Joker War? Is this related to Batman Who Laughs? The one where Batman trying to kill Joker..
So we are now 3 issues into this event, how are you guys enjoying it? I've been enjoying Tynion's run from the start, but I feel like he is continuing to do a great job. I like Harley being a main character and working with batman. Punchline isn't too annoying yet and I find her involement interesting. Clownhunter is definitely interesting and I doubt Bruce will care for a character like that though, so I don't see him becoming part of the family. And of course, the art continues to be amazing.
I really like it. And I think Clownhunter, as someone first inspired by Batman but, seeing the madness around him deciding that his methods doesn't work is extremely interesting. I don't think Clownhunter will be antagonistic to old Bat, but hopefully he'll make clear that he won't follow his rules and that in the narrows, Clowns and the likes have no place. In the long run, it could make for an interesting challenge for Batman : does he take down Clownhunter and risk allowing crime to return with a vengeance on the Narrows, or does he let him kill criminals ?
I hate it when Harley has a big role in these. Hate it. She's so annoying. It reminds me of her in Injustice (which I also hated her in).
I gotta be honest, I only like Harley as a character when she's the Joker's partner in crime. She's kind a of twisted, tragic figure like that, but on her own she just seems ridiculous. I hate how they try to force her into some kind of antihero (she's murdered WAY too many people to be let off the hook)
And I can't stand this stupid Punchline character. Come on, there's no way to make a new "Joker's girlfriend." That's been done and can't be done again. It's just a lame ripoff.
I agree that Punchline is ... a trite concept. But I do suppose there's still a little juice in the tank for the old standby notion that she will probably end up representing. Harley was hardly Joker's first moll. Like any riff on a vintage Gangster, he'd have a string of goons but he'd often have some eye-candy on his arm to appease his vanity, even if he didn't really give a crap about them. Sometimes just to be an inquisitive person to ask dumb questions so that he could egomaniacally explain things to someone - so basically a shallow mirror for him to talk to and clap congratulatory when he starts ranting.
While girlfriends weren't ever a big thing for Joker in early comics apart from maybe a small handful of occasions, once the 60s started rolling around it became very prevalent, obviously the comics and the '66 TV show reflecting each other heavily, so in that phase he often had some foolish girl tagging along. And at that point, why not? He'd grown less lethal and perhaps even his criminal reputation was starting to become something of an urban legend. He seemed to be cultivating that pop culture crime clown persona. Obviously the 70s rolled in and he started leaving the crime clown stuff behind and really shifted back to Golden Age style, and then the 80s came in and he decided to escalate, and he's been escalating ever since. But he still had girlfriends! Nicholson's 89 Joker famously played into the vanity and factored the fooling around with a gangster's girl into his origin, and then vain forever, he was about to throw that girlfriend out to try to get a new one infatuated by Vicki Vale. Dini introduced Harley Quinn shortly thereafter, and some of Dini's latter stuff continued to run with that "girlfriend" idea - particularly Case Study, which sort of riffs and incorporates various Joker origins including Red Hood Gang and old school racketeer gangs and stealing someone's girlfriend.
So the scenario with Punchline is that old cliche - oh look I've been chosen to be special in this anarchic scenario and it's like, "My Ideology" (obviously with the shallow real world "uber-fans of the Joker" kind of problematic stuff painted on). The problem is that Joker doesn't actually have an ideology and doesn't actually give a sh**. He just uses people, and any glimmer of humanity in how he might "care" for a woman (or Batman) at any given moment is mostly to appease his own vanity, or because it's one of the rare occasions when he's bored and his libido does kick in.
Harley's assessment is probably pretty right. But you know, dumb idealistic college kids, in this case a radical counter-culturalist anarchist. Some people gotta learn the hard way. Clearly Punchline is a piece of work with or without Joker. The question is when she suddenly becomes very, very radically aware of the cliche that she's found herself trapped in, what does she do? That's going to tell us whether or not she's an interesting character or not (like, does she fail and Joker beats her? Does he gaslight her like he did Harley? Does she utterly f*** him up somehow?) Until then, she's a living trope. I wish her costume was better.
The real question is - and it was actually raised this issue - What's Joker's actual motivation here? Because this is unlike him to do based on years of interactions. This is a Bane Plot. Worse still, it's coming literally right after a big Bane Plot.
I actually theorize that he's having a mid-life crisis. That would explain the iffy "Professor-Aged Guy" hanging out with the college-aged girl thing and getting his hands on Batman's Gadgets could be perceived as "Buying the Porsche."
Retro315 no more. Anonymity is so 2005.
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I also cannot stand Harley and don't like Tynion giving her this huge role in this story. I thought this new Harley was all about getting away from Joker and being her own independent woman, and also practically retconning her past into a innocent misguided abuse victim. So why shoehorn her into this storyline in such a major role? And knowing Tynion I'm sure he'll have Harley be the unsung hero who proves pivotal in defeating Joker. What a joke.
Yeah, you could tell pretty fast that this is one of the many (many) people who like to write Harley and I started rolling my eyes just as fast when she started showing up all the time.
I really don't want this guy to be on Batman long term and I wish that wasn't happening. He's never been anything but mediocre anyway and there are no original ideas in this run- everything feels like something we've all read a thousand times before, down to who's involved, etc.
First off, I am actually enjoying the tie-ins with Batgirl, Detective and Nightwing. The main title is up and down, and I don't think turning the "Designer" story into a very extended prologue to this story did it any favors, but when I say up and down I mean somewhat above average to really enjoyable. My issues with modern comic writing are plentiful here, lots of talking that just seems like the writer wanting to hear themselves, but the story is using some new characters to spice things up to keep it interesting along the way. Three more issues of the main book though seems pretty long, but then again the double shipping has always resulted in the story moving twice as slow.