... Joker considers both Batman and himself to be above the common breed of "civilized men," telling him, "Don't talk like you're one of them. You're not, even if you'd like to be. To them, you're just a freak." I guess I'm fortunate Nolan didn't work in any mentions of Ubermenschen, possibly counting on audiences to interpolate the (false) idea that Nietzsche's supermen were simply strong men who ignored society's rules. -- my review of DARK KNIGHT.
This five-issue arc appeared on the heels of two other arcs in the regular BATMAN comic, both scribed by James Tynion IV. In the first one, CITY OF BANE, Bane kills faithful butler Alfred. In the next, THEIR DARK DESIGNS, several of Batman's familiar rogues -- including the Joker, resurrected from the usual villain-death-- set up the theft of Bruce Wayne's billions, which is the main story-trope of THE JOKER WAR. In addition, during DESIGNS Tynion, in concert with artist Jorge Jimenez, introduced Punchline, the Joker's replacement for his former partner, which debut includes an inevitable "first fight" between Punchline and Harley Quinn. I passed on reading CITY OF BANE, but to put JOKER WAR in perspective I did reread DESIGNS. As on my first reading, I found that it was just a basic Bat-adventure, with the intro of Punchline being that arc's only distinguishing aspect.
WAR is more complex than DESIGNS, for this third Bat-arc partly builds upon, and partly rejects, Christopher Nolan's quasi-Marxist interpretation of Joker. Some might aver that Nolan's above line about Batman and Joker being members of some elect group had already been suggested by assorted comics-writers, not least Frank Miller, but Nolan certainly popularized the concept. On the third page of WAR's first section, Tynion takes Nolan-Joker's sentiments and takes them in a similar direction, as Batman relates to an imaginary Alfred in his head:
I'm the only other person in this world he thinks is alive...
At the same time, Nolan-Joker shows utter contempt for money, while Tynion-Joker enjoys having access to the Wayne fortune, even if his main purpose is to use filthy lucre to defeat his destined enemy. That plan revolves around using money to prove Joker's view that Gotham City, the cynosure Batman has devoted his life to protecting, is really more in line with Joker's philosophy than Batman's.
One of Joker's opening gambits is to exacerbate the hero's already de-stabilized state of mind by having Punchline expose Batman to a toxin that makes him hallucinate in far more gross ways. Harley Quinn, anxious to keep Joker from turning Gotham into his own crazy town, seeks to aid the crusader, though her ultimate goal is to bring the Clown Prince's reign to a permanent end.
Harley manages to take Batman to a hideout, giving him a counter-agent to the toxin. Under this chemical bombardment, the hero begins to "trip balls" as Harley calls it, which includes another vivid dialogue with Alfred. (Actually, it sounds about the same as the toxin-less hallucination Batman has at the opening of the story.) Imaginary Alfred adds an element that obviously couldn't appear in the Nolanverse, having Alfred claim that Joker "mocks love and family by pulling his acolytes close to him. Making a joke of your family, your relationships. But he'd just as soon put a bullet in their heads if that gave him the upper hand against you." Alfred's subsequent statement about how the number of Joker's victims matters far more to the hero than to Joker, however, sounds largely like a restatement of a similar point in Miller's DARK KNIGHT RETURNS.
While the crusader trips out, Joker and Punchline enjoy the high life, with Joker commenting on his supposed early life (which of course could be a total fantasy on his part). Punchline mentions that some of their men have been slain by a new vigilante, Clownhunter. Though Joker gives the order to have Clownhunter "crucified" as an example, the villain is pleased to see the rise of an avenger who doesn't obey Batman's no-killing principles, because that confirms Joker's view of Gotham as a "kill or be killed" cesspool.
A little later, Punchline invades Harley's hideout and tries to kill both Harley and Batman. In terms of gender politics, Tynion must tread carefully here. Since the original Harley-Joker relationship of the nineties Bat-cartoon was denounced as toxic, Harley can't be seen as merely jealous of Joker's new female partner/girlfriend. For that matter, Punchline makes clear that she's not into Joker for reasons of passion, but because she admires his unswerving devotion to chaos. And Tynion largely succeeds in making the catfight about how each female projects, or has projected, her desires under the empty vessel of the Clown Prince. Tynion even throws in the irony that "there's nothing in the world that [Joker's] ever going to care about more than that stupid bat."
Back in Batman's seething brain, Alfred adds a fairly original wrinkle, stating that "Batman is a child's dream, that you can travel the world and learn every possible way to save everyone"-- but also adding that the dream is important for that very reason. Earlier Punchline has already claimed that Batman, not his kid-associates, is the one who gives his tools their childish names, and a recovering Batman indirectly confirms Punchline's hunch in a funny scene with Harley.
Not too surprisingly, Joker too echoes the insight about a "child's fantasy," though he calls it "selfish and strange" because Batman has sought to alter Gotham from its true corrupt nature. But Batman has one advantage: a whole Bat-family invested in his dream, and with the help of that family Batman turns the tide against Joker's army and recovers the Wayne fortune. Bat and Clown meet at Ace Chemical, the place where most versions of Joker were clown-ified, and though the result of this never-ending battle is inevitable, Tynion concocts a reasonably original climax.
Harley shows up while both combatants are on their last legs. She attaches one bomb to the tied-up Joker and another to herself, then runs away, forcing Batman to choose to save her life or Joker's. Batman makes the right choice, though naturally the villain escapes via his own resources, though not without a little humiliation. An epilogue shows Batman perform an "intervention" for the vigilante Clownhunter, trying to persuade him to give up his unholy fixation on killing.
JOKER WAR, though it's a better than average Bat-myth, is certainly no classic. There are too many segues in which Batman encounters zombies of some sort, both imaginary and brought about through some obscure Joker-science, and the Alfred-delusions would have made more sense if all of them had been triggered by the toxins. (There's a loose excuse that even before getting dosed, Batman was injured in the previous arc, but it's not a convincing reason for his fantasies.) There's a nothing subplot about Gotham's other villains trying to profit from the chaos, but it just takes up space. To my eye Jimenez resembles a more rough-hewn version of Jim Lee's work in the celebrated HUSH storyline, giving maximum moxie to even minor villains and to briefly seen members of the Bat-family.
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