The Joker is pregnant in DC’s new Batman comic

It’s troublesome to put in writing a narrative the place the Joker is the principle character. This is the case with many villains, however the Clown Prince of Crime’s conventional stream of consciousness strategy to criminality doesn’t precisely assist.

I imply, certain, James Tynion (et al.)’s The Joker is a improbable comic — however that’s largely as a result of it’s secretly a narrative about James Gordon the place he hunts down the Joker, somewhat than a straight-up Joker story. Nevertheless, Matthew Rosenberg (What’s the Furthest Place From Here?) and Carmine Di Giandomenico (Batman: The Knight) try simply that: The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing actually is only a ebook concerning the Joker.

And it comes with some actually stream of consciousness again up tales, drawn by Francesco Francavilla (The Joker) in which, nicely. Yeah. The Joker seems to be pregnant for a web page or two.

What else is taking place in the pages of our favourite comics? We’ll let you know. Welcome to Monday Funnies, Polygon’s weekly checklist of the books that our comics editor loved this previous week. It’s half society pages of superhero lives, half studying suggestions, half “look at this cool art.” There could also be some spoilers. There will not be sufficient context. But there can be nice comics. (And when you missed the final version, learn this.)

The Joker gets out of bed wearing an open dressing gown and boxers, revealing his swolen and apparently pregnant belly to his henchmen in The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing #4.

Now, it seems that what truly occurred is that he swallowed a bunch of mud on the identical time that Zatanna was cursing him and one thing magical in all probability occurred and anyway he barfs up slightly Joker mud duplicate — and if that sounds darkly zany, that’s very a lot the purpose.

Rosenberg has instructed press that The Man Who Stopped Laughing’s again up tales are his tribute to the Silver Age, an period in which superhero comics acquired a bit dada, with extra trendy, violent incarnations of the character courtesy of creators like Alan Moore, Brian Bolland, Scott Snyder, and Greg Capullo. And certainly, in his backups with Francavilla, there’s loads of bisected our bodies, level clean executions, and gorilla-with-a-machine-gun carnage, and all of it looks like a whole mpreg fever dream.

“You’ve come through the Last Door. A portal of my own creation,” the Scarlet Witch explains as she serves her guest tea. “It appears only to those in the direst of need. Those who feel they have no one left,” in Scarlet Witch #1.

Writer Steve Orlando typically favors deep continuity dives and frenetic pacing that leaves me overwhelmed, however his first difficulty of Scarlet Witch is a stunning one-and-done fable. If the sequence retains up the framing of Wanda fixing the issues of every new character who walks by her magical final resort door, I can see myself having fun with many extra problems with this bantery, episodic journey comic.

Close views of Lex Luthor’s back as, far away and framed between his legs, Superman catches a car in midair, then disappears in a streak of speed, then taps Luthor on the back. In the final panel of the page, a huge POW appears around Superman, whose punch has just thrown Luthor into the far distance in Action Comics #1050.

The Superman mythos took a swerve in this New Year, by giving Superman a secret identification as soon as once more. Lex Luthor did some machinations with a psychic and, now, aside from Superman’s closest family and friends, no one is aware of that Superman and Clark Kent are the identical particular person and when you attempt to inform them they may have a large stroke.

In honesty, I might have preferred to have frolicked in the place of “everybody knows Superman is one of the world’s most trusted investigative journalists” for some time longer, however I’ve to confess that Luthor’s reasoning for it — “If the world needs Superman, then I will give them the best version possible… The world needs to believe you are a god. That you are above them, not one of them” — is such a direct shot throughout the bow of the final decade of Superman movies I feel I felt my hair transfer.

But “Susana,” you say, “this image has nothing to do with that,” and also you’re appropriate. It’s simply that this Nick Dragotta-drawn web page fuckin’ guidelines and everybody ought to take a look at it.

Iron Man explains that his plan to hire Skrulls to pretend to be him and do superhero work was inspired by Squirrel Girl. “I’ve taken Doreen’s advice and done more with it than anyone would’ve thought possible,” in Secret Invasion #3.

OK so not solely did Ryan North put a wordless Squirrel Girl cameo in Secret Empire, this story about Skrulls and Maria Hill and the Avengers is additionally a direct sequel to an Unbeatable Squirrel Girl arc? This guidelines.

A giant snake suddenly attacks a screaming boy — and passes right through him because they are both ghosts. In fact the giant snake is actually coming out of the neck of a normal boy ghost. “What the fuck was that?!” they both yell. “Bro,” a girl yells at the snake boy, “Dom said don’t —” He protests back at her, his snake head wobbling and his arms gesturing emphatically and hilariously in The Sandman Universe: Dead Boy Detectives #1.

Dead Boy Detectives — they’re two ghost boys from completely different eras, they clear up crime and run from Death — is my favourite The Sandman spinoff. Like most Sandman spinoffs, DBD sequence don’t normally final very lengthy, however I hope this one goes one million years as a result of I love how author Pornsak Pichetshote and artist Jeff Stokely staged this second when our standard boy detectives meet some Thai ghost youngsters.

Johnny Storm reveals to his minimum wage coworkers that he’s secretly the Human Torch. “We knew, Johnny,” one says. “Johnny, you wanna turn that off before you trigger the sprinklers?” in Fantastic Four #3.

I didn’t anticipate to learn a comic concerning the Human Torch unionizing his minimal wage office this week, however I did and I loved it.

A series of concentric circles depicts the Amazons rending Hercules limb from limb. An outer circle of standing Amazons, a large inner circle of furious Amazons stabbing, slashing, and beating him as he screams, and a small center circle of ants overwhelming a preying mantis in Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons #3.

Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons has lastly reached its conclusion, which suggests I can formally say, for the primary time, that its collected version can be considered one of Polygon’s finest comics of 2023.

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