The Joker is probably the world’s greatest and most well known comic book villain ever. Websites, magazines, and random user polls from various sources have sought to determine the who the world’s top bad guy in all of comics and the Clown Prince of Crime always seems to finish in the Top 3. He’s the bad guy that everyone knows, recognizes and, well, loves.
To endure with such a longevity of faithful fans there has to be a great deal of character development involved. Be it Ceaser Romero’s king of campiness on the 66′ television show, the chilling cruel Joker from Killing Joke—given a heart-breaking story that speculates it only takes one bad day to turn a man insane—or Heath Ledger’s portrayal of an ingenious anarchist who just wants to “watch the world burn,” the Joker has accrued a lot of depth over the years that makes him more dynamic than virtually any other villain.
Written from the first person perspective of Joker’s henchmen, Jonny Frost, JOKER is considered a stand alone adventure, meaning it takes place outside of mainstream Batman continuity. The characters involved are depicted with a bit more realism, like how things were in Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy of films. Joker even carries a scarred grin, but any real connection to the films is purely coincidental. As the story begins, Frost is just a low level guy that arrives to pick Joker up for his release from Arkham. Joker takes a liking to Frost, however, and has him act as his chauffeur.
The main structure of this tale is that while Joker was locked up, members of his gang and other crime bosses took control of his turf and now he’s going to get it back. I explained how Joker has numerous incarnations, this particular one is pretty heartless and will kill anything wether there is reason or not. As he rises back to the stature he once had, a road block appears in the form of rival boss Two-Face. Two-Face manages to get Frost to himself and tries to detour him from Joker’s camp, assuring Frost that Joker will in fact kill him eventually, but our narrator’s more loyal than that.
A nasty turf war develops between Joker and Two-Face, to the point Two-Face pleads with Batman to stop the Joker. We see more and more how vile this take on Joker really is during the war with Two-Face. For example, Frost’s ex-wife is in Two-Face’s camp and helps Frost get her back. In doing that, though, Joker rapes her to “even the field” with him and Frost because he failed to mention his meeting with Two-Face. As Two-Face told Frost, Joker does eventually knock him off, using poor Frost as a hostage in his fray with Batman and shooting his bottom jaw off which leaves Frost crawling over and off a bridge.
I really enjoyed the almost journalistic point of view in this story. The art work is also phenomenal and complements the noir-styled character writing perfectly. It was also extremely interesting to see Batman’s other rouges presented in a more realistic setting, as they may have possibly been depicted in a Nolan film.
Bad guy books are always a fun time, however this one is gritty and very, very dark. It gives a secondary meaning to “graphic” novel. It’s very violent, contains moments of brief nudity, sexual assault and in a particularly nasty bit of revenge/foreplay, Joker and Harley even skin a guy (neck down) and place him on stage at a strip club for us all to see. This isn’t your regular type of Batman book from previous years. It’s an awesome read, though, and like all other Lost in the Longbox articles, please seek this out and enjoy!
