Joker Origin Revealed? (Spoilers)

[Morgan]

Geoff Johns? Hard pass. After the way Doomsday Clock turned out and how he handled the DCEU, Batman: Earth One, Trinity War, Flash: Rebirth, Flashpoint, N52 Shazam, and Villain's Journey? He should be the last person behind Three Jokers. And this story is, what, 5 years too late and 3 continuities ago or something? New 52 was a clusterfk to begin with by trying to cram all the Robins' tenures into 5 years along with Barbara being paralyzed and recovering acrobatics-tier mobility in record time. Even with DC Rebirth adding the "missing ten years", there being "three Jokers" to explain entire different comics runs that are far over a decade apart, while Batman is still the same Batman from start to finish is weird, and, no one noticed? Not Batman, not his sidekicks, not even Joker's sidepieces or the rest of the criminal underworld?

Anyway, no use reading a story set in the Bat-universe by a guy that writes like he hates Batman and all the memes surrounding him, and characterizes Bats according to whatever will allow him to "take him down 1000 notches" by using other characters as mouthpieces for how much he personally doesn't like Batman.

Prediction: None of the Jokers will die permanently and Joker as a concept won't die, because as much as Geoff Johns hates the BatGod meme, Joker is basically going to be JokeGod so everything that happens is "part of the Joker's master plan" and retroactively bites the heroes in the ass. Especially Batman. Because Reasons.

 

[V's patron]

I read issue 1 and liked it. I enjoyed it more than ''Joker War" over in the main comic. Granted i'm more interested in the new characters like clownhunter, punchline, ghostmaker, the designer, underboss etc than the old faces......

Which is a trend I see popping up regarding how I interact with my personal fandom but I digress.

Personally I gave up caring about DC/Marvel continuity and tend to prefer the more expiremental side stuff than the "vanilla"/"patchwork" main continuity. For reference I mostly read the Sandman imprint and Far Sector. My favorite DTV was JL: Gods and Monsters and I loved ''Beware The Batman" (you were too good for us....)

 

[Morgan]

The writing and art in this first issue was predictably Johns entertaining his worse impulses. There's a reason why Alan Moore said the industry was "going through [his] trashcan like raccoons in the dead of the night", and it's the same reason that drove Johns to include a scene where a Joker goes out of his way to run over a raccoon with a truck. Moore said that quote over a decade ago and Johns is still feeling some type of way about it? Can't stop rooting through another dude's trash.

He really wants us to know his opinion on Jason's character since Death In The Family. He couldn't just let it be an arc of Jason repurposing the name of an enemy and reclaiming it as part of his development beyond "the worst Robin" after hitting a low point, moving out of the trauma that Joker inflicted on him to do other things. Joker takes a verbal crowbar to that by adding new information, retconning Jason's development beyond Death In The Family as a continued low point that he's never gotten out of since that was Joker's "plan all along". Adding that Jason plead for his life and offered to be "[Joker's] Robin", and the humiliation inherent in stating that Jason's never moved beyond being a Robin -- contextualized as being submissive to either Batman or Joker -- presents Jason to the readers the way hack writers approach rape backstories in Strong Characters, except the subtext (implicitly crediting the abuser for the victim's strength) is now text (the abuser literally saying that's the case). Johns already humiliated Jason in the Arkham Knight videogame. Jason pleading for his life was there. Jason being utterly broken [and willing to divulge Batman's identity] was there. Jason "dying" pathetically was there.