FORMAT: TRADE PAPERBACK (REVIEWED) | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

A good villain is hard to keep down, especially one as popular as The Joker, which probably explains why DC decided to produce Joker War, a Batman story in which it looks like The Joker has all the winning hand.

The premise is pretty straight forward. The Joker figures out that Bruce Wayne is responsible for all of Batman’s wonderful toys and then successfully steals all of Bruce’s money. Don’t try and figure out how that works because it’s not relevant to the plot  and this is very much a super-hero story. The Joker then proceeds to burn down Gotham city using all of the resources at his disposal, whilst torturing Batman with zombies and a convoluted plot that essentially boils down to ‘The Joker tries to kill The Batman with Batman’s own sense of guilt’.

Along the way we meet The Joker’s murderous new girlfriend who is called Punchline and a new vigilante called Clown Killer.  Neither of these characters sparkle with originality. Neither does the story; there’s no character growth here and nothing that hasn’t been done before.

James Tynion IV is doing the best with what he can, but the current run of Batman stories seem severely hampered by DC’s need to make the character part of a larger franchise. Weighed down by the need to introduce new characters whilst name-checking heroes with their own series, Joker War is a bit of a slog. There’s nothing new here and that doesn’t seem to be the writer’s fault; if you want an example of what Tynion can do without restrictions, check out the excellent Something Is Killing The Children.

The art is brilliant;  this is a pretty book with some great stand out pieces, the sort of thing that looks great on a wall or as part of a promo. The storytelling is strong and the dialogue is entertaining throughout; it’s just a pity that the story itself doesn’t really do anything.

Joker War Volume Two is a stagnant tale that works as a nice waste of time, but nothing more, and will be forgotten like so many Batman books before it. If it is remembered, it will be as the book that made The Joker boring.