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New 52 Joker Has Lost Something
BlackUmbrella
Posts: 208
Having just read the 14th issues in the Batman family titles, I'm pretty disappointed in the approach to the Joker. What has always made the Joker frightening and sinister is his joviality and insane, indecipherable sense of "propriety" in the face of his cold blooded killing. It was that disconnect that was unsettling and set him up as the anti-Batman.
This new Joker is a filthy monster, straight up. They lost the essence of the character, IMHO.
Increasingly I find myself concerned that the reason some modern writers cannot write stories with a convincing moral center is that they do not have one to draw on. It's all storytelling mechanics and shock.
This new Joker is a filthy monster, straight up. They lost the essence of the character, IMHO.
Increasingly I find myself concerned that the reason some modern writers cannot write stories with a convincing moral center is that they do not have one to draw on. It's all storytelling mechanics and shock.
Comments
I do agree with you overall about your thoughts on modern writers in general but sometimes when a story is written well and the long-term effects make the series more interesting, I can forgive the shock value of certain moments but everyone feels differently. I might think differently after this story is all said and done but I hope not.
And, now there's this weird Professor Zoom thing going on. Joker loves Batman so much that he isn't going to share him. He wants to make Batman a better hero.
Not for me.
For years I've heard podcasts and internet fans bemoan the following things:
-Grim'n'gritty
-Gimmicks
-Deaths, "deaths", and promised-deaths-to-sell-big-storylines
-Overwritten, wordy expository talky boring comics
-"Edgy" '90s-type comics
-Hyperviolence for little to no reason
Snyder's Batman is ALL of these things, and yet it gets a total pass from most fans. And this Joker storyline really brings those otherwise-maligned elements to the forefront.
It's not like I'm saying "Hey, people should HATE and COMPLAIN about Snyder's Batman!" I personally LIKE it (overall, generally)! But there are definitely some drawbacks to the run and to these "DotF" issues in particular.
The whole metaphor of Joker-as-Jester to Batman's "King" is really being stressed and harped on way too much. It's a cool little idea, but Snyder is emphasizing it over and over again to the point that it gets annoying. It's not THAT profound, dude. It's sort of like the owl/bat metaphor thing from earlier this year. The first couple times Snyder told us that owls prey on bats, it was cool and neat. But we had to hear about it issue after issue after issue until it got boring.
Also, whatever the Joker's plan is, and however that plays into whether or not the Joker knows Batman's identity -- The whole thing is just annoyingly pointless and breaks my "suspension of disbelief". I find myself constantly being pulled out of the story. For years (decades, actually) Bat-writers have played with the idea that the Joker might know who Batman really is, but it was never brought to the forefront for a very good reason: Because the Joker's playful like that and wouldn't want to ruin the fun. It's sort of the same deal as Commissioner Gordon: Does he know that Bruce is Batman? Probably, but if you make a whole in-continuity storyline about it, you sort of spoil the mythos by making everything so damn joyless and obvious.
And that's basically what Snyder is doing: He's making the Joker's plan joyless and obvious and crowbarring in (forgive the pun) a bunch of old continuity references to make it seem like what he's doing is a legitimate outgrowth of who the Joker is. But this Joker feels like a stranger or a generic impostor. When I'm reading these issues, it just feels very, very obvious that it's "A 'big' Joker story for the sake of having a 'Big' Joker story". Snyder just basically spins his wheels and concocts a bunch of metaphors and pseudo-reasons as to why this is going on, but it all just feels very... forced and pseudo-meaningful.
The the ending of the last issue, the stuff about the Joker "loving" Batman. Way too drawn out and laboriously written. Again, though, like a lot of Snyder's ideas, it's sort of cool and neat, but he harps on it and puts way too much story-weight on it, to the point that it feels clumsy and annoying.
There are some things I LIKE about these comics, though. It IS neat to see the whole Bat-family together. The storyline does have a lot of dynamism and excitement in it. I do find myself anticipating every forthcoming issue, in much the same way I'd anticipate a new "big dumb action movie". And the art is obviously still quite good. Capullo finds a way to make the Joker's (needlessly disgusting and thematically pointless) new look sort of okay.
I guess what I would say in the end is that these Batman comics remind me A LOT of Spawn issues from the early-to-mid-'90s. I think comics like that are okay. I actually sort of get tired of fans in recent years who endlessly bash those comics. They do have flaws, but I think they can also be fun. What doesn't make any sense to me is how those same fans can bash old-school overwritten grim'n'gritty Image comics on the one hand, and yet speak of Snyder's Batman as if it deserved the Nobel Prize in Literature. It's basically a slightly-better-written version of Spawn circa 1995. Thematically and in terms of mood and style, it's very similar.
But I hope it ends with Tim Drake being tortured. And maybe a certain someone getting... flag-speared.
I didn't say it was a GREAT answer, but that's the answer.
If Hawk & Dove were facing a reborn Kestrel who was ripping people's throats out, eating babies, raped Dawn in front of Hank and then kissed Hank open-mouthed and told him he loved him so much he wanted to make him a better hero...the boards would be full of outrage, hand-wringing and won't someone please think of the children?
But if Batman does it it's cool. Because Batman.
/rim shot!
M
I've been away from comics for a few years, but dang. It hasn't been THAT long. I don't remember this much blood being drawn all over everything.
Loved the art. And I loved Hush's design. Looking back on it now, it was trite and obvious. And honestly, I didn't know it was rated that high to begin with.
Still, it holds a certain place in my heart (and bookshelf) for what it did for me.
When it didn't happen, I was okay with it, just disappointed. THEN when you find out how Hush & the rogues got kick started together, I called bullshit. No precedent, no clues, nothing; completely out of left field. That's what hurt the story for me...oh, and gas releasing nozzles from the cowl. WTF?!
M
Batman, for most of the modern era has been a dark, classically pulp-y type character with villains who kill, dark psychological themes and a gothic feel to the stories. He is the Darkknight Detective.. You can go "grim and gritty" with him because it's a part and parcel of the character going back to his beginnings. Other characters who DON'T have that expectation going in, when they turn dark, betray that expectation, and if you are going to do that, your story had better be DAMN good or you fail.
For example: JM DeMatties and Mike Zeck told a DARK story about Spider-Man, who had pretty much been a super-hero soap opera in Kraven's Last Hunt. It went against the type of stories done with the character, but it was SO well done, it worked. Then, when they did "The Other" with a clearly less talented team, the Darkness of the storytelling failed and you are stuck with Spider-Man eating someone's head. (Yep, in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #3...not so friendly after all, I guess)
You don't pick up an Archie comic expecting to see Veronica getting an STD and going blind, you don't buy Deadpool and expect to see a morose emo character decrying violence in America and you don't pick up the Teen Titans expecting to see the villain threatening to rape everyone (OK, I guess you DO after Identity Crisis...but you shouldn't).
It's not "grim and gritty" on its own that deserves outrage, it's when they graft it on to characters it simply doesn't fit. When I pick up the X-Men, I expect super-hero soap opera and melodrama. When I pick up Batman, I expect Batman against the darkest of crimes and when I pick up the JLA, I expect the Biggest Guns in the DC Universe. When you don't get that, the book fails.
IMHO.
Agree with everything you're saying though.