Batman #13

So do I scan all of these Death of the Family Issues with the Joker mask showing?

Or the real face?

If I scan them all with the Joker face, it'll get repetitive very quickly. Like in two issues! But if all the faces underneath are as simply as this Batman one, the Joker face wins out as much more dynamic and exciting. I also kind of like the different eyes that will show through the Joker mask. I'll probably just end up doing both every time. Who knows? I guess whatever mood I'm in when I read Batgirl #13 next.

I wish the Joker mask continued around the other side. Especially since it's October. I want to see dozens of people wearing paper Joker masks at all the parties this year. And then the one guy will show up with a mask made from real human skin and embarrass the hell out of all the other lazy losers.

The issue begins with Harvey and Gordon having a smoke on the roof of the precinct and chatting about the weird things that have been happening in Gotham lately. It's relaxed and foreboding all at the same time. Harvey is worried that the number of bad omens happening in Gotham right now will only make the press condemn the police more when the next bad thing happens simply because they should have seen it coming. Even though Jim knows this is probably true, there isn't a lot they can do about it. Currently Gordon is worried about trying to quit smoking. And of course while they're relaxing and speaking halfheartedly about whatever the omens portend, the portended pulls up at the police station in a white delivery van.

"Pick up for one clown face."

The Joker wanders about the police station terrorizing Gordon with his routine. The jokes part of his act was pretty scary but I think the fact that instead of punch lines he would just murder another cop was what horrified Gordon the most. It all happened in the dark, though, so Jim could only shine his flashlight randomly about the room and listen to all of The Joker's new material.

I made up this joke this week: "How many poltergeists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One but your ass hurts like hell afterward."

News travels fast around the Bat-Family. It's like a long lost uncle who would ruin every family gathering has suddenly returned for the next reunion and everybody is freaking out about what he's going to do to the potato salad. And it doesn't take long before everybody loses their appetites.

So Batman has plenty of time to stop the Joker since this first midnight deadline is sort of a soft deadline. You know. Because Mayor Hady is a piece of shit so it's okay if Joker kills him.

Joker is dropping so many clues to so many different things during his appearances that Batman's detective ability is faltering. He's getting all of The Joker's references and homages and double entendres. He's seen this act enough times that he knows it by heart. But Joker's changed his encore and Batman has no idea what it is.

This is why Batman keeps him alive. It's the challenge.

The calling card turns out to be yet another Joker Toxin that's already been delivered to the police assigned to watch over Mayor Hady. Joker always manages to poison people before he makes his first appearance. Perhaps that's why Gordon and Batman and the others get so stressed out when The Joker appears. Because it means people are already dead but they just don't know it yet. Seems to happen every time.

The calling card, by the way, Batman figures out is three non-essential, non-reactive ingredients in the Joker's new toxin. The initial letter of the three ingredients are A, C, and E. Ace Chemicals. Where The Red Hood became The Joker.

Batman meets up with The Red Hood inside the plant. Batman realizes pretty quickly that the person under the mask is not The Joker. The Red Hood tells Batman his plan. He's going to kill each and every member of the Bat Family because they're making Batman weak. I think it's because The Joker is jealous that Batman has so many new friends to play with. Whatever the case, Batman doesn't care for his family being threatened and he attacks. As he charges, a gigantic mallet swings down from the roof and knocks him in a vat. Well, well. Who do we know that likes oversized hammers?

Maybe I should have read Suicide Squad first to see how Harley gets out of Regulus's clutches.

While Batman is distracted and caught in a vat filling with chemicals in much the same way that one of the Adam West television episodes might have ended, Joker is busy putting his plan into action.

I guess this definitively answers the question if Joker knows Batman's identity. Unless he's just meaning to kill Bruce Wayne because he's Batman's financial support. Except that sort of ironic twist was just done in The Penguin story in Detective Comics. Again.

So Joker wants to turn Batman into a mean, pissed off, loner again. But why did he have his face cut off in the first place? Did he simply just want to turn his metaphorical clown mask into a literal clown mask? I'm sure Tony S. Daniel didn't have any real idea in mind when he had it happen so I'm expecting Snyder to use that moment to explain why the Joker has changed so dramatically.

The back-up story involves The Joker preparing Harley for her encounter with Batman. His jokes and teasing are more mean-spirited than his usual farcical attitude. He scares the hell out of Harley as he threatens to cut her face off too. But even though she's scared and frightened and abused and says she's not ready, she still accepts that it's going to happen. Of course it doesn't. He sticks the Red Hood on her and leaves her for Batman. It's this story that explains this panel:

I have a feeling The Joker is going to lose a lot of fans who thinks it's okay for him to be a murdering psychopath but treating your girl like this? Unacceptable, clown!

Batman #13 Rating: Still the top comic of The New 52. Come on, Snyder. Make a mistake already! Morrison and Azzarello want a chance at #1.

P.S. The DC Comics All Access section at the end of the comic is about the television show, Arrow. It begins thus: "It's an awesome time to be a Green Arrow fan!" Excuse me? Really? The first thirteen issues of Green Arrow sucked cosmic monkey poo, so I'm pretty sure being a Green Arrow fan is currently a really depressing thing to be. Although the show, Arrow, was much better than anything the Reboot has done with the character. Maybe I should just pretend the television show is the new comic.

Red Hood and the Outlaws #0

These team books have been focusing on just one member of the team in these Zero Issues, so my guess is we'll learn how Jason Todd became Robin. And then like Batgirl's Zero Issue, the Joker will make an appearance at the end to fuck some serious shit up.

The first page has three panels (discounting the panel with the title in it). Since Jason Todd is narrating, these must be very important moments in his life. His mother giving birth to him in Panel One. His dad cheating on his mom while she's giving birth in Panel Two. The Joker bashing his head in because fans in the eighties hated Robin and were complete assholes in Panel Three. I believe DC's vote to see whether Jason Todd lives or dies was a precursor to internet Trolldom. Jason Todd died because "the best lack all conviction" while "the worst are filled with passionate intensity." Speaking of which, Yeats predicted the fucking internet decades ago!

He was conceived in an alley under the shadow of a typo.

I'm going to give Lobdell a pass this issue on me bitching about the entire story being told in Narration Boxes as if Jason Todd were speaking directly to the reader. It's a fucking Zero Issue and it's about origins. Todd can be telling this Origin to a group of runaways under a freeway on-ramp for all I care. Maybe it's like that scene in Hedwig and the Angry Inch when Hedwig is telling her (his? its?) life story while on the worst stage at an outdoor music festival. Maybe Jason Todd can sing some of this!

Jason's dad was a drunk asshole. His mom was a depressed user. His dog ate constantly ate its own shit.

No. Seriously.

And he states that the happiest day of his life was in an incubator on the day he was born. Yeah, but that's because he traded his happiest memory away when he and the Outlaws went into that weird space looking for the Untitled and came out with just a snowglobe. So the best day of his life was when he was sick and Batman decided to not patrol and instead sit home with him and watch television. But Jason Todd doesn't have that memory anymore! So the next happiest day of his life was alone in an incubator protected by its glass walls from his fucked up parents.

Eventually Jason Todd's dad gets arrested, goes to jail, and dies in prison. His mother is pregnant on the night he goes to jail. On the night Jason Todd finds his mom dead, she doesn't look pregnant in that panel. But he never mentions her having a child or him taking care of a baby brother after that. Maybe she sold the baby for the drugs which she overdosed on. I'm even making the assumption that she overdosed. Maybe she just slit her wrists. But there's no blood in the panel where he finds her dead. There are some footprints though! Maybe she was beaten to death by the Joker who took her baby to raise as his own!

Jason Todd turns to crime to get by. Eventually someone catches him and beats him close to death. He wakes up in a hospital where a nurse treats him with the first kindness he's ever known. She believes he can turn his life around. She believes he deserves love. But what does Todd know? He steals from the first chance he gets but is immediately caught by Batman. But the nurse comes to his defense in a bit of a Les Miserables moment and somehow convinces Batman to take him under his wing.

"Really, Master Bruce? Another fucking kid? This is getting to be a seriously bad habit, if you don't mind my saying."

Eventually Jason becomes the next Robin since Dick went off to do something else. And eventually he was grounded from patrol for nearly killing the thugs they were capturing because he couldn't quite contain his anger at his father. So back on monitor duty, he finds himself at the beginning of a twisted version of the Preboot story, "A Death in the Family." Instead of discovering his mom was not his real mom after being grounded from patrol, he notices a picture come in on the Bat Computer of his mother still alive. Jason Todd leaves without telling anyone to search for his mom. He eventually finds her but it's a trap. The Joker is waiting. He knocks Todd senseless with a crowbar and leaves him with his mother die in an explosion. Batman arrives too late to do anything. It's a very slight variation on Todd's Preboot death.

DC in 1989: "Wait, what? The fans don't like Robin?! Count those votes again!"

And then sometime later, Jason Todd wakes up in a Lazarus Pit.

Apparently Lobdell didn't get the note that DC Comics were 20 pages long now since this is yet another one of his titles that runs 16 pages. Although I probably shouldn't be so quick to blame the writer. Maybe it's the artists who can only handle so many pages a month so the last four pages need to be a new story with a new artist. Anyway, the last four pages are filled with The Joker telling a story to an audience at the Airport Hilton, Conference Room Three.

It's only classic in the sense that The Joker is insane and doesn't give a shit about the definition of words.

This Joker story is the worst piece of shit I've ever read and will probably be retconned right out of existence as quickly as possible by the fans. Except I've come to believe the fans deserve what they get. They get so invested in liking certain writers and artists that they meet them when they get the chance. And then they think they're the best of friends and they suddenly love every single thing that drips out of the person's colon and happens to hit paper. But this story. THIS STORY!? Lobdell, you, sir, are an idiot and an ass.

The story: Joker fashioned Jason Todd to become the next Robin. It was all Joker's plan! Joker had Todd's father arrested and probably killed in jail. Joker had his mom appear dead from on overdose although it was really one of those drugs that makes a person seem dead. Joker beats Jason Todd near to death and leaves him for a caring nurse to find. Then Joker sees Batman with Robin and thinks, "Ha ha! I did it!" Fuck you, Lobdell.

Comic books may be escapist entertainment where anything can happen. But this? This is the one thing that can't happen. Well, not the one thing. There is that other thing where Harvest plans every fucking thing in the universe because random happenstance never happens, apparently. Predicting the future is all just a simple mathematical calculation based on where the pieces are on the chessboard. Except their are billions of pieces and the chessboard is nearly infinite. But, you know, Harvest is a super genius Vampire Tim Drake from the future so fans that want to believe it will.

Wait, I meant to be speaking about the Joker! Oh yeah! For this to even be a plan, The Joker has to know enough about what drove Bruce Wayne to be The Batman. And since this is a Reboot, even if The Joker knew who Batman really was in the Preboot (I don't think he did but who the fuck knows?), I don't think the Reboot would begin with The Joker having this knowledge (again, who the fuck knows! He might!). So how does this plan make any sense at all? "Oh, if I torture a kid and take away his parents and leave him orphaned in Gotham, he'll become Robin!" And, of course, even if he did know all of these things might tend toward a child being picked to be Robin, it's still just random chance that it would all come together and happen. And that's if he knew all the details of Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson and he's still merely crossing his fingers that Batman might take on a new sidekick.

This story is just too stupid to be true. I guarantee it'll simply be retconned as one of The Joker's insane delusions.

Red Hood and the Outlaws #0 Rating: Hey DC! Just because a writer makes his deadline doesn't mean what he wrote was worth printing. This issue would have been better and probably made me less angry if it had merely been four pages short instead of including that fucking tumor stuck to the issue's ass.