it's time

this thread will be pt 1 of my Joker Journalism, which will overall be, appropriately enough, in three parts. pt 2 will appear on XavierFiles. Pt 3... we will discuss later

Page 1: 9 PANEL GRID! THOMAS WAYNE'S TOMBSTONE! BUT WHAT'S THIS... oh NO his tombstone is WRECKED!

this comic is 9 Panel Grid DEEP but it is also IRREVERENT.

2: "Time heals all wounds... if they don't KILL you first!"

"My parents..."
"I'll fix their markers after I fix you"

2: also, what's going on here? is this an AU where Joker killed Barbara and DickBats as well as Jason? Or does Batman just keep like out of fashion outfits now on display

Like, this was teased in the comic where Batman sat on the Cool God Chair and in Rebirth #1; it's in mainline continuity, right?

Page 3: 6 Panel grid. We're flipping back and forth between 9 and 6 in a way I find: distracting! Alfred cuts apart Batman's costume to get to the terrible wound that lead him to drive over his parents' graves.

Page 4: 9 panel grid. Batman has scars! A lot of them! The terrible wound this time? Stabbed by an umbrella. :(

Page 5: BACK TO 6 PANEL GRID! montage of scars + scarring incidents. The weird thing is that the opening page implied something HUGE and HORRIBLE had just happened to batman, but this montage makes it all seem like, welp, just another wound to add to the pile.

So if this isn't an extreme situation, this is Batman's normal, this is just another wound and just another appointment w/ Doc Alfred, there's nothing unusual here at all, it implies that Batman is like woundedly driving over his parents' graves ALL THE TIME.

Page 1: What could have happened???? Batman's in trouble!!!!

Page 5: no he's not like this is a Tuesday for him. On Tuesday he gets stabbed and destroys his parents' graves again. It's fine.

Page 6: More villains, more wounds.

Page 7: Montage continues but instead of three panels of scars with three panels of DIFFERENT villains it's THREE PANELS OF JOKERS BAY BEEEEEE

we're in it now

throughout the Scartage, laughter SFX slowly overtakes the PUNCH sfx

Page 8: Laughter overtaking Bruce sadly sitting in the batcave. why does laughter make bruce so sad?

Flashback.

Bruce laughed when he left the Mark of Zorro that one night :( :( :(

joker laughter make bruce sad because when joker laugh bruce thinks i used to do laughs. but that was before my parents were DEAD :( :( :(

I kind of figured we were going to get a flashback to the death of the Waynes, because I expected this comic to be bad, pointless, retreading of a lot of stuff, and you can't more bad and more pointless in a batman comic than doing the Waynes' death again--

But I never could have IMAGINED that this was the way it was going to be connected to the actual plot of Three Jokers.

Joker Laugh Make Bruce Wayne Sad Because He Laugh Before Parents Dead.

Incredible.

Page 9: death of the waynes but THIS time in a NINE PANEL GRID

[audience starts chanting "9- PANEL- GRID! 9- PANEL- GRID!!!"]

Page 10: bringing Bruce out of his reverie,

Alfred: This wound is DEEPER than the others. It's going to leave a scar, not that you'd notice.

IT'S DEEP B/C U THINK ALFRED TALKING ABOUT PHYSICAL SCAR BUT WE JUST SAW BRUCE HAS EMOTION SCAR FROM DEAD PARENTS

Also on Page 10: the joker is waging a war against ORGANIZED crime, and Batman and Joker both waging wars against crime could be an interesting bit, in a different comic, I suspect.

In this one the big deal is that he just killed the people accused of hiring Joe Chill, who were never brought to justice.

so fuckin

Joker got justice where batman couldn't

batman mad

Page 11: Christ

Page 11: Cut to Barb. We see her running at MAXIMUM SPEED on a treadmill in a gym. Because-- you remember the Killing Joke? Right? REMEMBER THAT COMIC???? The TV plays an IRONIC ad for restless leg syndrome, and then cuts to a fucking. A Kevin Smith cameo???

The Joker has murdered a dude that doesn't look like Kevin Smith, but he does go by "Fatman" who dresses up as "Batman," you know, like the podcast

I stand corrected: https://twitter.com/urbane_turtle/status/1298270404629258257?s=20

Page 12: 9 Panel grid about Barbara's scars. Idk why Bruce's was a 6 panel grid and this one was a 9, since we're clearly supposed to compare the two.

I'm not the best judge of this kind of thing, but I don't think Fabok is doing a Sexy Trauma scene here, so, at least it's not bad in *that* way.