Joker - Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo

Written by Brian Azzarello
Art by Lee Bermejo and Mick Gray
Cover by Lee Bermejo
Colors by Patricia Mulvihill

Published by DC Comics ; 128 pages

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Pills and Psychos

Petty criminal Jonny Frost is out of prison for his fifth time. He's got a wife who is working hard to legally become his ex-wife, kids he has no interest in, and when his local gang of crooks learn Joker is inexplicably being released from Arkham, Frost volunteers to pick him up.

Azzarello's story is a well-crafted Batman comic book novel, although Batman himself only appears in the final pages. However, he remains ever-present in the Joker's mind, serving as a constant, looming figure. Throughout the story, Gotham feels unmistakably like Batman's domain — a city where the Joker's chaotic schemes can only ever have a temporary, though bloody, impact.

Joker takes an instant liking to Frost. Jonny is naive, amiable, malleable, slightly-innocent somehow, and he has what Joker needs - a car. Soon he is Joker's driver and sidekick, followed by Harley Quinn, who is working at a strip-bar when she rejoins Joker as his demented other sidekick, handing over drugs and acting as a kind of mother-confessor in the wee hours.

Azzarello uses the character of Jonny Frost as a lens through which we glimpse the private, unhinged world of the Joker. What we encounter is a pill-fueled crime lord who grows increasingly vicious and frenzied as his poorly conceived attempt to rule all of Gotham’s underworld goes off the rails. At least, ruling seems to be the Joker's intentions, but as the body count mounts it appears such a plan is simply an excuse. The Joker's real goal is to get either God’s attention or Batman’s. In fact, the Joker seems somewhat confused between the two, they overlap in his mind and play some part in his personal crazy quest

Killer Croc's Evolution

Killer Croc in Azzarello's 2004 "Broken City" had already been depicted as a more evolved version of the typical lizard-like (and Marvel-esque) killer seen in other Batman comics. In this story, Azzarello takes Croc’s character even further, re imagining him as a hulking criminal with a peculiar skin condition, serving as Joker's muscle while possessing a sharp awareness of the chaos unfolding around him. Croc also defines Frost's future: it will end with Jonny gurgling in his own blood.

It’s clear that Croc has witnessed this cycle many times before and can predict the Joker’s patterns with ease. Frost, meanwhile, is too distracted by the fleeting allure of working with a notorious criminal—an allure that quickly dissipates, leaving him focused solely on survival. The Joker's erratic moods, swinging from fleeting affection to homicidal rage within the span of a single panel, making Frost's position as the Joker’s lackey increasingly precarious.

We sense that Croc has seen this all before and can predict the Joker's pattern effortlessly. Frost, on the other hand, was too preoccupied with the quickly vanishing glamour of working with a famous criminal, satisfaction that quickly gives way to just playing for survival, Joker's moods swing from affection to a vindictive, murdering rage in the space of a panel or two.

Joker; his phobias and friends

Azzarello's Joker has a number of psychological problems besides just a desire to see a lot of blood spattered everywhere. He has a raging inferiority complex, a desire for self-destruction wound up with doses of megalomania and feelings of being wrongly persecuted.

When Azzarello's Joker reveals he doesn't eat food, he just lives on pills, a twisted inversion of Elvis, Michael Jackson and every other celebrity who succumbed to chemical living comes to mind. Is the Joker an unintentional glam icon? In keeping with the Joker's 'look' from the Chris Nolan Batman movie, Joker has also had some serious facial surgery performed, with horrendous scars enhancing his smiling visage.

And this is where the superhero universe intrudes the most into Azzarello's story. None of these characters care about Joker's amazing looks. No one asks, and few remark on it. Joker tells Croc how he likes to see him because it makes him feel handsome, but since Bermejo draws Croc as essentially a generic looking (though a bit scaly) muscle-bound gangsta from the 'hood, the remark doesn't make a lot of sense. In a "real world" setting, Joker’s appearance would likely attract significant attention and stir commotion, but within this cast of characters, it barely registers. That said, the tale does make it clear that people are deeply unsettled by the Joker—not because of his eerie, milky-white death grin, but rather due to his well-earned reputation for random, merciless violence. (Regarding visuals: Azzarello has Joker verbally dwell on Batman's looks, a combination of analysis, ridicule and an expression of Joker's twisted affection for the Caped Crusader.)

Though the silent Harleen Quinzel seems exempt (like Croc), everyone else in the tale is in a tense position where they might be on the receiving end of Joker's next burst of crazed excess. But as demented as the Joker is, he is also a standard issue control-freak/sadist with a demand to approve/not approve of the behavior of the people close to him. Frost's anxiety grows as he starts tripping over those shifting lines of conduct that Joker requires, a set of rules that he finds harder and harder to understand as he sees other victims randomly dispatched by an unpredictable caprice in the Joker's mind.

Abusive and controlling, Joker is a father figure that Frost is attracted to but then later can only fear. Quinzel seems to know how this all works, she says nothing whatsoever throughout the story but otherwise seems to anticipate every move. Croc's business attitude seems to shield him, and he makes no special editorial statements (aside from his warning to Frost). Penguin appears briefly, but Joker's contempt and Penguin's inability to play the behavior game correctly almost gets him killed.

Gotham's Status Quo

There is 'noir' twaddle in the tale, the hiccups of crime writing in which Gotham is apparently being victimized in an almost supernatural way by an inscrutable God. That is, for Azzarello, Gotham is a terrible place without any redemption possible. In fact it was probably built from the same disease that infects Joker. Azzarello’s Jonny Frost takes this idea a step further, concluding that the Joker himself is not just a product of the city's disease but a manifestation of it—a walking, sentient contagion.

Azzarello hasn’t constructed the oppressive claustrophobia typical of urban noir—the sense that the entire city (and perhaps the whole universe) is conspiring against the main characters. Instead, the chaos and malevolence are entirely centered on the actions of the infamous crazed clown. The city itself remains a distant backdrop, merely a stage for the Joker’s twisted theatrics.

Azzarello's other criminal characters are organized, grossly refined, completely dedicated to a status quo where corruption works hand in hand (and relatively peacefully) with the rest of the middle class around it. In the end, the Joker is a whirling Tasmanian devil creating chaos and spilling blood while cutting though this compromised moral stasis.

As we watch ex-con Jonny Frost narrating his personal criminal career highlight reel with the "star making" moment of his joining the Joker's ranks, but then a swift plummet into well-deserved paranoia and then an endless fear of what could happen next, Gotham doesn't really come alive as a third character interacting with this dynamic. We do get very detailed architectural drawings and text but this is mostly travelogue.

Lee Bermejo and Mick Gray Artwork, Patricia Mulvihill Colors

Lee Bermejo's artwork is effective and makes for a true professional superhero comic. Mick Gray assists with nicely drawn buildings and bridges. A reliance on photo reference haunts the look of this book, but the finishing effects are interesting and remind me of Italian comic books, that is where a series of frames are drawn in a basic ink on paper style, but certain panels are embellished into small paintings. This seems to emphasize that a particular panel is important for the reader to notice, or just to show that the artist can really create a beautifully detailed image, but there's not enough time to do the whole book that way. The colors by Patricia Mulvihill keep the book in a seedy, shadow-filled nightmare mode of dank and dark criminality.

The Long Shadow of Heath Ledger

A step removed from the usual Batman graphic novels, Azzarello's JOKER is built somewhat along the lines of the Heath Ledger Joker from the Dark Knight movie, although I have read that Azzarello was already in progress on this tale prior to the movie release. Either way it is in keeping with the sick-fiend dreamed up by Jerry Robinson back in Batman #1 from 1940, versus the cartoony character that developed over the decades within the standard month-to-month fare of DC Comics that falls in and out of fashion. That friendlier version of The Joker in many ways is in stark contrast to the psychologically-twisted rendition of the character we had in the original incarnation and what we have here in Azzarello's book.

Summary: DK Joker vs Azzarello Joker

In the Nolan Dark Knight film, the Heath Ledger Joker character is dedicated to exposing the hypocrisy and double-dealing of Gotham's citizens, with a big dose of self-justification going into the project. As with the early scene from that film where Joker kills off his henchmen one by one, the dangerous and unpredictable personality of the Joker is given center-stage.

Azzarello takes a more nuanced approach. His Joker seems like a common pill head in some ways, but he is blown up larger than life by way of his fearsome visage and his outsized taste for ultra-violence. The books features the expected bloodletting, but is coupled with hints of a supernatural aspect bordering on the demoniac (something Frank Miller's version of the character had), but Azzerallo explores this in a different, unique way.

There's more nuts-and-bolts of running a gang in Azzarello's tale, and his Joker is a deeper, more complex story that is a step apart from the Hollywood versions.