Batman: Three Jokers #1 Discussion/Spoilers

[Rakzo]

Here it is people. The long-awaited Three Jokers storyline that was teased since the beginning of the Rebirth initiative way back in 2016. Geoff Johns has certainly been busy with his multiple projects so I can understand why this took so long and in retrospective it could have taken even longer (I mean, when is that Aquaman's Rise of the Seven Seas storyline going to release anyway?).

Sure, Johns is using the already overused Clown Prince of Crime and considering how derivative the current Joker War crossover in the Batman books is, I was not particularly claiming for more of him but I have to give it to the author, he's actually doing different with the character at least.

If there's something that I can appreciate about Johns is that, while he used to denigrate Batman a lot early on (which was understandable considering how overly-used he was in the 90s and early 2000s), he knows how to do something new whenever he takes him seriously. Take for example the early pages where we see Bruce's scars and we see how each one of them was produced by a different member of his rogue's gallery which builds-up for who produced the most of them, the Joker. This is pretty solid character work that involves multiple cast members and perfectly sets-up the plot. Bravo.

The good character work doesn't end there though since Batgirl and Red Hood also star in this book in interesting ways. We see how Barbara overcompensates the use of her legs as a symptom of what the Joker did and, while I was afraid that the author was making Jason more violent than usual, there are actually good justifications for it in story.

The mystery of the Three Jokers is still being explored with intriguing set pieces here and there that makes readers wonder where the story is going and who is really behind all of this and ends with a cliffhanger that is just shocking.

It wouldn't be a Johns' book of course if he didn't include obscure concepts and here we see Gaggy, Joker's original sidekick, back (and this is part of a joke to boot). Joe Chill also makes an appearance in a flashback but this time we see a bit of his personality since there seems the possibility that he actually took pity of Bruce and that's why he didn't kill him along with his parents. Good stuff.

Jason Fabok handles the art and I was missing his work too. Great and detailed artstyle that creates beautiful characters and delivers a pretty precise storytelling that follows the script perfectly.

Great beginning. Doubt anything will come close this week.

[Dark_Tzitzimine]

This book is a mess. No wonder it was bumped to non continuity limbo, the ramifications are so many and so stupid that I doubt any writer would be eager to deal with them.

I loved Johns work back on GL when he was just interested on telling a good story and not in trying to surpass far better writers than him like Moore or Morrison. Three Jokers is just an extremely poor attempt at character study that misses all the marks about what made the Joker become one of the most popular characters in fiction and instead delivers an attempt at be clever that face completely to hit its mark. The sad part is that if Johns didn't have the Three Jokers coexist, it would be a decent, if shallow, explanation to how does the Joker always cheat death. As it stands now is just a ridiculously contrived attempt at shocking the reader that only makes everyone in universe to look like complete morons.

Bruce, Jason and Barbara are written with the subtlety of a brick to the face and from this first issue, and while there is some degree of satisfaction at what Jason does to end the first issue, the reveal about what The Three Jokers are renders the whole thing meaningless.

Fabok art is decent but fails to deliver the sensation of movement or dynamism, where everything feels stilted. Paired with the weird panel layout leads to a bunch of wasted space, bloating the issue. They clearly tried to go for a TKJ feel, where every panel had a reason to be an build the tension of the story, essentially becoming a mother character in the story but here they failed miserably.

[Pohzee]

I thought the art during Red Hood and Batgirl's final scene was pretty fluid. I thought this was a pretty awesome issue and the most interested I've been in Red Hood in a long time. Dig the redesign for him and Batgirl, but Bruce's still needs to grow on me

[Rise]

It was definitely worth the wait and the first issue was great indeed. I was pleased with how well Johns handled Jason and everyone in general.

Can't wait for the next issue.

[Katana500]

I loved it!

I cannot wait to see what happens next. I'd be interested to hear peoples theories of what happens in the next two issues.

I think both Barbara and Bruce will snap and each kill a Joker.

[Myskin]

I'll quote myself from another thread:

Basically Johns is pulling the Toyman/Doctor Doom stunt again. In his Action Comics run, he made the Toyman not responsible for killing Cat Grant's son. The killer was his robotic clone.
Basically the classic Doctor Doom/Doombots trick. Or Arkham Knight, now that I think about it. Which he wrote.
I'll be damned if I understand what the point may be or how beneficial this could be to the Batman lore.

If what Johns was aiming at was approaching the Joker in a more "realistic" way, he spectacularly failed.
"Realistic" as in "it isn't possible for one villain to do all the things the Joker has done", or "it isn't possible for one villain to change so much from one issue to the other".
The classic "Joker reinvents himself every day" explanation isn't realistic at all, but I'd say that the vast majority of the readers had accepted it years ago. There have been some very good stories - mainly by Morrison - on this specific concept. Was there really a demand among readers for it to be discarded? I mean, it's not less realistic than having Batman surviving dozens of mortal wounds including a broken spine.

The multiple Jokers thing doesn't make it more realistic. If anything, it makes everything needlessly complicated. We basically should accept that thanks to relatively realistic tools (acid, surgery) one character has literally been able to clone himself. Same - identical - look. Same cultural background. Same psychological mindset. Same IQ. And no one, not even the people close to him - Batman, Harley Quinn - had ever realized anything.
Batman has tried to discover the Joker's secret ID for years. And he has NEVER realized that the Joker's DNA changes from one crime to the other one? Oh yes, apparently - that's what I get from one single balloon from this issue - Joker chemicals change DNA, too.
I don't understand how this change makes the Joker more interesting or scary. It makes his influence on the world needlessly contrived. Instead of a charismatic criminal we basically have a gang. And none of them is entirely responsible of ALL the crimes which have always been attributed to the Joker.

All in all, I think that Johns made this stuff just to give Jason Todd and Barbara Gordon some kind of compensation for what has happened in DITF and TKJ. I can see Barbara's Joker dying in #02 (she obviously won't be the one who kills him) and some kind of reshuffling of the cards at the end, with one surviving Joker and some doubts about which Joker has done what. So Johns basically did it for fan pandering.

But yes, it will probably be just a standalone, out of continuity story.

[The Cool Thatguy]

This strikes me as an attempt to reconcile different Jokers, and all I can think is 'why?'.

The Joker's always been whimsical. Anyone remember Mad Love, and what Joker did?

First, he became so furious at Harley for upstaging him, and screwing up the joke, that he threw her out a window. He was furious that Harley was trying to steal his glory.

Then, he freed Batman, leaving him unharmed.

And finally, he changes his mind, and would have killed Batman then and there if Batman hadn't redirected the shot.

Joker has always been impulsive and crazy. We don't need more to 'explain' that

[Dark_Tzitzimine]

Agreed, this is just again another writer trying too hard to leave their mark on the Batman Mythos. When the stories that did left a mark weren't written with the idea of becoming such thing and were just about telling a good story.

All in all, I think that Johns made this stuff just to give Jason Todd and Barbara Gordon some kind of compensation for what has happened in DITF and TKJ. I can see Barbara's Joker dying in #02 (she obviously won't be the one who kills him) and some kind of reshuffling of the cards at the end, with one surviving Joker and some doubts about which Joker has done what. So Johns basically did it for fan pandering.

I'd argue this is actually detrimental for their characters since what they need is not a "compensation" but to be able to move, learn, and heal from what the Joker did to them. And killing one of the clones doesn't mean anything if another will simply take the place of the one they kill.

[DurararaFTW]

I'll quote myself from another thread:

Basically Johns is pulling the Toyman/Doctor Doom stunt again. In his Action Comics run, he made the Toyman not responsible for killing Cat Grant's son. The killer was his robotic clone.
Basically the classic Doctor Doom/Doombots trick. Or Arkham Knight, now that I think about it. Which he wrote.
I'll be damned if I understand what the point may be or how beneficial this could be to the Batman lore.

If what Johns was aiming at was approaching the Joker in a more "realistic" way, he spectacularly failed.
"Realistic" as in "it isn't possible for one villain to do all the things the Joker has done", or "it isn't possible for one villain to change so much from one issue to the other".
The classic "Joker reinvents himself every day" explanation isn't realistic at all, but I'd say that the vast majority of the readers had accepted it years ago. There have been some very good stories - mainly by Morrison - on this specific concept. Was there really a demand among readers for it to be discarded? I mean, it's not less realistic than having Batman surviving dozens of mortal wounds including a broken spine.

The multiple Jokers thing doesn't make it more realistic. If anything, it makes everything needlessly complicated. We basically should accept that thanks to relatively realistic tools (acid, surgery) one character has literally been able to clone himself. Same - identical - look. Same cultural background. Same psychological mindset. Same IQ. And no one, not even the people close to him - Batman, Harley Quinn - had ever realized anything.
Batman has tried to discover the Joker's secret ID for years. And he has NEVER realized that the Joker's DNA changes from one crime to the other one? Oh yes, apparently - that's what I get from one single balloon from this issue - Joker chemicals change DNA, too.
I don't understand how this change makes the Joker more interesting or scary. It makes his influence on the world needlessly contrived. Instead of a charismatic criminal we basically have a gang. And none of them is entirely responsible of ALL the crimes which have always been attributed to the Joker.

All in all, I think that Johns made this stuff just to give Jason Todd and Barbara Gordon some kind of compensation for what has happened in DITF and TKJ. I can see Barbara's Joker dying in #02 (she obviously won't be the one who kills him) and some kind of reshuffling of the cards at the end, with one surviving Joker and some doubts about which Joker has done what. So Johns basically did it for fan pandering.

But yes, it will probably be just a standalone, out of continuity story.

Batman had never realised Joker's identity in canon already, despite not only DNA evidence, full dental records, fingerprints and facial recognition software but after the Joker has gone through the full legal system, successful arrest, trial, sentencing, incarceration, hundreds upon hundreds of times over. Readers have already accepted the Joker is magic and can do anything and be anything and warp the fabric of reality whenever neccesary, there's nothing too complicated to be included in what the Joker is. But the serious guy from the golden age can only hope to come back with a story like this.

[king81992]

I'll quote myself from another thread:

Basically Johns is pulling the Toyman/Doctor Doom stunt again. In his Action Comics run, he made the Toyman not responsible for killing Cat Grant's son. The killer was his robotic clone.
Basically the classic Doctor Doom/Doombots trick. Or Arkham Knight, now that I think about it. Which he wrote.
I'll be damned if I understand what the point may be or how beneficial this could be to the Batman lore.

If what Johns was aiming at was approaching the Joker in a more "realistic" way, he spectacularly failed.
"Realistic" as in "it isn't possible for one villain to do all the things the Joker has done", or "it isn't possible for one villain to change so much from one issue to the other".
The classic "Joker reinvents himself every day" explanation isn't realistic at all, but I'd say that the vast majority of the readers had accepted it years ago. There have been some very good stories - mainly by Morrison - on this specific concept. Was there really a demand among readers for it to be discarded? I mean, it's not less realistic than having Batman surviving dozens of mortal wounds including a broken spine.

The multiple Jokers thing doesn't make it more realistic. If anything, it makes everything needlessly complicated. We basically should accept that thanks to relatively realistic tools (acid, surgery) one character has literally been able to clone himself. Same - identical - look. Same cultural background. Same psychological mindset. Same IQ. And no one, not even the people close to him - Batman, Harley Quinn - had ever realized anything.
Batman has tried to discover the Joker's secret ID for years. And he has NEVER realized that the Joker's DNA changes from one crime to the other one? Oh yes, apparently - that's what I get from one single balloon from this issue - Joker chemicals change DNA, too.
I don't understand how this change makes the Joker more interesting or scary. It makes his influence on the world needlessly contrived. Instead of a charismatic criminal we basically have a gang. And none of them is entirely responsible of ALL the crimes which have always been attributed to the Joker.

All in all, I think that Johns made this stuff just to give Jason Todd and Barbara Gordon some kind of compensation for what has happened in DITF and TKJ. I can see Barbara's Joker dying in #02 (she obviously won't be the one who kills him) and some kind of reshuffling of the cards at the end, with one surviving Joker and some doubts about which Joker has done what. So Johns basically did it for fan pandering.

But yes, it will probably be just a standalone, out of continuity story.

This is less Doctor Doom and Doom bots/ Toy man's robotic double and more Metal Gear.The only difference is that there was only one body double in Metal Gear and the process of his creation was clearly explained.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Batman had never realised Joker's identity in canon already, despite not only DNA evidence, full dental records, fingerprints and facial recognition software but after the Joker has gone through the full legal system, successful arrest, trial, sentencing, incarceration, hundreds upon hundreds of times over. Readers have already accepted the Joker is magic and can do anything and be anything and warp the fabric of reality whenever neccesary, there's nothing too complicated to be included in what the Joker is. But the serious guy from the golden age can only hope to come back with a story like this.

None of that would mean anything unless Joker was already in the system before his acid bath. If he doesn't have a family to report him missing, then they wouldn't even have a missing person's report

[DurararaFTW]

None of that would mean anything unless Joker was already in the system before his acid bath. If he doesn't have a family to report him missing, then they wouldn't even have a missing person's report

Identifying the defendant is a pretty key part of a criminal trial.

[Coal Tiger]

As like, a product to read, I enjoyed this, but I'm kind of baffled as to why it exists.

If the point is to clear up inconsistencies in continuity - they don't actually need to be cleared up. The continuity is not somehow richer for having concrete reasons *why* Joker behaves differently sometimes. If it's trying to fulfill a certain function, it doesn't actually improve anything - it's answering a question that no one really asked.

If it's all out of continuity and just an elseworlds, it's even more pointless. Here's a reality where there were three Jokers? I guess? I know, I know, "it's an imaginary story... aren't they all?" but like, that kind of reduces this to just a vanity project that they were too far along with to abandon... which is what I suspect this story will end up being.

But like I said, as a story to read, I mostly enjoyed it. I like the kind of comic book version of the Keaton costume that Batman is wearing. I really like the art, and reading it was enjoyable. It just begs the question, if there were always three Jokers, why did they wait until now to commit simultaneous crimes?

I feel like in 10 years there will be a really interesting story of what exactly happened in the making of this book and how the story changed over time.

[bat39]

I thought it was a pretty solid issue and a great start to an intriguing story. Pretty amazed by all the negativity here!

I think its best not to think of it as some big earth-shattering event, but rather as a relatively small-scale mystery story.

The art was great. It seemed like an attempt to evoke the art of TKJ without being overtly derivative. I loved Batgirl's suit, and Batman's. They seemed like updated versions of their BTAS looks. Anytime I see Batman in the yellow oval these days is a treat!

Not entirely sold on Red Hood's suit, though its interesting that he wears the Robin tunic. I wonder if that's just a design choice, or if its inclusion is making a point about Jason.

Now for the story itself, the three Jokers were introduced but the distinctions between them aren't quiet so clear-cut. From what I can gather, these are the three versions that we're dealing with in the context of this story:

The Criminal: The guy who kills the Moxon crime family at the start. He seems to be the most 'serious' of the lot and the leader for now. It does seem so far that he's the one who's being paired up against Batman, in terms of the narrative structure (Batman watches his crime on the news). I think he's meant to represent the Joker as a criminal mastermind and mobster - a guy who meticulously plans and executes elaborate schemes and may not be 'insane' in any overt way. Could he be the 'original' Joker?

The Comedian: The guy who live-streams the killing of the 'Fatman' comedian. He seems to be the one who's being paired up against Batgirl, and appears to be the version who shot her. He's wearing the same shirt, for one! But at the same time, the name and the crime that he commits seems to evoke Joker as the egoistic comedian who gets frustrated when no one appreciates the humor in his 'pranks' and lashes out. Joker focusing on killing 'rival' comedians doesn't seem to fit in with the version from TKJ.

The Clown: The guy who 'Jokerizes' and kills the three men at the Ace Chemical Factory, who Jokerizes the fish and the sharks at the aquarium, and who ends up getting killed by the Red Hood. Needless to say, he's the one who's paired up against Jason, and claims to be the version who beat him to death with the crowbar. But interestingly, he also claims that the Hawaiian shirt belongs to him - implying that he's the Joker from TKJ as well. But the connection to Ace Chemicals also suggests that he might have been the one who was Red Hood and originally fell into that vat of chemicals. This Joker also falls back on 'classic' tropes like the acid flower, laughing fish, razor-edged playing cards and using an old henchman, 'Gaggy'. 'The Clown' is a pretty generic label to attach to the Joker, so it seems that this version is every bit the definitive Joker. But now he's dead...so who knows?

Anyway, if nothing else, color me intrigued!

[The Cool Thatguy]

Identifying the defendant is a pretty key part of a criminal trial.

They can still bring charges without that.

Don't get me wrong, it does strain disbelief that no one knows the Joker's past for certain. But its not impossible, and most identifying information would require a prior crime for comparison