Punchline: Part 1

[cyberghostface]

"One of the big things that we wanted to do, and we're continuing Punchline's stories in the backups of every issue of Joker, is that Joker has kind of like planted all the seeds for the thing that he's going to do when he comes back and strikes against Gotham in the future. Punchline is the one who's sort of running the show that he left behind.

There's this great conspiracy that's building up around the city and the expanding clown gang, and the aftermath of 'The Joker War.' Punchline is in prison, but there's a whole citizens' movement to free Punchline. She remains a very dangerous figure in the Gotham mythos, and we are going to see her step up in a few key ways over the next year, being a villain in her own right. Not just a villain entirely designed to stand at Joker's side." -- James Tynion IV

From The Joker #1...

 

#2...







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#4...

Comments

[mesmiranda]

Punchline is in prison, but there's a whole citizens' movement to free Punchline.

...Why on earth.

[cyberghostface]

Combination of things but she's playing the victim role for the media and a lot of young people think she's innocent or was brainwashed by the Joker.

https://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/9051206.html

[mesmiranda]

--Ah, got it. Having read the related scans, this makes a little more sense.

(I thought it was going to be more like a "Yeah, she's right! Stick it to the man!" thing, which maybe it still kind of is? And that's the thing that irks me about Punchline--and Joker, by proxy--positioning them/themselves as truth-tellers, pointing out the corruption and hypocrisy in the system.

Because the system is broken and corrupt, but Punchline and Joker don't have anything meaningful or productive or good to replace it with. It reminds me of the Facebook folks who are all about "draining the swamp" and then turn around and spit on people who are just as disadvantaged--often more so--by the system. It starts to read like they like the system just fine--they're just mad they're not the ones personally benefitting from it, and if they do suddenly the system is great and totally works.

...Which I guess makes Punchline a fairly realistic villain, in that sense. But I do hope she gets a "and then what?" moment.)

[shakalooloo]

Is this Queen of Spades from the Royal Flush gang, or an independent operator? If the former, those're some powerful enemies to make..!

[tinygaylaura]

She is one of the Queens from the RFG

I'd love if DC remembered that Amos Fortune has basically turned them into a nationwide supervillain crime syndicate and Punchline learns she's bitten off more than she can chew

[dcbanacek]

Cool, Orca's still kicking.

Even better, they didn't job her out to the flavor of the week.

Even better than that, they show her having character development. POSITIVE character development even. Let's hope it lasts past this story.

Still not impressed with Punchline. (As I've said before, I just don't get the "joke")

[armycat23]

DC really wants Punchline to be the new HQ in terms of popularity, but the only thing it's doing is making me wish that this series is about Orca.

[tinygaylaura]

Orca is cool :)

I'm sad she's in jail

I wish we'd got a Gotham City Monsters ongoing

[janegray]

For what it's worth, while I'm no Punchline fan, I can see some good to come out of this.

(Assuming they don't get rid of her within 5 years like they did with Sugar the Ventriloquist, of course. And that's a BIG assumption)

Batman for all intents and purposes has no real female villains anymore. Catwoman is a hero, and Harley & Ivy have been whitewashed more and more to the point that Tom King even made the laughable suggestion that Ivy never killed anybody. The aforementioned Sugar was unceremoniously ditched and forgotten even though Dini had spent years building her up with excellent stories. Roxy Rocket is more comic relief than anything. And Jane Doe would have been a decent enough addition to the Rogues' Gallery, but after using her for just a couple of stories it seemed like DC just got tired of her.

So now we have a situation where DC's most popular and profitable superhero has no female rogues.

[cyberghostface]

The whitewashing of Ivy is particularly annoying. At least with Harley she has the atonement thing going on.

Good example with Jane Doe. They really botched her character after her first appearance by making her literally faceless with exposed skin and muscle.

[janegray]

I just realised that I completely forgot about Talia. But really, who the fuck even knows what's going on with her anymore. The writers constantly switch between portraying her as a well-meaning victim of indoctrination who struggles between wanting to do the right thing and being loyal to the cult she was born into, to Satan Incarnate who literally mass murder babies and tortures and tries to kill Damian for shit and giggles. Even Killer Croc has more consistent characterisation, and that's really saying something.

Honestly, overall, I'd be in favour of redeeming Ivy. Because superhero stories' habit of demonising people who rage against the status quo IS a problem. Ivy is 100% right when she rages against Corporation that are destroying the planet for profit. The planet is boiling for God's sake. A handful of those fuckers are literally going to invite the extinction of the entire human race, alongside countless animal species, so they can make more money when they already have more money than could be spent in a million lifetimes. Just, fuck them, you know?

But if you are gonna redeem Ivy, you gotta do so on a way that makes sense. I'm ALL for throwing out those shitty stories where she murders random bystanders for kicks. I'm ALL for putting focus on those stories where she rescues orphans after mayor disasters. But you really gonna expect me to believe that she wouldn't feed the DC version of Jeff Bezos to a giant Venus Flytrap? Lol no.

[cyberghostface]

I don’t have a strong opinion on Talia but a lot of that was Grant Morrison sabotaging the character like he did with Magneto because of his own personal issues and grievances.

[beyondthefringe]

Agreed.
I don't want Ivy to necessarily be a hero, but also not a mass murdering psycho villain. Less killing of bystanders, more targeted harassment of the real culprits. I mean, "ecoterrorist" isn't the worst idea when the future of the planet is literally an issue...

I want villains where heroes can stop and say "good point" and actually have to work through the ethics and justification of fighting them sometimes, as opposed to "I'm good, you're evil, let's fight."

[bradygirl_12]

I agree 100% with this. Ivy could be a very important character if written right.

[jlbarnett]

Doesn't Ivy more generally rage against the entire human race?

[janegray]

Depending On The Writer trope.

There are a lot of stories where Ivy is generally neutral, or in very rare cases even benevolent, to humans who respect nature. Most notably, she adopted dozens of children who had lost their parents in No Man's Land.

In particular, this type of stories has been getting more and more common as she started being written with more and more obvious lesbian subtext with Harley a couple of decades ago. I guess DC thought it was in bad taste to have Harley go from one abuser to another, so they started portraying Ivy as nicer. Still villainous, but definitely with a softer side.

Add in the fact that, as it started dawning on people that climate catastrophe could in fact kill us, the public in general started sympathising more with Ivy's eco cause, so she started getting written as more sympathetic. She even got to go out with a Heroic Sacrifice in the final Arkham game.

There are still outliers. Much like that horrible story where Harley murders children with videogames, there was a horrible story where Ivy kidnapped and tortured to death completely random civilians for kicks.

But overall Ivy's rage against the human race has been toned down to run-of-the-mill semi-mild misanthropy for some time.

[tinygaylaura]

I always saw Catwoman as a hero personally

I wish DC had done more with Sugar and Scarface

Roxy Rocket too

I do hope DC introduces some more villainesses for the Bat family

Or brings back some of the ones who have fallen into obscurity and does some fun things with them

Or both

[shakalooloo]

I'm holding out for the elevation of the Carpenter to top-tier villain. She rebuilds all of Gotham in her image!

[tinygaylaura]

Introduce a legacy villainess in the form of Condiment Queen

She'll relish the chance to show Gotham that unlike her predecessor, she can cut the mustard when it comes to being an A-list rogue, by putting Batman in a real pickle

[alicemacher]

Batman butter hurry if he hopes to ketchup to her.

[tinygaylaura]

She keeps saying this is the time she mayo win but I take her claims with a pinch of salt

[cyberghostface]

Given that Harley’s 75th issue was dominated by Punchline variants (for a backup story in which she didn’t even do anything) I’d say it’s been a success.

[armycat23]

So a variant cover is somehow aa successful as HQ.....ok....lol

[armycat23]

So one variant cover means she's as popular as HQ? I doubt that very much. Harly Quinn is and was known even by noncomic readers or cartoon watchers....and that was before the suicide squad movies came out.

[cyberghostface]

“So one variant cover means she's as popular as HQ?”

Lol it was a lot more than one.

https://leagueofcomicgeeks.com/comic/8357413/harley-quinn-75

But yeah Harley’s been around for almost thirty years so I’m not expecting Punchline to be as popular within just a few.

[janegray]

Well. As you know, my opinion on the Joker and Joker-related characters is, euphemistically put, not good.

So I was surprised that I actually don't dislike this. I was pleasantly surprised that Orca was not only not red shirted, but actually treated with dignity. And the art is really nice.

[tinygaylaura]

I do kind of wish Orca had put a stop to Punchline's clowning around tho

[deh_tommy]

“I was surprised that I don’t actually dislike this” is pretty much the Tynion run in a nutshell.

[tinygaylaura]

I am enjoying it for the most part especially the addition of characters like The Gardener and Ghost Maker

[mastermahan]

For sure. I've been unimpressed with Tynion in the past, but the new characters he's been churning out to add to Gotham have had an astonishingly high rate success rate.

[tinygaylaura]

Only character I'm not a huge fan of so far is Clownhunter because I feel like there's not a lot that can be done with his character and also because I just...I cannot take the name "Clownhunter" seriously

It gives me mental images of someone skulking around a big top with a bow and arrow

Or him doing a variation of that bit with McBain from the Simpsons. "Hello. I have purhcased the Gotham YMCA. I shall be tearing it down. And turning it into a nature preserve where I shall hunt the most dangerous game of all

CLOWNS"

[mastermahan]

The Free Punchline movement is deliberately absurd, right? It's insane that people would show their support for her by wearing clown masks when an army of evil clown terrorists just attacked Gotham, much less that people would give so much support to even an attractive white woman.

So is Free Punchline a commentary on the whitewashing Harley Quinn gets in the real world? Even if you ignore shitty outliers like the exploding video game consoles, Harley still spent years helping the Joker commit mass murder after mass murder.

[tinygaylaura]

No I am pretty sure it's a deliberate commentary on the fact people are this stupid in real life

The Free Punchline movement are morons but they're sadly a realistic depiction of the world we live in. If Punchline was real there would absolutely be legions of halfwits insisting she be freed or writing to her in prison begging her to be their waifu the same way some pathetic idiots fantasised over psychopaths like Ted Bundy and Charles Manson in real life

"It's insane that people would show their support for her by wearing clown masks when an army of evil clown terrorists just attacked Gotham"

The nazi's killed god knows how many American, British, French, Polish and Russian citizens. Yet you still find countless repulsive worthless morons in all of those countries willing to put on swastikas and join neo nazi groups. I agree that it is completely fucking insane. But I think the world has been insane for a while now. Or possibly always has been

I can easily believe Punchline and the Joker would have fans and supporters even in a city which they regularly do terrible things to because honestly every time I think people have sunk as low as they can they find a way to surprise me in the worst way :(

[cainofdreaming]

Adding to the absurdity is the fact that Gotham's mayor has given Hugo Strange a carte blanche to capture and 'cure' any clowns. So now is really not the time to wear clown masks.

[tinygaylaura]

The fact Gotham elected a mayor who thinks giving Hugo Strange a job is a good idea is another example of why honestly, it feels like Batman is wasting his time in trying to help Gotham

It's like devoting all your time, money and effort to creating a foolproof state of the art anti-tiger suit of protective armor for someone who has deliberately snuck into the tiger enclosure at the zoo six seperate times despite being mauled every time they did it

Like

Yes your work might save a life but is it ultimately a life that's worth saving?

[mastermahan]

I keep forgetting that DC civilians were given the choice between Justice and Doom and voted for Doom. It was majority rules, so a higher percentage of people voted for Doom than Americans voted for Trump.

Maybe someone imported the Marvel public's favorite snack of deep fried paint chips during the last crossover?

[scorntx]

... cure any clowns of what, exactly?
Clownitis?

[icon_uk]

It's a chronically under-reported condition... the neon hair, the swollen red noses, the painful extension of feet so they only fit huge shoes.... it's pitiful.

[tinygaylaura]

The giant feet can be treated by taking regular doses of Lifeldium. However please carefully read the instructions and do not go over the recommended dose

[scorntx]

Side effects of Lifeldium may include:
Loss of pupils, edginess, urge to carry improbably large guns, pouches, unmanageable hair, and permanently clenched teeth.

[tinygaylaura]

Spontaneous cape growth, rubber spine syndrome, unexplained breast growth, vision problems causing the world to look like it needs to be turned on its side to understand what is happening...

[cainofdreaming]

You guys joke, but Rob's disease was an actual thing in DCU.

[tinygaylaura]

wait what

[janegray]

To be honest, I completely believe that even in the real world people would absolutely do something like Free Punchline.

The past five or so years have proven beyond any doubt that humanity is hopelessly insane.

[mastermahan]

Point.

[lego_joker]

I just remembered... this exact plot was done at the start of Tony Daniel's run on the Nu52 Detective Comics. There, it was an attempt to "comment" on Occupy Wall Street.