No Laughing Matter...

"The protagonists in film noir were normally driven by their past or by human weakness to repeat former mistakes. "
- Filmsite

Joker, by Brian Azzarello with art from Lee Bermejo, is an attempt to bring noirish sensibilities to a story centered around The Batman's foremost antagonist.

Seemingly inspired by Heath Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight, this original graphic novel came out in October 2008 and, for some reason, I thought it had gathered a reputation for being shocking and controversial so had high hopes for an interesting read when I finally got round to it the other day.

Maybe I was misremembering the hype of the time because Joker was a surprisingly mundane read.

Seen from the point-of-view of henchman Jonny Frost, the story follows the Joker's release from Arkham Asylum and his bloody campaign to take control of the Gotham Underworld - basically grab back all the rackets that were taken from him when he was locked up.

Dime-a-dozen hood Jonny has just been released from prison as well, served with divorce papers by his wife, and determined not to go back to prison for a sixth time but become a "player" in the city's criminal fraternity. He is given the job of collecting The Joker from Arkham ... and that's where his troubles begin again...

This all takes place in an alternate universe (maybe even the universe of the current movie franchise?) where Oswald Cobblepot aka The Penguin is called Abner, The Riddler is a tattooed 20-something and Killer Croc is thug on steroids.

Little differences, but enough to be distracting - especially Oswald's change of name as he is never actually called Penguin and so I kept wondering if he was meant to be his brother or something. Most of these changes were superficial, but seemingly without reason; change for the sake of change that had no bearing on the story.

The most interesting aspect of Joker is the character arc of Jonny Frost who goes from idolising the Joker and wanting to live his lifestyle to fearing him and realising he is out of his depth and trapped with a psychopath.

It was only about a third of the way through that I realised Batman had not only not appeared but hadn't even been mentioned (there's a small newspaper headline just over halfway through the book), but he turns up to full effect for the final scene which is wonderfully open, yet wraps up the story of Jonny Frost quite nicely.

While the character of Frost certainly obeys the rules of film noir by repeating the mistakes of his previous life, the unfolding events around him don't carry the convincing gravitas required to give his plight the epic contrast that it needed.

Lee Bermejo's pencils (complemented by Mick Gray's inks and Patricia Mulvihill's colours) gave the book a lovely, gritty street-level vibe that reminded me of the Hellblazer comics and I'd be very happy to see this team working on a mainstream Batman title any day.

Ultimately, Joker is one of those annoying 'okay' titles that is neither great nor truly awful, simply middle-of-the-road... which is frustrating for anything associated with such a wild, larger-than-life character as the Joker!