The Four Color Media Monitor

The AP Wire's published its own sugarcoated report on the 13th Batman issue, and tells the following:

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - For a year the Joker's been out of sight, out of mind and out of trouble.

That changed Wednesday in the pages of "Batman" No. 13, when the clown prince of crime returned to Gotham with a mission to help Batman become a better man, even if it means going after everyone and everything that the Dark Knight and his alter ego, Bruce Wayne, hold dear. [...]

"He is someone who has a mission this time," Snyder said of the villain, long one of DC's most notorious, and arguably Batman's greatest foe. "This is a story about how the Joker took a look at Gotham, Batman and the way things are working."

And what the Joker has seen and learned, he does not like.

"His point here is to say 'You have forsaken your kingdom, it is rotting beneath your feet,'" Snyder said of Joker's reasoning, adding that Joker is "here to save you from yourself and to save Gotham" by making Wayne hold up his darkest fears to an uncompromising light.

But the Joker's way of helping involves mayhem, attempted murder and psychotic ramblings, all of which unfurl in "Batman" - drawn by Greg Capullo and Jonathan Glapion - and will do so through February in that title along with "Batgirl," "Catwoman," "Batman and Robin," "Detective Comics" and "Teen Titans," among others.

Snyder said it's not just Batman will who face the Joker's misguided wrath, but his friends, allies and those closest to him, including Robin, Batgirl and Catwoman.

Interesting that they don't mention what Snyder told earlier would happen. It's just like them not to do so, supposedly because they don't want the public to take offense, but really because they don't want a potentially ghastly story's sales chances to be botched. And if it's that far-reaching a crossover, then no doubt, they're hoping to ape the Joker's Last Laugh crossover from 2001, which may have been milder in tone, but was no less of a time and money waster.

And the premise of the Joker pretending to "help" make Batman better brings to mind something Geoff Johns did when he was writing the Flash - he had the neo-Zoom named Hunter Zolomon claim he was trying to make Wally West a "better" hero by assaulting his pregnant wife Linda, but only succeeded in ripping off a line seen in the Flash during 1980 when the original Reverse-Flash, Eobard Thawne, mocked Barry Allen by telling him he'd made him a better hero by murdering Iris West Allen, which was done much better the first time around. And, Johns only made the useless story all the more insulting the cerebral cortex.

"It's meant to be a deeply psychologically terrifying story for Batman," said Snyder, who's been writing the book since its launch last year.

No, it's meant to be a most repellant exercise in shock tactics that could only tire people further from crossovers and make them resent all the company executives from Marvel and DC who led to the whole idea, and scare them away from the Dark Knight's adventures for decades to come. Their failure to be more honest about what kind of violence could crop up in the crossover only makes this all the more aggravating.

Labels: Batman, dc comics, dreadful writers, Flash, misogyny and racism, msm propaganda, violence