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Comic Book Brain by Erik Weems. Business site is here.
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THINGS TO CLICK
ONLINE COMICS
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REVIEW Story: Paul Dini
But, in what I am thinking is the best Batman tale I have seen this year (though Bats is hardly in the story at all), Paul Dini and crew have fashioned a brief little story in which the Joker's bone fides as a disturbing, homicidal madman are resurrected in an effective and artful way. And that takes some doing considering the number of times the character invented by Jerry Robinson in 1940 has been used, over and over ad nauseam. By juxtaposing this character into a reasonable facsimile of "reality," that is, just another man behind the wheel of a big SUV being driven through town, the terrifying picture of an automobile as a weapon becomes the vehicle for a tight, short burst of a story. The first four pages seem like typical Batman fodder setting up a plot, a discussion between Tim (the "new" Robin) and Dick Grayson (the "old" Robin - I think it's Dick, the story does not indicate who it actually is) about the Joker, brought on by a television broadcast of a Marx Brothers movie. Well, yes, the Joker is a sad, failed comedian who through some tragic accident became this arch-criminal, blah blah. There's some overheated "psychoanalysis" tossed in:
This scene is told in flashback, because New Robin (Tim) has been picked up (apparently by pure happenstance) by a joyriding Joker when Robin was pinned down between two warring gangs. Quickly gassed, Robin is trussed up into the front passenger seat from where he is a witness to the randomly plowing-down of pedestrians on Gotham's snowy streets. Like a berserk holiday shopper running errands, the Joker passes off each hit-and-run as if it were an accidental fluke, even calling in wrong addresses to the 911 emergency service, and then heading (with the helpless, mute Robin beside him) to a fast food drive-through. Of course this erupts into bloody mayhem too, but I cannot tell if this is because Joker intended to all along, or if this character truly does lose his (rather prodigious) temper when the window girl cannot keep up with his highly detailed order. A sense of unpredictability, along with a glimpse of something like a human-sized (versus comic-book sized) megalomania, all set within the common, everyday of real life simultaneously makes for the unnerving success of this tale. Don Kramer's artwork is stiff but serviceable. There are times I cannot tell what is visually happening. Near the beginning of this 22-page story, it looks like the Joker's SUV is already smashed in the front with a cracked windshield when he picks up Robin, implying he had already been busy elsewhere. But then a few pages later the car is in pristine shape with a solid windshield. Referencing back and forth I realize that this battered car (though colored the same as the Joker's vehicle) is some other car altogether, though not one of the two original cars that were chasing Tim/Robin on the first page. Where did this fourth car come from? Also, when Joker pulls up into the drive-through to order the "big beefer extra mustard" burger, I am pondering if it is rational to expect the window girl to notice Robin in the passenger seat, trussed up and gagged with a Christmas ornament in his mouth, plus the two dead bodies in the back seat staring into the night with "Joker grins" plastered across their faces? After all, with the Joker hanging from the driver's window, gesticulating and shouting into her face, maybe she might miss on these extraneous details, but the manager she calls to the window takes no notice either (not that he has long to gaze at the angry Joker who promptly pulls a gun!) Maybe in a city like Gotham, this just is not that unusual? The denouement at the end of this tale wraps it all up with a little "Daddy talk" from Batman who has finally shown up. What puzzles me is the identity of the dead body on the street surrounded by Gotham Police flares and an officer with his arms in the air stopping traffic. It's clearly not the Joker, so who is it? The panel detail is shown twice (in fact it is identical, the same panel cut and pasted) - - but what does it mean?
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December 13, 2006 
For a seasoned Batman comic book reader, another tale of the Joker capturing Robin would immediately seem like one more time an overused story plot was being rehashed for the hundredth, if not a thousandth, time. Joker captures Robin; Batman saves Robin; Joker goes back to Arkham Asylum: as predictable as the motion of the sun. 
