Noteworthy Issues: Knight Terrors: The Joker #1 (July, 2023)

So, I had wondered why DC only put up two issues of the Knight Terrors event on DC Infinite, but then I realized there was a good reason for that:  they were early preview issues.  I just had to wait a few more weeks for those other issues to start showing up as part of my Ultra subscription.  And since I don’t have to pay extra for them…hey, I can read and review all of them!  And why not start with the Joker’s?  What is his worst nightmare?

“Noteworthy Issues” is gonna be kinda DC heavy going forward…

Issue:  Knight Terrors: The Joker #1, July 2023

Writer:  Matthew Rosenberg

Artist:  Stefano Raffaele

The Plot:  The Joker’s worst fears is a world without Batman.  Sort of.

Commentary:  What would be the Joker’s worst nightmare?  This is a character more inclined to cause nightmares than suffer from them, but since Insomnia put the world to sleep to give everyone nightmares while he searches for the Nightmare Stone inside some hero’s subconscious…why would the Joker even be a footnote here?

Truthfully, this issue (and presumably a second one since these stories seem to be two-part affairs) exists to get into the Joker’s head a bit and find out what scares him.

In short:  he’s afraid that Batman would die in a manner where the Joker didn’t really have anything to do with it, and without Batman, he’d have to get an office job.

Yeah, that happens.  In the first few pages, Batman has Joker and his gang cornered when the Dark Knight slips, heads his head really hard (probably dying on the spot) before sliding off the edge of the tall building they’re all standing on and dying for certain on the street below.  Joker had nothing to do with it.  And the whole thing depresses him.  Yeah, his gang suggests more crimes, maybe trying to take on a different hero (Green Arrow doesn’t interest Joker, and Superman is out of his league), before the Clown Prince of Crime gets a job, apparently at Wayne Enterprises (Bruce Wayne is fine in this dream, for what it’s worth), and no one there cares that he is or was a murderer.  Even when he kills again as he sometimes does, no one cares.

It’s an interesting concept:  the thing the Joker wants most, the thing Batman gave him, was attention.  Without Batman, aside from former members of his gang like Gaggy Gagsworth, no one cares what he does, and the longer this goes on, the more…ordinary he becomes.

Yeah, I think that would be something that would scare the Joker.

So, new Knight Terrors issues, and I got a good one…sadly, they aren’t all that good.

Grade:  A-