Joker (graphic novel)

AUTHOR: Azzarello, Brian

ARTIST: Lee Bermejo (illustrator); Mick Gray (inker); Patricia Mulvihill (colorist); Robert Clark (letterer)

PUBLISHER: DC Comics

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2008

Publication History

Joker is an original graphic novel created by Eisner Award-winning writer Brian Azzarello and artist Lee Bermejo. The duo had previously collaborated on the 2005 DC Comics limited series Lex Luthor: Man of Steel, as well as on the 2003 graphic novel Batman/Deathblow: After the Fire, which also marked Azzarello’s first time writing the Batman character.

A Chicago native who claims former involvement with petty crime that included some jail time, Azzarello has become one of the most prominent writers of twenty-first-century American comics. He began to garner wide recognition in 1999 with the launch of his and Eduardo Risso’s 100 Bullets, an Eisner Award-winning noir crime comic published by DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint that delved into the seedy underbelly of the criminal class, focusing on themes of vengeance and moral ambiguity and propelled by realistic dialogue and unglamorized depictions of urban violence.

Bermejo is a self-taught artist who began his career working at WildStorm comics. His first collaboration with Azzarello was in 2001 on issue 26 of 100 Bullets. In 2005, his work with Azzarello on Lex Luthor: Man of Steel was noted for its “sleek coloring and line design.”

In 2004, after his work with Bermejo on After the Fire, Azzarello took on the Batman character again, writing his acclaimed Batman: Broken City graphic novel, collaborating with Risso. Following the 2005 release of Lex Luthor: Man of Steel, Azzarello and Bermejo formed the concept for Joker, intending to give Batman’s nemesis the same treatment they gave Superman’s foe Lex Luthor.

Plot

Beginning with the Joker’s inexplicable release from Gotham City’s Arkham Asylum, Joker is narrated by the Joker’s henchmen Jonny Frost as he follows and assists the Joker in his bid to reclaim his one-time criminal territory that was divvied up amongst various crime bosses after the Joker’s incarceration. What follows is a swath of psychotic violence cut through the city by the Joker, as he encounters figures from Batman’s rogues gallery, including Killer Croc, the Penguin, the Riddler, Two-Face/Harvey Dent, and Harley Quinn, as well as Batman himself.

The Joker is released from Arkham Asylum under mysterious circumstances. He is picked up by an ambitious but low-ranking gangland solider named Jonny Frost. The Joker makes known his intentions to reclaim the criminal holdings he lost during his time in Arkham.

The Joker begins to reestablish his criminal empire when he single-handedly robs a bank by threatening the bank manager with a photograph of the manager’s daughter that has been soaked in blood. He then meets with the Penguin, who is in charge of a majority of Gotham’s monetary trade, and muscles him into “investing” the money.

The Joker, with Jonny Frost acting as his chauffeur, embarks on a brutal spree of murder and intimidation throughout the various tribes of the Gotham criminal underworld in order to show the Gotham criminals that he is once again in charge of the turf and the money that they had appropriated during his incarceration. A large number of Gotham’s midlevel crime bosses are murdered during this period. During another meeting between the Joker and the Penguin, it is revealed that Harvey Dent, the major crime boss in Gotham, who is physically disfigured and has a split personality, is extremely displeased with the Joker’s most recent wave of violent actions.

After being abducted and intimidated by Harvey Dent and a corrupt police detective in his employ, Frost meets the Joker and Killer Croc at a warehouse, where they do business with the Riddler, Edward Nygma; the Joker is given a briefcase, the contents of which he plans to use as leverage against Dent.

Following a failed assassination attempt by some of Dent’s corrupt police officers, the Joker engages in a destructive war against Dent’s rackets until Dent agrees to engage in a face-to-face meeting at the Gotham Zoo. The negotiations break down and turn violent, provoked by the Joker, and Dent’s henchmen are slaughtered; the Joker promises Dent that he knows a way to kill one of Dent’s split personalities.

Following their encounter, the Joker goes on a random and murderous spree, while Dent seeks out Batman and pleads for him to intervene and stop the Joker. Soon after, Batman subdues Harley Quinn and Killer Croc and his associates and pursues Frost and the Joker to a bridge over Gotham harbor. The confrontation ends when the Joker shoots Frost in the chin, Batman subdues the Joker, and Frost falls off the bridge, presumably to his death.

Characters

•Jonny Frost, a character created for this graphic novel, is the narrator of the story and an ambitious but low-ranking member of a criminal organization associated with the Joker. He is sent to pick up the Joker from Arkham Asylum after his release, and the Joker takes a liking to him. He seizes the opportunity to work for the Joker as the chance for which he has been waiting to increase his criminal notoriety and power.

•The Joker is incarcerated in Arkham Asylum for untold reasons. His inexplicable release at the story’s beginning propels the violent and chaotic events that transpire throughout the narrative. He is depicted as having green hair, white skin, and a “Glasgow smile.” Throughout the course of the story, he engages in drug abuse, a rape, and a slew of vicious murders and robberies, in the name of reclaiming his criminal empire. He is psychotic and apparently without remorse and even kills innocents with no gangland or criminal connections. He is shown to be paranoid and strongly fearful of Batman.

•Harley Quinn, an attractive, young female stripper working at the “Grin and Bare It” nightclub at the story’s opening, quickly assumes the role of the Joker’s mute bodyguard. She is frequently seen holding weapons and is present at many of the Joker’s confrontations. She never speaks but appears to be the Joker’s most valued and trusted underling.

•Killer Croc, a circus freak with a skin disorder (a depiction that aligns with the character’s original incarnation in 1983), is depicted as a large black gang leader whose skin disorder gives him a scaly appearance. The narrative implies that he is a cannibal.

•The Penguin is a business associate of the Joker and in charge of handling much of the money of the Gotham underworld.

•Harvey Dent, a.k.a. Two-Face, is the leader of Gotham racketeering. The left side of his face is horribly scarred and disfigured, giving him a gruesome appearance. He has a split personality and is terrified that the Joker will be able to kill one of his two personalities.

•The Riddler, a.k.a. Edward Nygma, depicted as a young hustler and gunrunner, is high-ranking enough to have a cadre of his own criminal gunmen.

•Batman is an almost omnipresent force in this story. The criminal class of Gotham is paranoid about his involvement. He appears briefly in the events of the story.

Artistic Style

Bermejo’s work on Joker has been widely praised for the way its grittiness evokes the sense of a dark and sinister Gotham City, one in which the paranoia felt by both criminals wary of Batman and citizens afraid of the criminal class is palpable in the confines of each panel.

Opening with wide-shot, cinematic views of the smoggy Gotham skyline, then quickly zooming in to the buildings, revealing the griminess of Gotham’s urban life, the panel art delves into the often unpleasant life of the city streets. The panels are cramped, often featuring close-ups on the heavily lined faces of the often ugly characters, lending a sense of uncomfortable intimacy to readers as they are plunged into the bleakness of the Gotham underworld. It is an underworld in which violence is frequently used to resolve conflict; Bermejo’s artwork does not shy away from this violence, instead depicting its brutality starkly, such as when a victim of the Joker is skinned alive and his mutilated body is the main feature of six separate panels.

Muted colors are used throughout, and the overall feel is that Gotham is a dirty, dangerous, and chaotic city. This is reflected in the Joker’s actions, which are violent, deranged, and unpredictable throughout the story. An emphasis is often placed on these actions in the pacing of the panels, with frequent beats in the action scenes. Some of these beats are punctuated by the fact that Bermejo takes over the inking duties from Mick Gray on various pages and panels throughout the work. While Gray’s inking adds a lot of jagged roughness to Bermejo’s original pencillings, Bermejo’s inking tends to smooth out everything, causing the characters and their actions to become hyperrealistic in their depictions. This often allows for the characters’ emotions to become emphasized in an exaggerated but stark fashion. Bermejo’s inking frequently makes a great impact on the overall pacing of the scene, causing the reader to focus on the detailed beauty just slightly longer than one might otherwise.

Bermejo’s hyperrealistic products are somewhat haunting in their ugliness; Azzarello and numerous reviewers have used the term “ugly” as a great compliment in this case. The artwork took Bermejo more than two years to complete, and his great work is evident throughout.

Themes

Joker is a character study of both the Joker and the new character Jonny Frost. While the story chronicles the madness inherent in the Joker—described by fellow criminal Harvey Dent as a disease that plagues the city of Gotham—by following his murderous and chaotic actions, the narrative also pays attention to the development of the narrator Frost. Simply an ambitious, low-ranking criminal at the beginning of the story, Frost looks up to the Joker, wanting to emulate him and in turn gain some of his power, which has been acquired through fear and intimidation. By the end, however, Frost has come to realize the true depths of the Joker’s depravity and the chaos that propels him; by this point, it is too late for Frost.

Unlike some depictions of the Joker, who is often considered Batman’s greatest villain, Azzarello’s portrayal of the character in Joker is not so much a supervillain as he is a hyperrealistic criminal, one who is violent, depraved, and extreme, but, like the rest of the Gotham depicted in Joker, not so extreme as to be outside the realm of possibility in the real world.

Impact

Released in 2008, the same year as Christopher Nolan’s widely popular Batman film The Dark Knight, which costarred actor Heath Ledger as the Joker, a performance for which he received a posthumous Academy Award, Azzarello and Bermejo’s Joker, released several months after Nolan’s film, received a fair bit of attention largely because of the creators’ well-received previous collaborations and because Bermejo’s depiction of the Joker so closely resembled Ledger’s portrayal of the psychotic criminal clown. While this visual similarity was entirely coincidental, as Bermejo’s Joker had been designed as a concept years earlier and Nolan’s film crew was notoriously secretive prior to the film’s release, the two Jokers are congruent and exist in fictional universes not entirely dissimilar.

Both Azzarello and Bermejo’s Gotham and Nolan’s Gotham are considered more realistic takes on the city and the idea of its criminal class than many preceding comics and film depictions. While both are hyper-realistic in their approach, both also have a gritty sense of realism and refrain from adding elements of the supernatural that have appeared in other Batman-related works. This is keeping with an overarching trend in twenty-first-century modern comics toward a sense of gritty, postdeconstructionist hyperrealism.

Further Reading

Azzarello, Brian, and Eduardo Risso. 100 Bullets (1999-2009).

Azzarello, Brian, and Lee Bermejo. Lex Luthor: Man of Steel (2005).

Miller, Frank, and David Mazzucchelli. Batman: Year One (1987).

Moore, Allan, and Brian Bolland. Batman: The Killing Joke (1988).

Bibliography

Azzarello, Brian. “Exploring the Joker: Brian Azzarello Talks.” Interview by Steve Ekstrom. Newsarama, September 2, 2008. http://www.newsarama.com/comics/090802-AzzarelloJoker.html.

Azzarello, Brian. “The Joker’s Wild Ride.” Interview by Dan Phillips. IGN Comics. http://comics.ign.com/articles/923/923283p2.html.

Bermejo, Lee. “Lee Bermejo: Master of Pencil and Ink.” Interview by Richard Serrao. Optimum Wound Comics, May 11, 2009. http://www.optimumwound.com/lee-bermejo-master-of-pencil-and-ink.htm.

Reid, Calvin. “Joker.” Review of Joker, by Brian Azzarello. Publishers Weekly 256, no. 1 (January 5, 2009): 24.