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The Joker | 
 enlarge | Author: Brian Azzarello
Creator: Lee Bermejo
Publisher: DC Comics
Category: Book
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $10.89
You Save: $9.10 (46%)
New (20) Used (9) from $10.89
Avg. Customer Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 95
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 128
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 10.4 x 7 x 0.5
ISBN: 1401215815
Dewey Decimal Number: 741
EAN: 9781401215811
ASIN: 1401215815
Publication Date: November 4, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
An original hardcover graphic novel that tells the story of one very dark night in Gotham City--from the creative team behind the graphic novel LEX LUTHOR: MAN OF STEEL.
The Joker has been mysteriously released from Arkham Asylum, and he's none to happy about what's happened to his Gotham City rackets while he's been "away." What follows is a harrowing night of revenge, murder and manic crime as only The Joker can deliver it, as he brutally takes back his stolen assets from The Penguin, The Riddler, Two-Face, Killer Croc and others.
Brian Azzarello brings to THE JOKER all the visceral intensity and criminal insight that has made his Vertigo graphic novel series 100 BULLETS one of the most critically-acclaimed and award-winning series in all of comics.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 overrated November 17, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
overrated. period.
art is excellent, story is short rather boring - no real depth or climax. mostly taking advantage of recent success of dark knight movie.
not worth picking up.
There is less than meets the eye. YouTube was the main source of inspiration. November 16, 2008
That comic book is a marketing gimmick influenced from past summer's Joker-o-Mania...You really think that it is something new? Look again. Ok the new elements of joker is
some drugs, rape, lot's senseless jokerised brutal killings from elder people to his own henchmen there is a repeated sequence over and over again. Joker becomes a mad spaghetti western bad guy page after page from robbing a bank to his final confrontation with Batsy. We also watch Joker drinking with other mob guys, giving a party and generally having a good time his way. So what? Maybe the writer wants to show how lonely the world of Joker is or how lonely the Joker feels without a Batman-maybe the writer wants to show what Joker does when Batman is not around. Do we really need Azarello to remind us of that? Point is that Azzarelo can't comprehend the character of Batman as Frank Miller or Grant Morrison can do. Remember Miller's joker interpretation? Pale, silent when other times crazy, always a mastermind asexual personality yet a massive killer of boy scouts, love couples and a whole tv audience.
Azzarello's take on the Riddler is a bit funny (he makes him some kind of a new age pimp crime lord with a walking stick that resembles Johnny Depp eccentricity roles) Killer Croc is awful really; very commonly and very predictably made. The writer also presents a stripper Harley Quinn who becomes Joker's whore and brutal killer-not very original. The Penguin is...well the penguin and Two Face remains the same old racketeer mob boss... As a result it is obvious that DC draw (stole) inspiration from the comments that the Dark Knight fans have posted on YouTube regarding the ideas and expectations of a third Batman movie as also as their excitement with the Joker and with some copy-and-paste made a graphic novel out of them using Azzarello as the delivery writer. Oh and the dialogue sucks.. it is just ...dialogue. Really there is not even black humour in it, just some remarks on Joker's actions having no sense at all.. I think that Azzarello might have lost his touch after all. What I see is some ideas thrown into a blender of The Dark Knight franchise and comic book Batman universe while at the same time missing a great opportunity to express a great story of a Joker who takes back Gotham's underworld in an unpredictable way. Hell I mean what about showing Gotham's white collar criminal activities and racketeering? How would the Joker react to that? Finally two stars because I respect Azarello as a writer and if it wasn't for him I could give the story 1 star.
 Noncanon, but not bad. November 15, 2008
I'd have to concider this an "otherworlds" book, seeing as it's yet another interpritation of the Joker taken from a weak foothold; the new Dark Night movie. There are things I like & dislike about it.
PROS: It's a good sequal to the movie & the art is good, bareling a refreshing realistic look. Harley is in it, for those wishing she'd been in the movie, & she has a realistic bustline. The Joker's eyes have a lot of life & effort put into them.
CON: The comic seems to imply that the Joker has an intimate relationship with Harley, which contradicts the comics in which he usually ignores or beats her. In both The Dark Knight Returns & The Dark Knight, the Joker's sexuality is a lust for killing & a bizzare sadomasochistic desire to preform the reoccuring method of messing with Batman until a bloody fistfight ensues, someday ending in either a double homicide or at least getting Batman to kill. Otherwise the Joker is precieved to be either Autosexual, Asexual, & sometimes even Pansexual, Bisexual, or gay.
Noncanon, but not bad. November 15, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'd have to concider this an "otherworlds" book, seeing as it's yet another interpritation of the Joker taken from a weak foothold; the new Dark Night movie. There are things I like & dislike about it.
PROS: It's a good sequal to the movie & the art is good, bareling a refreshing realistic look. Harley is in it, for those wishing she'd been in the movie, & she has a realistic bustline. The Joker's eyes have a lot of life & effort put into them.
CON: The comic seems to imply that the Joker has an intimate relationship with Harley, which contradicts the comics in which he usually ignores or beats her. In both The Dark Knight Returns & The Dark Knight, the Joker's sexuality is a lust for killing & a bizzare sadomasochistic desire to preform the reoccuring method of messing with Batman until a bloody fistfight ensues, someday ending in either a double homicide or at least getting Batman to kill. Otherwise the Joker is precieved to be either Autosexual, Asexual, & sometimes even Pansexual, Bisexual, or gay.
 The darkest tale featuring the Clown Prince of Crime might also be his best. November 13, 2008
It's safe to say this has been a defining year for the Joker. Between his disturbing role in Grant Morrison's RIP arc and Heath Ledger's astonishing performance, I'm hard-pressed to think of a comic book character whose profile has been elevated this much in such a short period of time. And then, almost as if DC is determined to put an exclamation point on these works, along comes Joker by Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo.
Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo's Joker is a deeply disturbing and completely unnerving work, a literary achievement that takes its place right alongside Alan Moore's The Killing Joke as one of the few successful attempts to scratch beneath the surface of the Joker's impenetrable psyche. It's also a hellish decent into the bowels of the most foul and reprehensible city in all of fiction, with its most foul and reprehensible citizen as our tour guide. Even with its straightforward plot and an onslaught of extremely graphic violence, Azzarello and Bermejo's story somehow manages to achieve a level of subtlety rare to any Batman comic, let alone one starring his deadliest and most flamboyant nemesis. Joker is a true stroke of twisted genius, a masterpiece of chaos, gore, grit, guts, filthy gutters and unimaginable insanity. It demands multiple readings, even if you're stomach might not be up for a second go around.
Now I understand that comparing any work to The Killing Joke in the first sentence of a review can come across as the worst sort of hyperbole, so allow me to explain. I'm not comparing the quality or merits of the two works. What I'm saying is that for the first time since Moore's seminal exploration of Batman's greatest villain, Azzarello somehow manages to humanize and demonize the Joker at the same time. Despite his similarly scarred visage and propensity for chaos, this Joker is not the same meticulous agent of anarchy seen in The Dark Knight, nor is he the typical scenery chewing, joke-spewing maniac found in most comics. Azzarello's Joker is a schoolyard bully who long ago traded nooggies and dead-arms for torture and dismemberment. At the same time, he's more vile and depraved than any one of us, let alone Johnny Frost, his henchmen and the story's narrator, could possibly comprehend.
Thank the comic book heavens that Azzarello didn't attempt to place us in the Joker's head by making him the story's narrator, as he did with Lex Luthor in his and Bermejo's Lex Luthor: Man of Steel miniseries. Trying to dive directly into the Joker's thought process would have been not only a foolish move, but a futile one as well, and would only have trivialized what has become the most complex mind in all of comics. Instead, Azzarello puts the Joker on the psychiatrist's couch and let's his gullible narrator, Frost, ask all the questions while we sit back omnisciently and contemplate the answers. The novel includes two chilling moments in particular - one involving the Joker's explanation of what he hates more than anything, and the other detailing an anecdote about a man who tries to drive around the world in one day - that are just as revealing and powerful as Heath Ledger's "dog chasing cars" monologue from The Dark Knight.
If there's one other significant similarity between this Joker and Heath Ledger's besides their appearance, it's that both are catapulted into the mix with little or no explanation. In this instance, the Joker is simply released from Arkham Asylum without us ever really learning why or how. You would think this would be a problem, but it's not. Azzarello doesn't need an excuse to set Joker on his journey of chaos, because this story is all about that journey, not why it happened or what it means. It's all about watching the Joker brutally reclaim the pie that was divvied up by Gotham's underground in his absence, and witnessing how even a villain as heavy as Harvey Dent trembles at the mere thought of a Joker unleashed.
Thanks mostly to the work of Bermejo, this book crafts an entirely unapologetic and haunting vision of Gotham City, one that resembles a cross between the gothic metropolis found in most comics and the run-down slums seen in Batman Begins. In a lot of ways, "Gotham City" would have been a sufficient title, as the city itself is almost as much a star of the story as the Joker. Coupled with Azzarello's deft characterization, Bermejo's take on Two-Face, Killer Croc, Harley Quinn and the Penguin likewise provide a mix of the familiar and completely fresh.
Bermejo's art is stunning for the most part. My one complaint is that the book transitions from lavishly painted pages to traditionally inked and colored ones for no apparent rhyme or reason. Is this due to DC's desire to push this book out to the public while The Dark Knight is still fresh in everyone's mind? I have no idea. All I know is that there's a stark difference between the gorgeous painted pages and the more traditionally crafted ones, and the book would have been better served had everyone involved given Bermejo the time needed to paint the whole thing. But alas, when considering a work as brilliant as this, such a complaint is relatively minor. What matters is that Azzarello allows his artist to do much of the heavy lifting in terms of storytelling, and Bermejo doesn't disappoint. Just look at the subtlety of some of these scenes, particularly the one where Joker looks up and cryptically addresses the sky. Is he talking to God, or Batman? Or are they the same thing in his depraved mind?
Writers and artists have been exploring the world of Batman and the Joker for nearly seventy years now, with most creators trampling clumsily through its streets and select few creeping methodically through its back alleys and dark corners. Joker is one of those rare works that doesn't just creep methodically through this world, but gets down on all fours and crawls through its gutters and drainpipes, sniffs at its rotten corpses and leaves us all with the knowledge that although we love reading about this place, we'd never, ever want to go there or meet any of its citizens.
Buy this book. Read it twice in a row. Then put it on your bookshelf right next to The Killing Joke, Grant Morrison's prose issue and your bootleg DVD of The Dark Knight, and try to sleep well tonight.
(A review from IGN)
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