Could we just leave her to it? I've not helped, by buying this issue, but I won't be encouraging DC by buying further appearances. Because this is a character to avoid, a cliched, boring vacuum who exists only to further up the nastiness of their revamped line.
You want a teenage girl cutting herself because physical hurt 'overwhelms the other pain'? You want a kid, as scarred mentally as she is physically, mutilating people so their smile matches her Joker face? You want a dog tossed over the roadside because it's ugly?
This is what DC thinks you want.
So what's the story from Ann Nocenti? A young runaway decides to explore her new world, the flooded tunnels of Gotham known as the Nethers. She looks into the water for her reflection, finds the Joker's discarded face and puts it on. The scary visage of Batman's greatest villain gives her power over the Nethers tribe of Arkham Asylum escapees and she deposes its leader, turning a patriarchy into a matriarchy. The menfolk she hasn't given a Joker grin cut themselves to match.
Ye gods, this is an awful read. Not in the sense of a cathartic experience so much as in terms of a cringemaking comic. Bad expository dialogue is directed at a cat. Classical allusions clunk (Lysistrata referenced, a boatman named Charon and an underworld that Joker's Daughter, like Persephone, must negotiate on a journey to self-knowledge). Sound effects cry 'SLICE' with Tiny Titans literalism.
And we're apparently supposed to go with the story because, well, she's nuts, and so is everyone around her.
Artists George Jeanty and Dexter Vines do what's asked of them, giving us gurning lunatics by the dozen. It's not just people and pets, even an inflatable hippo looks seriously disturbed. They give our villain a signature leapfrog pose that's terribly unbecoming. And they don't bother to draw her cat for most of the book, though they do sneak in an Easter egg relating to another nasty DC feline.
That's not to say the composition and storytelling isn't fine. There's a clever, effective image in a family history flashback ...
Where the art can get as visceral as you like, the script is hypocritically coy.
Then there's this example of galumphing smut.
Apparently this issue is going to be popular among comics investors; normally I'd be against speculation but having read it, I say yeah, by all means sell it on and make a few quid - just don't read the thing. Or buy it to use the 3D cover - effective, in its way, as Jason Fabok and Nathan Fairbairn's image pops out at us - as a musical instrument. Or a scratching post for cats (ugly ones, obviously).
So, who is the Joker's Daughter? In the flashback, her father calls her Duela, a callback to the Seventies Joker's Daughter, Duela Dent. A minor headache for Robin, she quickly became a heroine, and she's remembered fondly to this day. The new girl? You'd have to be mad to like her.
The overwhelming darkness & needless cruelty that you mentioned at the beginning is why I've decided to drop all of my DC books. At least people can be happy now & then in my X-books and have joy in their lives along with the drama. And as a fan of Duela from the old days, this is just another insult to those of us who like comics/characters that can make you smile.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. I'm looking at a pile of trades and hardbacks I've not gotten to, such as my Forties Superman collection, and wondering if I shouldn't just pack in more DC books. I have to get rid of all this optimism!
DeleteOh I'm buying this issue. It's already been ordered and I'm picking it up later today ( and reviewing it for the website I work for). Sometimes, something looks so incredibly bad and I honestly have to see how much a trainwreck it is.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this kind of writing is what you have been missing out on with Catwoman. Aren't you sad about you have been missing out on?
Oh no, I tried an issue. Yechh.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to your thoughts!
I'm kind of tempted to read this because of my ongoing interest in contemporary superhero comics' relationship with and depiction of poverty - or even just plain old poor people - what with the genre arguably being a product of depressed economic eras. Usually superhero comics are very middle-class in sensibility and display ignorance or even outright hostility towards the poor, and the visuals and plot that you describe here seems to paint a fascinating attitude on the part of the book's creators*, Martin - poverty and poor people recast as actual Hell.
ReplyDeleteI am willing to accept your critical opinion of it as not being very good, but it might at least be interesting to me as an insight to how DC comics views its audience.
* By which I mean the editors who mandate content just as much as I do the writer and artist.
I wouldn't buy this as part of your research, Brigonos, as we're not really talking an underclass here, so much as former Arkham residents who moved into the, er, Nethers region. Are you reading The Movement, that's meant to deal with ordinary people (I gave up after #2).
DeleteIt's all hype! Just a fad! Let's get outta here! Honestly, I was quite disappointed and I didn't like anything about this hyped issue-the writing, the art. It's back to the 90's again with the gimmick covers with no meat at all! :(
ReplyDeleteIt's so weird that the thing I liked best/at all about this issue was the cover.
DeleteRead it and reviewed it. Find it here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.adventuresinpoortaste.com/2013/09/25/is-it-good-batman-the-dark-knight-23-4-review/
I'm calling it right now. This is quite possibly the worst comic DC has released all year long. Can't think of a worse thing that even comes close.
Good work, sir!
DeleteWell, it sounds so horrible I am glad my shop sold out so I didn't impulse buy it.
ReplyDeleteIt does speak about the DCU in general. It is not a place I would want to live in.
Me neither. I wonder, is this how DiDio and co see the world, or just what they think appeals to the teenage readers they're after?
Deletedc openly embracing torture porn as 'character'. I guess it'll get them the negative attention they crave.
ReplyDeletedc openly embracing torture porn as 'character'. I guess it'll get them the negative attention they crave.
ReplyDeleteIt's a wonder they've not sent Bat Cow to the abattoir.
DeleteDC Comics is a TrainWreck. Why they have taken this 52 mess further down the road to hell is beyond me. This 3D cover gimmick has pissed off the few fans they have left. Just awful storytelling. Warner Brothers needs to clean house before this company passes the tipping point.
ReplyDeleteThis event didn't bother me and neither did the 3D cover gimmick. It's perfectly fine and like any other event, it had its good and bad comics. This comic was awful, but it doesn't change the good comics that came out of this event, like Riddler, Count Vertigo, Clayface, The Rogues, etc.
DeleteDC does have problems, but this event wasn't one. Frankly, they probably would produce something this stupid even pre reboot.
I'm against the cover gimmick in terms of principle and price - but I do rather like some of the covers.
DeleteI buy DC almost exclusively because, whatever insanity they have going on in other areas, they have some of the more sane prices for their comics. I bought none of their comics this month. If they want to 'gift' me a fancy cover or pull in new fans that way, great, but I am not lining up to fork over an extra dollar for them. This just encourages them to add some gimmick, such as nicer stock paper, and up the prices.
DeleteI may be alone in this, but I always feel Ann Nocenti is the most misunderstood writer in all of comics. I don't even know if I'd call her good, she's so obviously quirky and clunky, but she is just so interesting to me.
ReplyDeleteHer comics burst with ideas, with the intent to discuss important matters, with the will to go deeper. Often there is so much happening at once, all delivered via big, rather unelegant exposition speeches, that you completely lose track of what the whole thing is supposed to be about. I mean, in her first Green Arrow arc, which lastet 3 issues, she had Ollie disappear and lose his company, she tried to meta-discuss the problem of sexy femals in comics via the Skylarks, she shoved a polar bear, genetic experiments and environmental aspects in there, she had mine workers discuss capitalism in general and their wages in particular...and, oh yeah, the whole story was wrapped up within a retelling of King Lear, only this time the guy was named Leer and the one daughter who truly loved him most was also the one that fell in love with Oliver Queen. This three-issue arc is still one of my favourite things in comics ever, even though I know that it is not objectively good.
Her work is often heavy handed, she jumps from scene to scene, there is even important stuff happening inbetween issues that you have to piece together from other dialogue, which I find very courageous on one hand and other times terribly confusing on the other...with this particular issue, I don't think anyone does Nocenti justice at all if it's simply dismissed as "torture porn". It's clear there is a feminist vibe going on here, the discussion of ideals of beauty for young women in particular, who as we know in our society today in ever increasing numbers resort to cutting themselves etc. to deal with outside pressures. I've even read a review online that stated this issue at its core had the simplistic message of "men bad, women good".
http://weirdsciencedccomicsblog.blogspot.de/2013/09/batman-dark-knight-234-review-and.html
Again, I wouldn't say it's handled in a particularly graceful way, but it is there. Intentionally so, as Nocenti has stated.
http://www.comicosity.com/interview-nocenti-daughter/
"Strengths and weaknesses are sometimes the same thing. The crazy paths my brain heads down made for some fun-twisted and not-so-fun-twisted moments. Having a political spine gave my stories meaning and too much meaning. The shadowy places dark work slips into can be rich at times, oppressive at others."
- Nocenti on manwithoutfear.com, 1998
Ann Nocenti maybe writes the most consistently amazing and interesting failures, with her competence as an actual comic book storyteller never quite measuring up to her intelligence and ambition. She's a journalist, she's directed documentaries, she teaches film, she's an advocate for animal rights and she wants even her funnybooks to say something. I don't know if she's actually the right person for this particular job, maybe she's even as horrible as everyone says she is. But I can't help it, I'm fascinated by everything she does.
Thanks so much for a wonderfully well-thought out and expressed post. I've certainly admiration for Ann Nocenti, everything I've heard about her makes her sound a terrific person. And I've enjoyed some of her work, including that Green Arrow story. I do wish, though, that she'd credit readers with being bright enough to get her references, be they Lear or Lysistrata. Sometimes it feels like I'm being hit over the head with a wet kipper.
ReplyDeleteAnd definitely, her editors should be tweaking the dialogue, or suggesting she reads it out loud and tries again. Few writers come up with dialogue that manages to be naturalistic while serving the story (go too naturalistic and we have Brian Bendis in his lengthy 'Um ... Mamet' period. But few, too, draw attention to themselves with their tin-eared ways the way Nocenti's words do of late.
I wonder if DC shouldn't use Nocenti on the editorial side, as an ideas person, rather than a writer.
You know, I actually sometimes get the impression Ann Nocenti writes for the theater. A lot of what she does, whether it be Olliver Queen standing on a rooftop shouting gigantic monologues in the wind or two people standing five feet apart but not really facing each other, instead kinda talking towards the fourth wall - it would all be perfectly exceptable on stage.
DeleteYou're right, someone should probably edit her better. Then again, with as far-out as some of her stories have been (again, I'm talking as someone who still finds enough in them to curiosly enjoy them), it almost seems to be a Grant Morrison situation with her: either you let that writer tell whatever crazy Obama as Superman from Earth 28/Catwoman trying to negotiate marriage deals with the sword and sorcery tribes that live under Gotham City while making allusions to classic literature stories...or you have to get another writer altogether. A compromise there seems pretty useless. I mean, sure, you could tweak the dialogue a little bit, but the overall style to me is so different from almost anything else in mainstream comics that you have to either find a way to embrace that or remove Nocenti altogether. I for one would kinda be disappointed if she left, but having looked at the falling sales on Catwoman and the never-existing-in-the-first-place sales on Katana, I'm sure somebody at DC has had those thoughts already.
And may I again mention that there are tribes living under Gotham City, one of them being called the Warhogs, with which Doctor Phosphorus, who rules a certain realm down there, tries to make peace by marrying his daughter off to them? This is now canon. As is the steampunk girl named Alice Tesla who lives in this Tim Burton style house, she makes all the gadgets for Catwoman now. Isn't that glorious? Damn, I can't hate this wacky stuff, I really really can't. :D
Ha, almost sounds fun, but I've never gotten along with Gotham tribes! going right back to The Cult. Which may not have had tribes, but I'm old! you know! Anyway, I love that you love this stuff.
DeleteHello Martin:- I'm typically at a loss for words after reading your reviews these days, because I just can't bear to read the great majority of DC books anymore. The constraints imposed by the Didio regime - EVIL villians, TORMENTED heroes, GRIMDARKGRIMGRIM backdrops - mean that I'm just not interested in what's produced; it all too often reads like a reactionary's fever-dream of how evil liberal society will inevitably become, and quite frankly, I can't bring myself to read more of the same. Luckily, you're there to do the reading for me, and I must say, I'm always fascinated to read your reviews, favourable or not.So, thanks for keeping this alienated customer in the loop.
ReplyDeleteI did, however, pick up a copy of Jokers Daughter on impulse while unexpectedly passing a comic shop. I can't say why. (Your review hadn't yet been published.) I think it looked like such a terrible idea that it just HAD to be entertaining. Sadly, I was wrong, and I can only agree with everything you've written. The contempt that the book - and the other DC titles I picked up - expresses for everyone but the hardcore audience is overwhelming. To have such a narrow sense of the audience to pursue is ... nothing that I can admire. Can I put it that way?
At the heart of this comic is the coincidence of a super-villain's flayed face arriving bourne on a current at just the right moment in a character's soul-searching. Can that really be so, or has my memory attempted to protect itself by distorting what I read? Having spent decades defending the superhero genre to my friends, I now find the critical mass of Nu52 titles on the stands defeats any attempt to do so. How can I encourage anyone to be enthusiastic and curious about the genre when they might come across something as terrible as this? After all, it's not as if this is the only example of such pap on the shelves.
Apart from that, of course, I hope all is well etc etc.
It's funny, the arrival of the face seemed almost like naturalism, given the ridiculous reaches of the rest of the comic, but you are, of course, correct.
ReplyDeleteSo, shall we sell our copies on eBay and give the cash to the Cat Protection League.