The Joker’s dead - pushed off a bridge. Whodunit? Batman. Or did he… ? So begins a hallucinatory voyage through the streets of Gotham and Batman’s memory to find the truth.
In his afterword, Brian Azzarello reveals that Batman: Damned was conceived in the wake of his and Lee Bermejo’s unexpected 2008 bestseller, Joker, as a continuation of that storyline in this more realistic Batman world. But, for one reason or another, the project got shelved - until DC resurrected it a decade later to launch their Black Label line.
This is also one of the most talked-about Batman books of recent years purely because, in the first single issue, you got a full frontal shot of Bruce Wayne’s penus. It’s been blacked out in this collected edition (boo!) and the single issues are still being sold for silly money on eBay, but the jpegs are all over the internet if you really want to see it anyway. So in that sense Batman: Damned was a success because it got people talking and shone a big light on DC Black Label. But, in a more substantive sense, this book is pretty crap.
Azzarello’s original script was an event where Batman was in the Justice League Dark and, though it was later repurposed into what became this book, at any rate all of the JLD appear throughout Damned. Joining Batman on his journey through Gotham’s levels of hell is his very own chain-smoking Virgil, John Constantine, and, because this is set in the same world as 2008’s Joker, Lee Bermejo draws some really interesting “realistic” versions of familiar characters.
Zatanna is a punky street performer, Deadman has transparent skin so that his red suit is actually red human muscle, Spectre is a raving homeless junkie, and Jason Blood/Etrigan is a (cringey) rapper. Enchantress has never looked spookier and Bermejo’s vision of her in the final act, perhaps channelling horror artist Richard Corben, is genuinely terrifying.
And Bermejo’s always-incredible painted art is about the only truly great aspect of the book, unfortunately. All the characters look amazing - I can’t say enough good things about every single page here so I won’t even try. It’s wunnerful. I also really liked Jared K. Fletcher’s imaginative lettering that does away with caption boxes and floats disembodied throughout, beautifully complementing the artwork rather than obscuring it.
Azzarello’s dreamlike narrative is boring at best. We know Batman didn’t really kill Joker so there’s no real mystery to solve - we’re just watching as Batman and Constantine ping-pong from one JLD cameo to another. Flashbacks are spliced in between this to Bruce’s childhood, so there’s a slightly different, dreary origin going on - and that’s it. It’s such an unimpressive and forgettable “story” that’s barely coherent and never engaging.
If the most notable thing about your book is a naughty dick pic then you haven’t written anything worth reading - so it goes with Batman: Damned Dull. It’s worth picking up if you’re a fan of Lee Bermejo’s art but don’t expect Azzarello’s writing to come even close to matching it in terms of quality. If you’ve not read this creative team’s previous books, Joker and Luthor, they’re both much more interesting to check out than Damned.
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