Batman #663, by Grant Morrison and John Van Fleet
That cover could not be less representative of the book it masks. Behind this pedestrian Andy Kubert image lies a strange mishmash of computer-generated art and overcooked prose, ill-fitting midwives for an abortive rebirth of the Joker. Everything about this comic is slightly off-kilter and yet oddly appropriate for its schizophrenic subject, except for the faux hard-boiled narration, which is just bad. Jog already culled the worst offenders, so I humbly nominate "Gotham City [...] Where crime swaps spit with high society and everything's for sale." I hope they print that on the signs leading into town, right above "Hamilton Hill, Mayor."
Underneath the purple prose and plasticine computer graphics there's a sturdy if standard mystery plot about the Joker killing off his old henchmen to mark the birth of a new self. That hook gives Morrison an excuse to rifle through the comic's history, including a couple of references to The Killing Joke and maybe even a wink at Frank Miller's "goddamn Batman," although this time the criticism is pretty much nonexistent. The Batman stories that most influence this issue (besides Morrison's own Arkham Asylum) come from the 1970s: the prose format evokes Denny O'Neil and Marshall Rogers' "Death Strikes at Midnight and Three," while the shtick of the Joker killing his own henchmen comes straight from "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge," the Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams classic that recast the Joker as a vicious murderer for the first time since the early forties. That story fixed the role that he has been playing, with madly escalating body counts, ever since.
Instead of breaking out of that paradigm, "The Clown at Midnight" looks for a new way to present the same old homicidal Joker. Morrison reintroduces and attempts to canonize his Arkham Asylum interpretation of the mutable multiple-personality Joker who burns through "superpersonas" like a Vegas dealer runs through decks of cards. (Speaking of which, wouldn't it be awesome if Harley Quinn were not the obviously pseudonymous "Dr. Harleen Quinzel," but Dr. Ruth Adams, the woman who diagnosed Joker's "super-sanity" before becoming a killer herself at the end of Arkham Asylum? No? It's just me, then?) It's a clever idea that explains and incorporates the Joker's many radical changes over his sixty-seven-year history, but that's a thesis, not a story. Except for a couple of note-perfect taglines like "the Thin White Duke of Death"--pinning the Joker to another noted aesthete's penchant for reinvention--Morrison hasn't shown us what the Joker's going to become next.
For all that, the Joker's rebirthing sequence is arresting. He runs through his own best lines from Batman #1 to Arkham Asylum, rolls all his history up into a ball and primes us to watch him jump outside it--but then, all the Joker scenes work; the overheated writing and hyperreal/hyperfake art finally make sense as representations of how the "21st-century big-time multiplex man" sees the world. Ideally the story should have been split into two modes or even two separate issues--a conventional comic showing Batman's investigation of Five-Way Revenge 2007 and a prose/computer art look at the newest Joker.
But what is the newest Joker? Just before his rebirth, the Joker watches a bank of television screens, searching for inspiration. "What face, he wonders, will the bogeyman of this dark century wear?"
The answer seems to be something lifted from J-horror, mutilated and unsettling and tremendously brutal. But the Joker's been playing that card for more than thirty years now, while the rest of our culture has caught up and finally surpassed him. How do you become a bogeyman for a society that celebrates torturers? Our bogeymen are faceless, anonymous--everybody is a potential killer, which means everybody is a potential victim except the hero cop holding the alligator clips. Where's the room for an old showman like the Thin White Duke of Death? Is it time for him to join the ashheap of villainy alongside mustache-twirling landlords and Nehru-jacketed nuclear blackmailers? How can his old routine become fresh again?
If Grant Morrison knows, he isn't telling.
Is the Joker still the Iranian ambassador to the UN? This may be stepping into Frank Miller territory, but that angle's got potential.
Posted by: phil | February 23, 2007 at 09:21 AM
I suppose it's a matter of taste, but I don't think that angle ever had potential; it was already dated when Starlin(?) did it back in 1988. Forcing the characters into current events just produces instantly dated comics. A good update would find a way to tease out our anxieties without confining the character to them (sort of like the way Morrison recast the League of Assassins as al Qaeda with one simple line about living in a cave), or would produce something nightmarish that isn't limited to a single moment.
I would sooner see Joker go back to the Dick Sprang gimmick crook than the Starlin Eighties Islamophobia model. That grinning motherfucker had style.
Posted by: Marc | February 23, 2007 at 11:52 AM
Honestly, the Joker's visual style hasn't really changed in a very long time. And I don't see much call to change that aspect of him.
If anything, he should be less of a lunatic killer and more a literal wild card. In an age of flashing lights and video poker he should be the kind of guy who engineers ten casinos going bust at once just to collapse the entire city. Financial manipulations on a vast scale, messing around with complex systems like subways, water distribution... less about killing people and more about increasing the turbulance.
Posted by: Matt Rossi | March 05, 2007 at 02:09 PM
No, the day-glo Conrad Veidt visual still works.
I like your chaos theory/cosmic trickster Joker idea a lot (but then you know I'd happily line up to buy any comic you wrote). Whatever DC does next with him, they need to move him away from the pointless mass murder that makes his continued existence both implausible and increasingly unpleasant to read. The new Joker should use murder as a tool, not as an end. Unless someone of Morrison's stature produces a strong, clearly focused revision of the character, a revision on par with "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge," that's not likely to happen any time soon.
Posted by: Marc | March 05, 2007 at 08:53 PM
Just out of curiosity, what did you (Marc or Matt) think of Sam Kieth's spin on the Joker in Batman: Secrets? The media commentary was, shall we say, a bit obvious, but I was rather fond of that interpretation of the character nonetheless.
Posted by: Ken Lowery | March 12, 2007 at 12:18 AM
Can't say I've read it. What was Kieth's take?
Posted by: Marc | March 12, 2007 at 04:08 PM
The Joker planned to manipulate the media into believing Batman was a crazy, violent psychopath bullying a man (himself) who desperately wanted to reform. Wanton murder wasn't really his aim (I don't recall anyone dying) so much as making a spectacle of himself by leading scandal-rags around by the nose. It's an imperfect mini, but (sans Year 100) the best Batman story I've read in a long while. I don't think I'm doing it justice... I recommend a glance-through, for Kieth's gorgeous art if nothing else.
Posted by: Ken Lowery | March 12, 2007 at 05:58 PM