Cover by Mike Allred
Written by Jeff Parker
Art by Joe Quinones
Colours by Maris Wicks
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Beware of spoilers!
This week it’s the conclusion to The Joker story which started in last weeks ‘The Joker Sees Red’. This week ‘Batman Hunts The Dead’.
When we last left the Dynamic Duo they were left baffled when the mysterious Red Hood kidnapped The Joker out from under their noses in the middle of a grave yard.
I raved about issue #7 for it’s genius concoction of references of other famous Joker stories from around the Batman universe. This week the references – bar one to spelunking – are sidelined in order to maximise time for the remainder of the story.
Much like in the back half of the Penguin arc there’s a huge amount of exposition crammed in to these few pages. We learn the identity of the Red Hood and the methods by which be became the hooded menace. There’s some brilliant trickery which like all of Jeff Parkers other work sits so well with the Adam West Batman mythos.
I was a little disappointed to learn that this story wouldn’t stretch to three issues like the opening arc featuring Riddler but I can live with the story that we got here just because it’s a perfect escalation of The Joker’s character from the TV series.
Artwork and dialogue are perfectly consistent with last week’s issue, granted these stories are most like produced as one for the print media and separated in to two or three for digital but there’s always the concern that in splitting the story up it loses some of the moment and some of the impact.
Unlike the Penguin arc and the Chanteuse bonus story there’s a little more time afforded to the big fight in this issue. There’s not a huge amount of action to witness on screen but we’re allowed a few more on screen captions than we have seen in recent issues.
I’m not sure if it’s me but when I used to watch the TV series I would be fixated by the big silly fights that would come at the climax of both parts of a story and I feel that particular element of the show still needs a little development in order to find its place amongst the pages of this comic.
Overall another solid issue and a great ending to the first entry of The Joker to the series.
8/10
