great collection of Joker stories, though I wouldn't say the greatest, It starts in the early forties through the sixties when the Joker was the master of gimmicks and tricks like The Riddler is now.
It has a few of the seventies amp eighties where the joker is just plain evil, and too obsessed including the absolutely famous Joker Fish comic.
Yet none of these are the true Joker, None of them are the funny creepy evil joker that I love I guess because he probably wasn't that prevalent inwhen this was published Ahh, well.
Still a good primer on The Joker, It's funny that one of the best representations of The Joker was his very first appearance back inBatman, During the mid fifties and sixties The Joker deteriorated to a mere clown, before he was finally rescued in the seventies, especially by Steve Englehart's "The Laughing Fish" and "The Sign of the Joker" which heavily referenced The Joker's first story, exactly like what Ed Brubaker did with his notable Joker story "The Man Who Laughs".
I Batman. I really do. While I was sitting on the couch last night, giggling like a maniac at some of the really bad,s dialogue, Alexander commented "I think you like bad Batman better than good Batman.
" And y'know, I think he's right, Because Good BatmanAlan Moore! Frank Miller! Even Batman Begins!is really great, engrossing and dark and gritty and atmospheric, but bad Batmanthe camp of the 's, the overlyspecific writing and captioning of the 'sis just something special.
And it pleases me. Because I'm that kind of comics nerd,
That said, The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told Wow, Some of these were really good, but mostly they were the early ones, As we approached the 's andthe most recent story in the collection the book was released in ', probably a month or so before The Killing Joke, it really tanked.
Still fun, but without the quality of the earlier stories, An excellent collection, though far from complete which the intro/outro go to great lengths to remind us, However, I think an individual intro as to why each story was selected would have gone a long way, rather than the extended ramblings before and after the collection.
"The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told" was okay, It's divided into roughly three sections, the first are the earlier Joker comics, mostly from "Detective Comics", then the middle half of it are ones where the Joker was appearing frequently in "Batman" comics, followed by the last quarter from later on, the's.
In the first quarter, the earlier stories, the Joker is a killer, like we expect, with all his victims dying from his Joker venom or gas.
Those stories are okay.
The middle half, the longest section, is the most kidfriendly, where the Joker never kills or even threatens to kill.
Most of the stories revolve around the Joker announcing he's going to steal something and then trying to do it, Many times they're based on some pun from his message, Batman in those is a hero, hanging out at City Hall and teaching criminology classes, in costume, at Gotham University,
Finally the last few stories are much darker, The Joker is again a killer, and Batman is much darker, much more troubled, with the ears on his cowl longer and his cape billowing out behind him like he's almost a gigantic bat.
It's the last ones that are best stories, of course, but also the most confusingly drawn, with lots of things in frames I simply couldn't identify.
In one, for instance, I couldn't tell what the Joker pushed his associate in front of, I had to go back to the page before to recognize it as a moving truck.
Overall it's entertaining, though the middle half was kind of dull, wearing thin after a few stories that were mostly the same, with little variation in plot.
The beginning and the end are fantastic, Thought I had read this: but, now I have, This is a great anthology, ending up at the moment in time when Killing Joke and Dark Knight Returns publish and further darken, with A Death in the Family, the character for seeming ever.
Here you get beginnings and weirdness, Lots of great Dick Sprang art, too, Very few writer credits before the mids, something I think has deepened with fandom and scholarship, In particular, the writing of Bill Finger is prolific here, but we don't have full credits for his or other writers work, due to the unfortunate practices of the day.
So: mildly recommended. My disappointment in this volume echoes my disappointment in The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told, Of thestories collected here, I could only say two felt worth keepingthe first and the lastwhich is to say they weren't totally terrible by modern standards.
Those are the only stories where Joker a is a villain, instead of just an eccentric trickster or vandalizing thief and b is unpredictable in a manner that makes him seem dangerous.
"The Laughing Fish" almost gets there were it not for the convolutedoutofcontext serial plots running throughout the story that and the glaring flaws:
You can blame the Comic Book Code or you can blame how desensitized movies have made us, but if the Joker isn't seriously threatening lives, having a clownfaced villain is kind of cheesy.
In those cheesy pages, the Joker gets fussy about his reputation, steals random stuff from rich people or museums after you read one or two of these, who cares about another rich person's ruined party and engages in ludicrous acts that are mostly just annoying.
Some of this is dreadful writing, like when the writers over explain things
that are not complex or build an entire plot around hamfisted wordplay.
One part that made me wince the most is when the Joker enters a production of "Hamlet" dressed as Falstaff and a faceless background audience member exclaims, "Ha! Ha! Falstaff! He's in the wrong play! He should be in 'Henry the Fourth' or 'Fifth'! Ha! Ha!" Besides this weak attempt at giving the Joker a comic twist, if the writers felt the need to explain it, why not simply do a joke that didn't need explaining Most attempts to make the Joker funny generally fall flat, except those few times he kills people who are not expecting it those moments aren't funny, but the Joker's laughter at those moments are affectively unsettling.
Finally, every single story in this volume even the first and last one, which I think are worth reading has a moment that is cringeworthy, like Batman trusting the Joker in a completely naive way or the Joker's getaway being foiled by suddenly being totally dimwitted.
Admittedly, it is difficult for me to appreciate some of this earlyera Batman stuff, In it, Batman is never conflicted, acting downright cheery at times and smiling a lot, Those stories do not even hint at the complex character he would become, He's like a costumed onepercenter in a hokey "It's curtains for you" melodrama, In this volume, Robin has some line about having a speaking engagement at a yacht club, gag In addition, his "detective" work in this collection mostly consists of conveniently effective guessing which is less deductive reasoning, so much as it is "and here's a lessthantidy attempt at a resolution".
Nowadays, storytelling styles have changed in comics so that things are shown more than explained, affecting both dialogue while the witty turnofphrase still makes an appearance, nowadays natural speech is patterned and exclamation points used sparingly.
. . rather than flagrantly and expository text boxes which no longer appears in nearly every panel, nor features radio dramalike narration, Nowadays, those boxes of text are mostly just functional, like when naming a setting,
Ultimately, what makes these stories "the greatest" is lost on this casual comics fan, Perhaps if each of the stories were give a miniintroduction that explained its significance to both the choosing committee and Batman lore I could understand the reason why some of this bilge was reprinted.
A great, thorough read for any Batman fan, The title says it all and these really are some of the greatest stories ever told about the maniacal clown prince, It's also really interesting to see the development of The Joker as more of a humorous foe into the psychotic nemesis that he has become in the comics.
My favorite of the stories would definitely have to be the one where The Joker builds his own utility belt to arm himself against Batman's own.
This collection of Joker comic stories came out when the first Tim Burton film came out, I was living in a small town in Japan and luckily a friend of mine sent me a copy of this book.
It was the most precious thing I owned in MojiKu Japan,
Excellent survey of Joker stories that appeared in Batman, The early ones of course are more sinister and the later ones got kind of silly, But as I mentioned before the review down below I more interested in The Joker as a character than the story or how he's placed in the story.
Basically I just like to look at him and make up my own stories about this character, What's better than a collection of the Greatest Batman Stories ever told A collection of the Greatest Joker stories ever told! Oh how I do love the Joker, who in my humble opinion is the greatest villain ever created better than Lex Luthor, better than Gallactus, better than Thanos and a whole lot more entertaining to boot! This was a really great book to own and read it's a shame it took me this long to read since I've had the book forever but like a fine wine, I guess I needed to age a little more to appreciate this book.
My only complaint is that there was so much of the old Golden Age Joker who I really wasn't a fan of since he was more campy than gritty.
I love the's era Joker best, he's a little more manic and dark but still pretty zany and can be somewhat silly but still edgy.
You never know with that Joker if he's gonna zig or zag and how far off the edge he's willing to go.
It is kind of disappointing that "A Death In the Family" and "The Killing Joke" isn't included in this book but understandably, those titles, aside from retaining their popularity with the fans are better appreaciated a standalone storyline with the spotlight solely focused on them.
I can respect that. So, in short, I love this book: loved the fact that DC took the time to make a gorgeous leatherbound edition because I do so love a pretty book, love the stories, love the subject and made me appreciate the villany of the Joker even more.
I may have become a bigger fan of his and the Bats, if that's even possible! Awesome book, absolutely terrific! Ohhh boy
Overall average of all the stories:.
Favorite story: Fool's Errand,
Least favorite story: A clash of symbols,
Favorite art style: The man who laughs,
Least favorite art style: The joker amp the joker returns,
This was, quite frankly, baad.
It was interesting to get the full character journey but I'm left wondering why some stories were selected for this: especially The Origin of the Joker, which is basically the killing joke but in just two pages.
There were also stories in here, where you needed background knowledge because of events that happened before and characters that were already established at the certain issue that was selected for this collection.
Because of that some stories were incredibly hard to follow and confusing,
A downside from covering all decades of the jokers appearance were that on the one hand the characters have very little to do with what you associate with them and on the other hand comics were just written drastically different that time.
The art style was completely not my taste and it had a very loweffort somewhat comedic ring to it, In addition to that were the text bubbles in the corner of the page who are normally used for setting up a scene on every page, stating what could be seen on that page.
For example it would be "he shuffled the cards" and the picture would be of hands shuffling cards,
Overall I really didn't enjoy my time reading this but the text pages, explaining the history of the character were really interesting.
I gave a total ofout ofstories a rating overand my average rating reflects that,
.
Procure Batman V The Joker: The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told Originated By Mike Gold Distributed As Publication
Mike Gold