Enter the Joker

Detective Comics #880 Review

Let's get the obvious out of the way. Detective Comics #880 is not only a contender for the best cover of 2011, but also for the creepiest splash page of the year.

With that said, what's left? Another impossibly solid issue of Detective from Scott Snyder and Jock. Opening on a narration by Gordon about Gotham City's true architect being the one and only Joker and concluding with another chill-inducing cliffhanger, everything in between is a gripping, tight read. With the Joker escaped from Arkham, he seemingly beelines for the Gordons while the Bat-team reevaluate the threat and learn about their own relationship to Gotham City. Snyder concocts another chilling entry into his ongoing saga that successfully harkens back to the Black Mirror through-line that he's been building since his very first issue. Here's the thing: if you've been reading Snyder's run since the get-go, I'm almost positive that I don't have to sell you on it. But if you haven't been reading in a while and were drawn in by Jock's amazing cover, then maybe I do.

Everyone loves the Joker. But we've seen him escape from Arkham a hundred times over. However, Snyder's Joker isn't like a Joker we've seen before. He feels less blissfully demented and more tragically insane, almost child-like. Letterer Jared K. Fletcher gives him a lowercase font that separates him even more succinctly from the rest of the characters. But the true stroke of genius on Snyder's part is that, at least as he suggests in this issue, that Joker might not be the bad guy of this story after all. Despite Joker being off his rocker, his recognition of Dick as a different Batman displays his sheer genius. Snyder plays up the eternal feud that will forever rage between the Dark Knight and the Joker, using that idea to send the minds of readers (and Batman himself) in a different direction.

I mentioned the splash page earlier, but Jock's work on this issue is as phenomenal as everything that's come before it. This issue lets him play up all aspects of the run thus far, from the gritty street level investigation to the laboratory scenes to the downright horrifying. In many ways, Detective Comics #880, artistically, is the perfect cocktail of everything that's made this run such an enormous success. Something I particularly enjoyed is that a key sequence with the Joker –one of the most disturbing in the entire book –is colored predominately with whites by colorist Dave Baron, a juxtaposition that makes the scene all the more successful and a perfect complement to Snyder's overall usage of the Joker.

There isn't much time left on this run, but I have absolutely no qualms about saying that this will go down as one of the greatest runs on a Batman book ever. I doubt many of you will disagree.