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Those are okay, I guess, but these would grab my money much faster:
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The Joker from the Killing Joke is probably the one that pops in my mind the most besides the version that was drawn by Jim Aparo back in the 70s/80s. I don’t see the need to make three Jokers unless they are on Earth 1, Earth 2 and so on.
 
We need but one Joker...the original diabolical villain from Batman #1 (Spring 1940):
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Trying to give him an origin is always idiotic and indicates a complete lack of understanding of what makes the Joker a great villain.
 
Do you guys recommend anything from the Fourth World after Jack Kirby phase? I got it, and Mr Miracle Tom King phase. But I don't know almost anything about the DC universe aside from Batman.
 
BlackWolf said:
Do you guys recommend anything from the Fourth World after Jack Kirby phase? I got it, and Mr Miracle Tom King phase. But I don't know almost anything about the DC universe aside from Batman.
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I would recommend hunting down Walter Simonson's work on Orion and Jack Kirby's Fourth World. Simonson is, in my opinion, the only person not named Kirby to really understand the various Fourth World stuff and make it work.
 
Tulpa Girl said:
I would recommend hunting down Walter Simonson's work on Orion and Jack Kirby's Fourth World. Simonson is, in my opinion, the only person not named Kirby to really understand the various Fourth World stuff and make it work.
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I got Kirby already :grin:, will hunt for Simonson for sure. I grabbed his Thor phase, without realizing he worked on DC too. Thanks for the advice!
 
Tulpa Girl said:
Jack Kirby's Fourth World
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BlackWolf said:
I got Kirby already :grin:
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For clarification, I was referring to the anthology series that DC did in the late 90's.

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That said, I had misremembered Simonson's work on the book. While he did most of the covers, and a few back-up stories, JKFW was mainly Byrne's work (which was... okay).

But yes, Simonson's Orion is love.
 
Tulpa Girl said:
For clarification, I was referring to the anthology series that DC did in the late 90's.

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That said, I had misremembered Simonson's work on the book. While he did most of the covers, and a few back-up stories, JKFW was mainly Byrne's work (which was... okay).

But yes, Simonson's Orion is love.
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I didn't find any tpb collecting all the stuff from Byrne, but I grabbed these for me.

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I'm halting all my purchases til next year for sure, there is already too many stuff to read haha. But your recommendation was good so I grabbed it.
I'm still not 100% on street level supers, but these epic over the top larger than life cosmic conflicts are fun as hell.
 
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So a good bit more revealed. For brevity G.A., B.A. and M.A. are the Gold, Bronze and Modern Ages respectively. They don't seem to include a Silver Age Joker maybe due to the lighter nature of the character at the time. I don't much about the history of DC comics though. M.A. Joker is confirmed to be the Killing Joke one.

They confirm a basic timeline with G.A. Joker was active before Batman, then when Batman showed up the B.A. Joker took over (he's now dead, shot by Jason in the previous issue). B.A. Joker was more violent and evil but not full on "dark". Then at some point M.A. Joker took over. They're being pretty clear with things to be honest, e.g. G.A. Joker is basically a Jack Napier style criminal who fell into acid and went somewhat mad and M.A. Joker's backstory is the one depicted in the Killing Joke.

They do seem to be contrasting the pair in some way. G.A. Joker is basically a cruel prick and although prone to manic outbursts he can control it and isn't insane. In fact he just comes off as a gangster suffering from chemically induced laughing fits. M.A. Joker however is a tragic figure divorced from reality, not aware of the reality of his actions, who frequently hallucinates his wife and child and doesn't retain clear memories of his former life aside from being vaguely aware of some tragedy. In fact I got the impression that G.A. Joker is more aware of the events of the Killing Joke than M.A. Joker is.

They target Jason Todd as the next Joker but G.A. Joker rejects him as being "too dim" and decides to opt for Joe Chill. M.A. Joker (who confirms he was the one that nearly killed Jason in "A Death in the Family") still holds out hope. Jason himself admits to being somewhat like Joker, e.g. wearing the Red Hood in imitation as a joke.

Not sure what to make of it at this point, it's surprisingly unambiguous in what's going on and what everybody's backstory is. My personal conjecture is that they killed off the B.A. Joker as they couldn't make an archetype out of him to explore. He's not the supervillian and genius criminal that G.A. Joker is and not the more psychological Joker we've come to know in recent years. I suspect they didn't know what to do with him.
 
BlackWolf said:
I didn't find any tpb collecting all the stuff from Byrne, but I grabbed these for me.

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View attachment 22769

I'm halting all my purchases til next year for sure, there is already too many stuff to read haha. But your recommendation was good so I grabbed it.
I'm still not 100% on street level supers, but these epic over the top larger than life cosmic conflicts are fun as hell.
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Those are some lovely covers.
 
Reading the "Batman: The Adventures Continue". It's a continuation of the Bruce Timm animated stuff. Very fun read and interesting to see their take on characters they never got around to on the show like Jason Todd, Azrael and others.
 
So final issue.

Again I was quite surprised at how blatant and unambiguous it was. Criminal Joker seems to be tired of his long running feud with Batman and sought out Chill as a more meaningful adversary to continue the fight, since the comic essentially confirms that Criminal Joker was just some minor criminal and felt this reduced his status as Batman's enemy.

However the whole thing turns out to have been orchestrated by the Killing Joker to help Batman forgive Chill and move on. This was because the personal pain over Chill was sort of holding Batman back from being a true avatar of Justice to oppose the Joker. He even kills the Criminal Joker as the last aspect of this plan and criticises the other two for not being Epic enough. Criminal Joker hated Batman personally and the Silver Age Joker was just a sadist. This is obviously reflecting how Joker has become more of an avatar of Chaos over the years. The deaths of these two being discarded character concept.

The scenes with Chill are well done, as he genuinely repents what he did and Batman out and out forgives him and seems to move on from his parents' death. There's a nice panel in the hospital with them as Chill dies.

However the big shocks all come quickly at the end. Basically everybody drops the charade of not knowing their identities. Barbara just calls Gordon "Dad" to his face. Joker just straight out addresses Batman as "Bruce" at the end and confirms he know everyone's identity. However the final scene is that Batman in fact knows Killing Joker is the failed comedian Jack, but pretends he doesn't to protect Joker's wife and son who are still alive. Basically it reinterprets a scene from the Killing Joke as him being abusive and she was relocated.

A lot of this feeds into the basic theme of Batman ultimately being above what he views as a madman's obsession with him.
 
I guess he forgot the early version of Supreme
 
CRKrueger said:
So is this The Shining City on the Hill or The End of All Things?
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It’s another Editor-in-Chief that will last as long as the big yearly events profit well-enough for DC. Jim Lee seems to be the only one there who had the Teflon.
 

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TristramEvans said:

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I believe he was signed for three standalone films in the first place... This is also We Got This Covered, take whatever they report on with a salt lick.
 
It's been reported that Steve Lightle has passed away.

I know when people think of iconic Legion artists, they usually think of Grell, Cockrum, or maybe Giffen, but in part because of when I started picking up LSH, to me Lightle will always be *the* Legion artist. His style was not particularly flashy, but it was clean and solid. R.I.P.

 
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OK. It has my interest.

Time will tell if it has my attention...
 
Just wanted to note that a bunch of DC stuff landed on HBO Max.
  • The Justice League and Justice League Unlimited series -- which continued the Batman / Superman Universe.
  • Batman: The Brave and the Bold -- Wonderful Tribute to the Silver Age.
  • The 1960s Aquaman Series -- Which I remember well and why I never thought Aquaman was "uncool".
 
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