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What happens when the Joker stops being crazy and starts being angry?

About halfway through Joker, Harvey Dent explains to Jonny Frost, the Joker’s newest acolyte/henchman, just exactly what Jonny’s future is.  Harvey explains clearly to Jonny how little the Joker values human life and what he does to his supposed “friends” and “allies.”  Harvey lays it all out for Jonny, including telling Jonny what will happen if he keeps following the Joker down the path that they are currently going.

And then everything happens almost the exact way that Harvey said it would.

Joker writer Brian Azzarello has forged a career in crime and dirt.  Almost none of his books have been about good guys versus bad guys.  It’s all about bad guys versus even worse guys as the readers are left to try and figure out which character’s morals are slightly less evil or villainous than the next.  There’s no good guys; only varying shades of corruption.  His newest graphic novel Joker doesn’t even offer those shades.

Azzarello’s Joker has much in common with Heath Ledger’s cinematic Joker than in almost anything that has appeared in a comic before.  This isn’t the clown prince with poisonous fish that kill people with a smile.  This isn’t a crazy but funny villain looking for the next murderous punchline.  The Joker in this graphic novel tears through Gotham like a tornado, sucking anything and everything into his vortex.  Jonny Frost gets sucked in, thinking at first that it would be cool but quickly discovering the truth; the Joker just doesn’t care about anyone or anything.  The Joker is only a force for destruction and he’ll use anything and anyone as his target.

Joker is an odd book; a movie tie-in without being one, a book that wants to be mature but has to hide behind innuendo and suggestion, more of a character study than an actual story and the concept spins out of Azzarello and Bermejo’s Lex Luthor mini from three or four years ago.  Oddly enough, both books share some of the same weaknesses, particularly both are more explorations of a single character rather than a satisfying narrative.  The character we’re supposed to follow and possibly identify with is Jonny Frost, an ambitious thug who believe that the Joker is his shot at fame.  Through Frost’s journey, we see the Joker as a man at first to envy and want to be like but progress to seeing him as a monster of destruction and chaos.

The true story arc in this book belongs to Jonny but it may as well have ended once Harvey talked to Jonny about the Joker and Jonny’s future because in one scene, Azzarello lays out the plot of the rest of the book.  At that point, it only becomes a matter of how everything will happen rather than if it will happen.  The sick thrill in the remainder of the book at that point becomes seeing how sick and violent the Joker is. Azzarello and Berjemo produce a visceral experience, riding with the Joker and slowly getting sick and disgusted over his actions.

There’s a strange maturity that this book is trying to achieve.  Released from Arkham Asylum, the Joker turns to the city and flips it his middle finger.  Of course, the panel where it happens only suggests it as Joker’s finger rises up mostly off panel.  And then there’s the drugs that seem to be quite prevalent when Harley Quinn is around—or at least the sex doll that looks like Harley Quinn.  Joints and cocaine use by Joker and Harley are never expressly shown but strongly implied.  It feels like Azzarello is trying to bring a 100 Bullets level of maturity to something that still has to sell movies, toys and coloring books.  That ends up making a book that’s trying to be something it can never really be.  Of course they’re not going to show the Joker snorting blow before going on the next murder spree but Azzarello and Bermejo have got no problem letting you think that’s exactly what’s happening.

While they may have been unable to explicitly show anything in this book, Lee Bermejo, Mick Gray, and Patricial Mulvihill create a visually dirty and grimy experience.  Bermejo and Gray combine to produce a starkly contrasted book and Mulvihill adds incredible heat and energy to the story.  Similar to an HBO show like The Sopranos or Deadwood, the visualsestabllish so much of the emotion and drive of this story.

The unsatisfying element in this book is that there’s no solid conclusion.  By the time Azzarello and Bermejo get to what could be a final showdown with Batman, the book just seems to end without supplying any conclusions or finales.  Azzarello and Bermejo build up a story solid story in what happens when the Joker is released from the asylum but, in the end, have little to say about that strange plot contrivance.  That he got released isn’t the story.  The story isn’t even really about how he tries to rebuild some kind of little empire which ends up just being another plot contrivance with no ending.

There are a lot of types of stories Joker tries to be but in the end, it falls short of most of them.  Azzarello and Bermejo try to take a walk on the proverbial wildside but get hampered and bogged down by not being able to get too wild or crazy.

Joker
Written by: Brian Azzarello
Pencilled by: Lee Bermejo
Inked by: Lee Bermejo and Mick Gray
Colored by: Patricia Mulvihill
Lettered by: Robert Clark

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