BATMAN: THREE JOKERS
Three homicidal maniacs walk into a bar… oh, you’ve heard it.
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Publisher Dc/black Label
Writer Geoff Johns
Artist Jason Fabok
ISSUES 1-3 Legendary comics writer Alan Moore may have sworn off superheroes (and comics in general), but DC still seems unable to stop itself from exploiting his back catalogue with questionable “homages” any way it can. The recent Watchmen crossover/sequel Doomsday Clock apparently wasn’t enough; now, also from writer Geoff Johns, we have this three-issue Black Label prestige-format miniseries that desperately wants to match Moore’s acclaimed 1988 story
The Killing Joke.
The plot actually links back to a plot thread first set up in 2015, although Three Jokers’ connection to current DC Bat-continuity is nebulous at best. The central hook is Batman’s discovery that the Joker might actually be three separate people – and when a string of murders proves that the Three Jokers are real, Bruce has to team up with both Batgirl and ex-robin-turned-vigilante Jason Todd to track them down.
While the references and links to The Killing Joke aren’t as blatant and overwhelming as Doomsday Clock’s relationship to Watchmen (and the story also heavily references 1988’s classic Batman tale A Death In The Family), this is Johns very much trying to deliver a similar kind of definitive take on the relationship between Batman and the Joker. And, as with Doomsday Clock, from a technical perspective it’s a gorgeously executed comic, with atmospheric art from Jason Fabok and a handful of attention-grabbing set-pieces, including the grisly discovery of an experiment to create even more Jokers.
Unfortunately, this is also another case of Johns proving that as a writer, he isn’t even in the same aisle, let alone the same bookshop, as Alan Moore. The central concept of three Jokers teaming up would make for a potentially entertaining comicbook romp, but instead Johns treats it as if it’s high literature, delving into the trauma behind Bruce, Barbara Gordon and Jason Todd in a suffocating, superserious manner that can’t hide the emptiness at the heart of the story.
Three Jokers doesn’t have anything to say that hasn’t already been explored many times before in previous Bat-comics, and the “big twists” that Johns delivers towards the story’s climax range from the humdrum to the hilariously melodramatic and borderline ridiculous.
Admittedly, there are brief moments where Three Jokers delivers the classy, grown-up Batman thriller that it’s trying to be – but for the most part, this is another tired example of superhero storytelling that’s fixated on squeezing more value out of decades-old comics rather than actually aiming for something truly new. Saxon Bullock
Johns’s next comic will be the muchdelayed third volume of Batman: Earth One, with artist Gary Frank.
Fixated on squeezing value out of decades-old comics