The Joker has taken everything from Batman and now seeks to bring about joke of them all, the destruction of Gotham. Spoilers for Batman #95 follow.
After what turned out to be a nine-issue prelude story for Batman, which is too long for any sort of prelude, “Joker War” is finally upon us. So, was the dramatic build-up to the beginning of this arc worth it? Just based on this first issue, not really. This is a decent issue, with some fantastic art, that doesn’t really give you any sense of what the goals of the story are moving forward. It’s also oddly slow after the last issue made it seem that this arc was going to start with a bang, and it really doesn’t.
Where this issue fails at doing is truly setting up a purpose for “Joker War” beyond “Joker wants to destroy Gotham.” It’s absolutely nothing new in terms of motivation and is honestly quite boring in that sense. Yes, he also took over Wayne Enterprises and this issue does a good job of how he’s now manipulating Gotham, but Joker isn’t actually doing that himself, he’s using intermediaries making it a bit less interesting. There’s a lot of potential for this story that wasn’t really achieved in this first issue.
Where the issue succeeds though is how it makes Batman feel completely desperate. He has very few places to turn to and nowhere that he can really feel safe at and that is felt in this issue. Even once he gets to a micro-cave inside of Wayne Tower, Punchline ambushes him. This issue constantly keeps Batman off-balance, thus also keeping the reader a bit off-balance as well. Plus, this issue has a pretty decent appearance from Punchline. She feels a bit like a Jokerized version of Erica Slaughter from Jame Tynion IV’s other series, Something is Killing the Children, but she’s fun nonetheless here.
The best part of this issue though is the art from Jorge Jimenez and Tomeu Morey. Both artists are phenomenal separately but combine the two and they are one of the best art teams in comics. Jimenez’s linework, inks, and layouts, unsurprisingly, are gorgeous in this issue. He manages to capture the greasy underbelly of Gotham incredibly well, while also making it seem slick and clean as well. He also provides a great “creep” factor when it comes to Joker and Punchline as well.
Then, once Morey’s colors are put on top of Jimenez’s work, everything comes together incredibly well. The excellent colors make the already beautiful art gorgeous and elevate it to become something more than it already was.