in greasepaint

[alicemacher]

And another to show everyone how many boners he can make, and to force Batman into a boner.

[cyberghostface]

It’s a real missed opportunity to not have one of the Jokers being one of the silly ones who did stuff like that. If they had that, the more serious ‘gangster’ Joker and the psychopath from ‘The Killing Joke’ there might be some fun meta stuff to explore.

[deh_tommy]

“Why did you really kill Thomas and Martha Wayne? Why did you cause their deaths through deliberate or unintentional action? What is the true reason you killed them? Who else kills people? I do! I am usually killing people all the time. I am deliberately or unintentionally removing people from this mortal coil. Come on, man, the anticipation is killing me! The anticipation is filling me with great and exorbitant excitement. I will make a killing off this tape. I will amass an incredible and generous fortune from the circulation of this tape. You’re killing me, Joe. You are doing or saying something I find incredibly funny. Just confess, already! Everyone knows you are a killer. You are someone or something that causes the untimely deaths of other people and things. I’m getting pretty bored, now. I think I’ll play some of my favourite songs from The Killers. I shall listen to a music from a mid-2000s rock band consisting of members Brandon Flowers, Dave Keuning, Mark Stoermer, Ronnie Vannucci Jr. and formerly consisting of--“

“STOP, I’LL CONFESS TO EVERYTHING! Please make it stop...”

[icon_uk]

Well played... :)

[alicemacher]

Agreed. :) And it reminds me of a scenario someone came up with way back in the LiveJournal scans_daily era, when I was just a wee occasional lurker. Someone, commenting on a Superdictionary post that happened to be not long after Jason's return as Red Hood, imagined what might happen if he'd ended up on Earth-Superdictionary, where everyone talks like that all. the. time. To reconstruct from memory, it went something like this:

BATMAN: Jason, I don't want you to punch Robin. I don't want you to hit Robin with your fist.

JASON: What's wrong with you people?! Why can't you talk normally?

BATMAN: Here, Robin, drink this punch. Make this liquid that is called punch go down your throat.

JASON: I'll kill you all!

[lbd_nytetrayn]

I wonder if they'll turn Chill into a Joker, to sort of parallel the '89 Burton movie.

[cricharddavies]

The story was headed that way, but things worked out in a different, and quite surprising way. Most of this series has been crap, but the last few twists that it pulls are frankly brilliant.