I had a fancy dress party for my birthday last weekend and my flatmate went as The Joker, which got me in the moon to read this. The Man Who Laughs is the story of the emergence of The Joker, following on in spirit from Batman: Year One. Also included is a story called Made of Wood, in which Batman teams up with the original Green Lantern, Alan Scott, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
A theme through The Man Who Laughs is how Gotham is changing, and how Batman needs to adapt to change with it. The narrative follows both the Caped Crusader and Jim Gordon as they seek to protect those who the Joker has threatened. The crimes seem unpredictable and chaotic but Batman feels there is an underlying pattern, and works hard to see if there is a method to Joker’s madness. The artwork is great and quite haunting in the way that it depicts Joker’s victims, and the story does a good job at evoking the unsettling terror that comes with the Joker. It has the same mood as Batman: Year One, but at the same time it does go over things we know already, so the book isn’t going to subvert your expectations or deliver any great twists. However, it’s a solid story and if you want a quick read to get into the Batman/Joker dynamic then it’s as good as any.
But Made of Wood was a big surprise. While I like the idea of DC’s Golden Age heroes I’ve not read much about them, and I wasn’t aware that Alan Scott actually patrolled Gotham. The story here deals with an unsolved case from Green Lantern’s days, one that he actually felt responsible for, and it leads to him and Batman teaming up. The relationship between the two of them is written well, and it’s insightful to get Batman’s views on the legend. He admires Green Lantern for being a hero, whereas he feels like he has to become almost a mythic creature in order to save people through fear, because he’s just a man. The exchanges between the two eminently enjoyable, and they play off each other perfectly. They both comment on Gotham and how much it has/hasn’t changed, and they both have different philosophies about how to fight crime.
Both stories in this collection are good, but The Man Who Laughs is a familiar story, while Made of Wood offers something that I hadn’t read before, and approached Batman and Gotham from a different angle.