What do you get a clown for his 80th anniversary? If you’re The Joker, a 100-page bumper special!
Of the ten short stories collected here, only a couple really stood out for me. Tom Taylor and Eduardo Risso’s Birthday Bugs is a fun piece where the Joker takes pity on a budding young psycho and forces his grimy neighbourhood to throw him a party. Taylor’s dark sense of humour and Risso’s art makes this one the best of the bunch.
The creative team behind one of the best Joker books ever, Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo, reunite to tell a pastiche of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest called Two Fell Into the Hornet’s Nest. The story felt unnecessarily obtuse but I enjoyed Bermejo’s masterful art which, unlike his previous depictions, wasn’t drawn in a realistic style and had an enjoyably cartoony look to it.
Of the many covers here, my favourites were Greg Capullo’s (the one on the front), Stejan Sejic’s and Fiona Staples’. Scott Snyder and Jock’s middling story Scars, about a psychotherapist working with Joker’s victims, was a lot of intellectual musings on Joker, which wasn’t particularly interesting to read, but had some thoughtful insight into the character. Jock’s art wasn’t terribly good either.
James Tynion IV and Mikel Janin’s What Comes at the End of a Joke ties into the Joker War storyline and introduces a new Harley stand-in character (now that she’s gone solo): Punchline. She’s a bad girl at college - and that’s about it for a “story”! Janin’s art is great but I’m not that taken with the new character, about whom everything seems contrived and silly.
Paul Dini’s The Last Smile, with art by Riley Rossmo, was disappointingly forgettable - Joker is haunted by a nightmare about being laughed at by Batman as he dies; ho hum. Also substandard from another good Batman writer was Peter J. Tomasi’s The War Within, with art from Simone Bianchi, which was an allegorical story about Batman and Joker’s never-ending battle.
Then we’re into the dregs. Gary Whitta, Greg Miller and Dan Mora’s Kill the Batman was a whole lotta blather leading up to a lame punchline - the art also wasn’t as good as Mora’s usual. Denny O’Neil (RIP) and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez’s Introducing the Dove Corps was as good as anything I’ve ever read by O’Neil, which is to say it was terrible. Joker goes abroad to help people for a change of pace/scenery and things end predictably after a load of embarrassing campiness.
The less said about Eduardo Medeiros and Rafael Albuquerque’s No Heroes, about a young bank employee who stands up to the Joker, and Tony S. Daniel’s Penance, where a man confesses to a priest (or is it??), the better. Both were instantly forgettable, though both had decent art.
While this 80th Anniversary issue hasn’t got any exceptional Joker stories, the range of them shows the depth and richness of the character and highlights why Joker has endured for 80 years and will undoubtedly continue to for many more years to come. And if the writing didn’t captivate me much, the array of fine art from the numerous gifted artists contributing here definitely held my attention. This one is more of a visual feast with just enough variety of Joker antics throughout to make this a decent celebratory issue of the iconic character.
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