DC Comics reviews 6/8/21 – Detective Comics #1037, Rorschach #9

The Joker #4

The Joker has been one of the more pleasant surprises of the Infinite Frontier era. Writer James Tynion IV and artist Guillem March are crafting a taut thriller with James Gordon chasing down the man responsible for killing hundreds at Arkham Asylum. Or did he?

The wisest move Tynion made was not focusing too much attention from The Joker’s perspective. He’s a character that works so much better with someone else reacting to his particular brand of crazy. In Gordon, Tynion has someone almost as obsessed with taking down Joker as Batman.

Already Tynion shifted up the status quo by having Joker capture Gordon just as a wave of assassins come gunning for him. This made for an impressive display of The Joker’s cunning and vicious planning while Gordon can only watch with disbelief.

In a fun interlude, Barbara Gordon and the Batgirls are keeping a close eye on Cressida in hopes of finding out her real agenda. We’ve already got seemingly 30 Batman and Batman tie-in issued a month, but I’d be totally on board with an Oracle, Orphan and Spoiler book.

March’s artwork has really impressed over the years. He’s not taking the easier path of panel layouts going with creative setups that dramatically tell the story. Arif Prianto’s color work is subdued and falls right in line with the tone of this story.

The Punchline story Tynion co-wrote with Sam Johns with Mirkwood Andolfo was fine despite feeling very short this installment. Tynion is focused on making Punchline into a player, but another smartest person in the room character doesn’t make for the most engaging read. Andolfo’s lively cartoonish style art still isn’t the best fit for Punchline, but Andolfo is talented enough to make it work all the same.

The Joker has been a killer read so far and it’ll be interesting to see how far the chase takes Gordon before he fully spirals out.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10