"If you're good at something," the Joker wheezes, "you never do it for free."

Rating: 10/10 (4 July 2019)

For a while, it seemed as though life in Gotham City was looking up. Gotham's finest, led by straight-arrow Lt. Gordon, was squeezing the city's crime syndicates. Harvey Dent, a new and fearless district attorney, stalked the courtrooms. Batman prowled the city's darkest alleys. Mob bosses stopped meeting at night, afraid they'd be pinched.
What? A city where crime kingpins are afraid of the dark?
Then-like the flu, like a hailstorm, like a crowbar to the side of the head-comes the Joker. No baggage. No backstory. No greedy motive. Just a leering, cackling demon of chaos. He crashes a high-level mob meeting and offers his services as the city's very own bat exterminator. What does he want? Nothing. Everything. What does he ask for? Half the mob's money.
"If you're good at something," the Joker wheezes, "you never do it for free."
So begins perhaps the deepest, bleakest summer blockbuster ever, an explosion-riddled saga about order and anarchy, about good and evil, and about the line we draw between the two.