Joker (DC Black Label Edition)
By: Charisma Estes
Tags: Joker, Brian Azzarello

Joker, written by Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo, tells the story of Joker being randomly released from Arkham Asylum in Gotham City, New Jersey and how he takes back his city from multiple villians that messed up all his hard work. It is mainly told from the point of view of Johnny Frost, who intentionally gets himself involved in the Joker’s business, and inevitably, his insanity.

As this comic and all other comics surrounding the basics of this story are dark and mysterious, the art style used is perfect and helps keep the story accurate and real. The color tones range from bright to dull, but black is a constant throughout the entire book. It is used heavily for shadows and for contrast. This book does use the basic range of the colors in the rainbow, but the tones differ depending on the scene and what all is in it. For example, this three panel scene where the Riddler is getting inside his car and the Joker answers a previous question while he is rolling up his window. The brightness of the car is orange and yellow, compared to the dullness of the inside of the car and the Riddler’s orange hair. The purple in his hat is a neutral tone while the blue in the windows appear to be a light blue, but it is transparent so it seems sort of dull at the same time. This scene peaked my interest as the contrast between the inside of the car and the window was something new in the comic. Also, the use of reflection to get his point across about insanity was very nice.

For the majority of the comic, time passed within seconds of dialogue but it could also change from one scene to a completely different scene with a large time gap. Some of the panels are also split versions of one scene while others have no sense of direction, just chaos, which does tie in well with the theme of this comic and one of the main characters, the Joker, who is well known for being insane. Reading the scene with the chaotic transitions seems confusing but when you read it, it’s like your eyes know exactly where to go, especially after reading a good amount of the book. It’s actually pretty cool that the book gets you prepared to read the book as it gets more chaotic as the Joker and the events in the book get more chaotic. Thinking about the things I’ve learned from McCloud’s Understanding Comics, I’ve noticed many action transitions. There are a lot of moment-to-moment transitions, action-to-action transitions, and scene-to-scene transitions, as well as a decent amount of subject-to-subject transitions. There were a few aspect-to-aspect transitions but they could also be considered a part of the scene-to-scene transitions.

There were two scenes that I found amusing, purely because of facial expressions and picturing myself in the scene. One is the Joker telling the Penguin to feel his muscle, and as he went to touch his arm, the Joker tells him which arm he meant, and the surprise on his face caught me, and him clearly, off guard and I found it absolutely hilarious. The other scene is Johnny Frost watching as the Joker just put his gun in his mouth, pulled the trigger, and started to crazily laugh. Johnny’s shock at watching this happen was amusing to see. There were also two scenes that I noticed a change happening that was different than the rest of the book, one I could see the Joker’s breaking point in this particular comic, as he lost it years ago, and in the other there was a new point of view subtly introduced. It wasn’t confirmed until later, but it was Batman’s point of view, which wasn’t introduced until the last eight pages of the storyline. That’s also when the tone of the comic changed from various colors and tones to super dull tones of the cool colors and the neutral colors of black and gray, with the occasional splash of color.