The Batman is dead. As a result, the Joker is directionless, which sends him spiraling into the stuffy and artificial corporate world of Gotham City.
Just judging by the log-line, longtime Batman readers may feel like they’ve seen this story before. After all, it does share superficial similarities with “Going Sane,” a lauded story arc from Legends of the Dark Knight by J.M. DeMatteis, Joe Staton, and Steve Mitchell, in which the Joker believes he’s killed Batman and has no other choice but to join civilian life. However, readers will be happy to know that Matthew Rosenberg’s script for Knight Terrors: The Joker digs a good bit deeper, playing within a cartoonish version of reality as it peels back the layers of the Joker’s dependency on a solid crowd.
And boy, I’m 100% the audience for this. The book opens with the Joker’s greatest triumph: The death of Batman. But the wind is really taken out of the villain’s sails when Batman dies in the most hilariously inept way possible. Seriously, I don’t think any other moment in Knight Terrors will top this one for sheer audacity and absurdity, and I could not stop laughing when it happened. It’s so awful, yet so darkly funny at the same time, and I applaud this creative team for the unbelievable decision to kill this Batman in such an inauspicious, embarrassing manner. No wonder Joker loses all drive after this — how on Earth could he ever hope to follow this act?
Instead, Joker sets his sights on the business world, quickly climbing to the top of the corporate ladder within a superficial world that doesn’t know what to make of him. This story takes the clever angle of everyone finding Joker’s gags and horrifying comments to be genuinely funny. Whereas Batman’s refusal to laugh at his jokes once drove him to continue forward, it’s clear that Joker bristles at everyone being so on board for whatever comes out of his mouth. There’s no joy in the Joker’s life anymore, especially when he’s dealing with such disingenuous people, and it’s oddly affecting to see him trudging through one vanilla day after another.
Of course, this is no ordinary corporate drama. For the Joker, his greatest fear isn’t just losing his reliable straight man with the death of Batman. He also has to content with people laughing at him without really “getting it” or engaging with his brand of material in any meaningful way. The Joker is trapped in a world of phonies, and that’s what’s slowly wearing him down.
Stefano Raffaele makes the Joker’s transformation horribly visible, his baked-in smile now slightly turned down at the corners of his lips, his hair now depressingly laid down to match. There’s no flair to this Joker, who has to make do with occasional murders and threats to his coworkers. When the gross stuff happens, Raffaele and colorist Romulo Fajardo Jr. walk a fine line between ghastly and cartoonish, perfectly fitting the nightmare aspects of the story. The initial death of Batman is brilliantly timed and executed (no pun intended), while the final page of the issue made my skin crawl.
Readers may feel like one or two beats here feel familiar, but Knight Terrors: The Joker is definitely its own beast. It nicely continues some of the themes explored in the main Joker series, but also takes a step back and focuses tightly on how the villain’s greatest triumph could be his sincerest tragedy.
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