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A visit to Arkham with your guide, The Joker!

I know that this is going to shock many of you, but there’s this little teeny tiny indie film called “The Dark Knight” coming out in less than two weeks. I know. Just take a breath and lie down. Anyway, with the coming of such a film, the people at DC have to come up with some kind of marketing tie-in, preferably a new limited series that will showcase the main villain. For “Batman Begins”, they did a Ra’s Al Ghul Year One series, which was actually pretty cool. And since this upcoming film features Batman’s opposite number/arch-enemy The Joker, naturally they must have a Joker comic. And for this, they have come out with Joker’s Asylum, in which The Joker himself serves as narrator from his cozy cell in Arkham and talks about some of the other inmates, as well as himself. Essentially, they’ve taken the most terrifying character in the DCU and reduced him to the level of horrific insanity one would normally associate with The Cryptkeeper. Not terribly exciting.

In the first issue of this series, we are treated to The Joker walking us through one of his own insane adventures. A game-show called Hold ‘Em or Fold ‘Em, which is like Jeopardy meets The Joker’s Wild (I’m talking about the game show here), where the host, announcer and presenter have fun names like Flip Felchensteiner, Gaylord Spiceland, and my personal favorite, Condoleezza Jellyhole, and the contestants are competing for a 1977 Chevy Chevelle (which makes me wonder if writer Arvid Nelson was drinking absinthe straight-up or on the rocks when he was conceiving this). Well, The Joker appears on the show in the disguise of the host, with two henchmen in tow (one with a Hawkman mask and the other with a Wonder Woman mask) who threaten to kill the audience and promises to kill the contestants if they get an answer wrong. And behind the scenes of this all is the greedy, selfish producer who is thrilled at the possibility that someone might get killed. Well, no one does get killed, but the producer is revealed for being the total jerkwad that he is. Batman shows up, and the day is saved. But in the interim, we are treated to a little morality play.

People go to Boxing matches to watch people get the snot beat out of them. Many people watch NASCAR hoping to see a horrific crash. As long as the people watching aren’t getting hurt, they don’t really mind seeing it happen to someone else. I am not exempt from this. There is a certain vicarious release of fear and excitement in watching something dangerous. I think that, especially over the last several years, society has spawned billions of voyeurs. We spend thousands of hours searching the web for videos of… well, several different things. The story that is within the pages of this comic is one that we’ve seen several times before, and in better ways. This is nothing new, nor is it anything truly disturbing, which is what we want to see from The Joker. The thing that does spin my wheels is how much of this, if any of it, is real, or if it’s just The Joker’s imagination? And maybe that’s what they’re trying for here. If it was just communicated a little more effectively, then perhaps this issue would have been a little more interesting. Also, artist Alex Sanchez does some interesting visuals here, but nothing really exciting.

The title of this tale is “The Joker’s Mild”. Extraordinarily appropriate.

Joker’s Asylum #1
“The Joker’s Mild”
Written by Arvid Nelson
Art by Alex Sanchez
Colors by Jose Villarrubia
Letters by Rob Leigh

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