Three Jokers #3

[cyberghostface]

"We made a choice right from the beginning that we would base the look of our book around what Brian did in The Killing Joke. I consciously infused a lot of that Brian Bolland, even the way he would tell stories through his panels. The Killing Joke has sat next to my desk for the last two years. I've been constantly referencing it, and even following a lot of the rules of how he laid out his panels in that book. I really want it to feel like it could be a spiritual sequel, at least artistically." -- Jason Fabok

Comments

[cricharddavies]

Except that there is a final twist, and it's brilliant.

[lucean]

What is the final twist? As the scenes here are pretty pedestrain, especially compared to the Joker War stuff.

Again, why the hell is DC running these two stories concurrently?

[lordultimus]

It turns out that Killing Joke's Joker's pregnant wife never died; she was scared of her husband and the police helped her escape and lied to him about her death. Batman knew the Joker's name within the first week he met him, but kept it secret so that the wife and her son are safe from him and the rest of the world.

Oh, and Golden Age Joker is connected to Joe Chill somehow.

[cyberghostface]

For the latter I don't have a direct answer but 'Three Jokers' has been delayed for a while so maybe it was unintentional. As it is its continuity status is up in the air, Tynion already said it doesn't affect what he's doing.

[thanekos]

" We made a choice right from the beginning that we would base the look of our book around what Brian did in The Killing Joke, because why should his trashcan remain un-rifled through? "

[icon_uk]

Yes, that bit baffled me too.

Brian Bolland's style in The Killing Joke was amazing, and memorable and so is the last thing that someone should be aiming for in a new and supposedly seminal work.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Perhaps, but I'm hard pressed to complain, because if nothing else, this story has been a real treat to look at.

[mazway_75]

"A defined Joker? With a name and identity? That ruins the definition of me."

I do like Johns openly addressing the very complaints folks had when this was announced and Joker refusing to end the "game" by just killing or exposing Bruce Wayne fits.

[phantomfo]

And yet this story simultaneously tries to cement TKJ Joker as the definitive one. He literally killed off the Clown and Criminal incarnations to become the defined Joker.

[deh_tommy]

When you put things that way, this suddenly becomes a clever bit of meta commentary, huh?

[superfangirl1]

Doesn’t the joker need batman more then batman needing the joker?

I wish the joker go into retirement for awhile.

[nyadnar17]

I honestly have zero idea what Batman "needs" the Joker for. People who push that whole "two-halfs of the same coin nonsense" never actually explain how Batman's life becomes worse if Joker bites it.

[cyberghostface]

He would continue to exist but yes there is a deeper connection between the two than Batman has with any of his other villains except for Two-Face. They were practically soulmates under Snyder.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

I think Terry proved that the answer is "yes."

[shakalooloo]

So, the Joker admits to all of this being a pre-meditated, intricate plan where he was fully aware of the consequences, and yet he still goes back to Arkham rather than prison?

[alicemacher]

Well, I'm caught up. And yeah, as cyberghostface said in his recent post on Issue 2, this was a missed opportunity to do something more broadly encompassing and meta with the Joker, by including the brutality-free goofy prankster version of the character. Instead, the three we got were all "kill maim kill" as usual. Dull.

I did find interesting the revisionist take on the pre-Joker Young Man from TKJ: i.e. that he was never a good guy just trying to support his family, but an abusive husband. In the original work, the Joker says he sometimes remembers his past one way, sometimes another. It'd make sense though, that his memories at any given moment would be significantly inaccurate, not to mention self-serving.

Also, I liked that neither Jeannie nor her child had to die in this version. Here Johns, whether he consciously realized it or not, emulated Moore in a more low-key way for once. I'm referring to the hint, toward the conclusion of From Hell, that Jack the Ripper's final victim, Mary Kelly, wasn't the Mary Kelly he'd meant to kill; rather, that Mary escaped to Ireland and started a quiet, peaceful family life.

Other than those points, however, this mini had an intriguing premise but in execution was a swing and a miss. Regardless of whether it was ever meant to be in continuity (whatever that means these days) or not.

[cyberghostface]

I didn’t really like the reveal. I’m not saying he should be Saint Joker but having him as a wifebeater takes away from the tragedy of the story.

That and it’s contrived in that it really only works because Joker fell into the acid on the same day he was told that she died. Otherwise he’s told that his pregnant wife is dead due to a freak accident but there’s no body?

[nyadnar17]

Wait....so Joker thinks Batman is actually bad for Gotham?

Or is Joker saying that Thomas and Martha wayne's death was what destroyed Gotham?

[donnblake]

I've seen the latter mooted about- some combination of the absence of Thomas and Martha's personal work for social reform, and the association of them with the symbolism of Gotham's possible reverse, such that their death, and the police's failure to solve it, was identified with the death of the hope for a better Gotham.

How this ties in with the ideas that Gotham's problems are due to centuries of institutional corruption and inequality, an elaborate ornithological conspiracy, and/or a demonic curse is left to the reader.

[lordultimus]

Oh, and Barbara and Jason are in love with each other or something.

[nyadnar17]

Please say psyche.

[reveen]

That's the conclusion? Batman's fucked up, he and Joker are intertwined because he's representative of his pain or whatever? Is that seriously it?

Because I'm pretty sure that same theme has been explored literally millions of times with Batman.

[cyberghostface]

There’s kind of a big reveal at the very end about Joker’s wife and kid but the answer to the “three Jokers” mystery is one big shrug.

[tcampbell1000]

The work this series did with Jason Todd and Barbara Gordon was far more interesting than anything it did with any Joker. Their characterizations were tense, complex, dynamic, and believable throughout... until the very end, when Jason forgets how Scotch tape works for the sake of a forced missed connection.

Still, I'm here for the version of Jason who's constantly suffering and sorta broken psychologically: he's a lot more interesting than just "the adult Robin who kills" or "that guy, but in charge of a team." The way he latched onto a doomed infatuation with Barbara is uncomfortably true to life, and something I would really like to see followed up at some point, continuity issues aside.

I was bored by the Criminal, but the Batman-Real Joker-Joe Chill stuff was generally fine. The Joker's plan to heal and thus replace Batman's greatest pain is very in keeping with the current version of the character, who's basically out to replace every component of Batman's emotional life that isn't him. Fabok really sells the hell out of their last scene together, too.

I was not too interested in or impressed with the final twist. The flashback scenes of The Killing Joke are almost impossible to follow up on satisfactorily, as several other writers have demonstrated.

And... not that anything DC Comics has done since 1989 has made Alan Moore happy, but it seems like a pretty aggressive misreading of his work to make Killing Joke's hapless comedian into an abuser. Yes, he snaps at his wife once in the original, but the ratio of anger to apologies he offers in their scenes together is not consistent with abuse, and 1980s Moore definitely knew how to write abusive relationships (see Swamp Thing, especially).

I get that this is claiming the Joker's memories aren't reliable, which, sure, but TKJ was about a good but weak man losing everything and thus going over to madness; 3J's revisionist take is that this guy had sufficient evil in him that he probably would've ended up fighting Batman anyway, just a lot less memorably.

I didn't much like Joaquin Phoenix's Joker because the protagonist was such a weakling, especially mentally, that his transformation didn't seem plausible. The figure implied at the end of 3 Jokers seems to err in the other direction: already a domestic villain, he's too close to the Joker's moral alignment for the transformation to be dramatic.

That said, the final scene is almost redeemed for me by how well it handles Batman. The "I'm Batman" bit is just the cherry on top. Could the world's greatest detective lie about failing to solve a case right in front of his face? If it was to protect just one innocent family, then HELL TO THE FUCKING YES HE COULD, AND THAT'S WHY HE'S WORTH READING ABOUT.

[palgrave_goldenrod]

I think that making the Young Comedian an abuser does help reinforce The Killing Joke in one key respect, which is that, for all the hype the "all that separates the Joker from anyone else is One Bad Day!" plot-point gets, what tends to get forgotten is that ultimately Moore rejects that argument. The whole point is that the Joker's attempt to drive Commissioner Gordon mad and thus prove that no one is different from him fails; Gordon is understandably affected by his experiences, but he is psychologically resilient enough to, if not exactly overcome it, then not let it completely shatter him the way the man who became the Joker was, and his fundamental decency and belief in the rule of law is kept intact. So it is, in a way, in keeping with the original text to suggest that the Young Comedian was, in some way, already the kind of person who would be prone to become a monster like the Joker given the right trigger; it's not the bad day itself that creates the Joker, it's the bad day coupled with who the man who would become the Joker already was, just as Batman is a result of Bruce Wayne's bad day coupled with who Bruce Wayne was and is.

Which is not to say that Moore intended him to be an abuser per say, or that he'd be happy with this development (but then, yes, that ship has well and truly sailed by this point), but I wouldn't say it's the "aggressive misreading" of the text you're presenting it as either. I'd argue it's actually more in line with the kind of reframing and repositioning of existing characters that Moore himself tends to do. Especially since The Killing Joke itself acknowledges that the Joker's own memories are unreliable and we only ever see those scenes from his perspective; if he's got a "multiple choice past" and we're only seeing what he thinks are his memories, when why should Moore's depiction of this character being a loving husband be considered sacrosanct or an unimpeachably accurate representation of the character?