Featured Review: Batman: Three Jokers #1

 

Writer: Geoff Johns

Artist: Jason Fabok

Colors: Brad Anderson

Letters: Rob Leigh

Cover: Fabok and Anderson

 The secret to making a good Joker story is to not make it about him. Sure, he is there and a major player, but he should not be the focus. Joker himself is a dull character. He has no ethos, no wants. He has no modus operandi. He is just chaos. He is an inherently one-dimensional character. The focus should be on the ways he interacts with and affects the other characters. Joker should be like the shark in Jaws: rarely seen, but always at the forefront of other characters’ thoughts as they wait for him to strike. The tension that creates drives the story. Three Jokers #1 weaponizes that tension to deliver the best Joker story in at least a decade and explore the traumas of its protagonists.

Full Spoilers for the issue. You’ve been warned.

There are 14 pages in this comic that feature one or more Jokers, not including flashbacks. In a normal comic, that is far too much. That is the opposite of the aforementioned rare shark sighting. But in a nearly 50-page comic, that is a nearly perfect amount of page space. Instead of focusing the story around the Joker(s), it is trained on Bruce Wayne, Barbara Gordon, and Jason Todd and the ways in which trauma effects people.

Bruce Wayne dresses up as a bat because it is how he deals with his pain. Is it the healthiest way to deal with his problems? No. Does it give him purpose and a reason to get out of bed? Absolutely. This issue opens with a nine-page sequence that highlights all of Bruce’s scars, both physical and mental, and their causes. Notably, it begins with multiple villains injuring him, transitions to numerous Joker incidents, and, finally, the night he watched his parents being gunned down.

Barbara Gordon was paralyzed by Joker. She could not walk, so she helped fight crime the best way she knew how: with her brilliant mind. Eventually, she walked again. In fact, her legs have gotten so strong that it is implied in this issue that she regularly breaks treadmills at her gym. That’s how she copes with her pain; she makes the symbol of that pain stronger than they were before. Of course, that does not prepare her for the direct confrontation she has with that painful past at the end of this issue.

Jason Todd handles his emotions more like Bruce than other Batfamily member. He fights, violently, to cope with the pain he feels. He has taken on the old moniker of the man he hates, the source of his pain, as an attempt at reclamation, but one can only wonder if it is holding him back, including Jason himself.

Jason’s insecurities come to a head in the final pages as a restrained Joker tries to provoke him and Barbara. Joker plays on the fact he goes by Red Hood, the worries Jason has about being the worst Robin, and how much trouble and pain Jason causes Bruce. It works. Jason fires a bullet right through his skull.

Instantly, Barbara confronts him, questioning what Jason just did and why. She had tried to stop him, throwing a batarang at his hand to make him miss. She missed. As Jason notes, Barbara never misses. She wanted this, consciously or not.

The trauma inflicted is what makes Joker such a compelling character. Trauma is something that never goes away. It can be dealt with and managed. The symbols of it can be reclaimed. It can be stuffed into a mental closet and not dealt with. There are many tacks taken by those that have been harmed. As Jason does standing over Joker’s dead body, we can only look at our methods and say, “I hope that’s the right one.”

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