Nightwing #16
Summary: Nightwing heads to Amusement Mile to check on Haly's Circus, and finds that Joker has already been there. Joker, via the PA system, leads Dick to the big top, where Dick finds... Well, literally dozens of corpses... And I'm not even overstating things, there are literally dozens of corpses there! Where does Joker find the time... So yeah, Joker tells Dick that the corpses were former members of Haly's Circus(Really?!), before Joker detonates the corpses, filling the tent with Joker toxin. Dick manages to get his rebreather in, but not before he's knocked a little loopy from the gas. Dick is then thrown from the tent as it explodes(Overkill much, Mistah J?!). As he picks himself up from the ground, Joker strolls over and pushes a button that destroys the entire circus, as well as most of Amusement Mile, knocking Dick in the process. When Dick returns to consciousness, he is confronted by that dead clown, Jimmy, as well as Raya. The two taunt him, but Dick manages to shake off the hallucinations and attacks Joker, beating the hell out of him. However, Dick is stopped in his tracks when he sees every member of Haly's Circus walk over in a Joker-ized state. Dick tries to reason with the now crazed circus folk, but ends up getting beaten back into unconsciousness. Dick wakes up in a cave(I think) where he sees Joker standing above him with the now familiar silver platter and dome.
Thoughts: This comic wasn't bad... If you read it in a vacuum .. If you haven't been reading all of the other Death of the Family books(or even if you were only reading this and Batman), then this was a pretty good comic book. However, this issue really falls apart if you try to fit it into the rest of the Death storyline... I mean really, Joker had the time to dig up DOZENS of graves, bring the bodies TO Amusement Mile, and then set them up in the big top? Even with a mess of help, that's GOT to take a few days, at the least! And then, on top of that, he managed to track down all of the people who were working at the circus(presumably before Dick sent them out of town), drug them with his toxin, have them hide around Amusement Mile, where they attack Dick(who saw none of them as he walked through the Mile), after the circus exploded?! Like I said, if Joker wasn't doing anything else? Then sure, I could see him doing all of that... Maybe... But on top of ALL the other things he's been doing in this story!? It would take somebody with Superman's powerset to do everything Joker has been responsible for! So for me, while this wasn't a bad issue, it was actually hurt by the greater Death storyline, because everything that happened here is just too unbelievable.
Score: 6 out of 10.
That's a pretty awesome Joker pic...
HI, whats up guys I have been off couz I went on vacation and got hooked in Game of thrones books so now I'm triyng to get up to date with my comics
ReplyDeleteSo I'm not reading the tie-ins but i'm really enjoying the main story and if I understand correctly Joker has been out of town like a year planing this whole Death of the Family thing so, maeby he got the corpses in that time?
Hey Alien, always good to hear from you! Yup, Joker was away for a full year, plotting everything out, but there were SO MANY corpses!! Like, around one hundred! Maybe more!! Where was he storing them?! And then there was decorating the tent with them! That had to take a long time! Shouldn't somebody have noticed Joker dragging corpse after corpse into the tent? Plus he was able to capture all of the live circus folks from Haly's and get them with Joker toxin! It was all just a bit overboard for my tastes. With that said, I wish I was only reading the Batman comics like you, because the tie-ins have hurt my enjoyment of the main story, especially since the main story is SO much better than the other books.
ReplyDeleteOK, you know that I've not been buying this whole event, but, now, I think I might get where Snyder is going. Throughout this event, I've been pissed by a lot of stuff, like Joker's magical powers, like you describe here, X, and, most of all, the whole question of whether he knows their identities. But, suddenly, I realized that of course he knows them: it's the whole point. Joker doesn't want to murder the family; he just wants it to die. As I was contemplating Dick watching everything he loved (including possibly the corpses of his parents) get destroyed, I realized that he's going to be furious at Bruce for not telling them that Joker knew their identities. How could he not? Bruce robbed them of the ability to plan for this eventuality, all because he himself couldn't accept the truth. I don't really see Dick forgiving Bruce any time soon for causing him to lose Haly's Circus, nor do I see Barbara thanking him for giving her the chance to contemplate whether she really would chop Joker in half with a chainsaw. So, what if the "death" is metaphorical? He doesn't want to kill them: he simply wants them gone. Plus, how furious would Batman be at Joker? I mean, look at how he went after him after Jason? Imagine Joker taking away the entire Bat-family? Suddenly, Joker has everything he always wanted: Bats' full and undivided attention. If Snyder goes this way, I can overlook a lot of the flaws of this arc.
ReplyDeleteI think JT floated the metaphorical card to me a while back, JW. At the time I was really unhappy about it(It's a DEATH in the Family! SomeBODY has to die!!), but the more I think about it, I guess I'd be okay(-ish) with it. I'm still a bit torn though... If somebody doesn't get killed, then, in time, everything will simply go back to normal. I mean, that's kind of a dumb statement(everything always goes back to normal in comics!), but in a way, I don't think this storyline would have the same impact if somebody doesn't die. But then again, whose death would really give that HUGE impact? I still think Snyder has written himself into a bit of a corner here... In a way it reminds me of Civil War, where I enjoyed the story, until I realized the end was going to be a major letdown. I'll just sit back and see how it all plays out come tomorrow, I guess. I'm currently cautiously optimistic about the end of this story...
DeleteJT always sees this stuff coming! I totally didn't even consider it until this issue. Agree with you, though, that everything will quickly return to normal if no one dies. But, given that everyone has pretty much already died at some point, I'm not sure the same wouldn't be true even if it was Alfred's head on the platter! (LCS opens in 28 minutes!)
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