The Joker is pregnant in DC’s new Batman comic

It’s difficult to write a story where the Joker is the main character. This is the case with many villains, but the Clown Prince of Crime’s traditional stream of consciousness approach to criminality doesn’t exactly help.

I mean, sure, James Tynion (et al.)’s The Joker is a fantastic comic — but that’s largely because it’s secretly a story about James Gordon where he hunts down the Joker, rather than a straight-up Joker story. Nevertheless, Matthew Rosenberg (What’s the Furthest Place From Here?Carmine Di Giandomenico (Batman: The Knight() is trying to do just that. The Joker: Who Stops Laughing?This book is really about Joker.

Francesco Francavilla drew some amazing stream of consciousness stories for the back up story.The JokerYou can also use a ). Yeah. It appears the Joker may be pregnant, at least for one page.

Is there anything else happening inside our favourite comics’ pages? We’ll tell you. Welcome to Monday Funnies, Polygon’s weekly list of the books that our comics editor enjoyed this past week. It’s part society pages of superhero lives, part reading recommendations, part “look at this cool art.” There may be some spoilers. It may not provide enough context. There will still be some great comics. This is the latest edition.

The Joker gets out of bed wearing an open dressing gown and boxers, revealing his swolen and apparently pregnant belly to his henchmen in The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing #4.

Now, it turns out that what actually happened is that he swallowed a bunch of mud at the same time that Zatanna was cursing him and something magical probably happened and anyway he barfs up a little Joker mud duplicate — and if that sounds darkly zany, that’s very much the point.

Rosenberg stated to the media that The Man Who Quit Laughing’s back up stories are his tribute to the Silver Age, an era in which superhero comics got a bit dada, with more modern, violent incarnations of the character courtesy of creators like Alan Moore, Brian Bolland, Scott Snyder, and Greg Capullo. And indeed, in his backups with Francavilla, there’s plenty of bisected bodies, point blank executions, and gorilla-with-a-machine-gun carnage, and it all feels like a complete mpreg fever dream.

“You’ve come through the Last Door. A portal of my own creation,” the Scarlet Witch explains as she serves her guest tea. “It appears only to those in the direst of need. Those who feel they have no one left,” in Scarlet Witch #1.

Steve Orlando, writer, sometimes likes frenetic pacing and deep continuity. His first issue was however a great success. Scarlet WitchIt’s a charming, simple fable. If Wanda continues to solve the problems of every new character through her magical door of last resort, then I could enjoy many more issues this bantery episodic adventure comic.

Close views of Lex Luthor’s back as, far away and framed between his legs, Superman catches a car in midair, then disappears in a streak of speed, then taps Luthor on the back. In the final panel of the page, a huge POW appears around Superman, whose punch has just thrown Luthor into the far distance in Action Comics #1050.

In the New Year, Superman was given a new identity. Lex Luthor did some machinations with a psychic and, now, except for Superman’s closest friends and family, nobody knows that Superman and Clark Kent are the same person and if you try to tell them they could have a massive stroke.

In honesty, I would have liked to have hung out in the place of “everybody knows Superman is one of the world’s most trusted investigative journalists” for a while longer, but I have to admit that Luthor’s reasoning for it — “If the world needs Superman, then I will give them the best version possible… Your world must believe that you are a deity. That you are above them, not one of them” — is such a direct shot across the bow of the last decade of Superman films I think I felt my hair move.

But “Susana,” you say, “this image has nothing to do with that,” and you’re correct. It’s just that this Nick Dragotta-drawn page fuckin’ rules and everyone should look at it.

Iron Man explains that his plan to hire Skrulls to pretend to be him and do superhero work was inspired by Squirrel Girl. “I’ve taken Doreen’s advice and done more with it than anyone would’ve thought possible,” in Secret Invasion #3.

Ryan North did not just make a Squirrel Girl comeo, he also wrote it. Secret EmpireThe story of Maria Hill and Skrulls is the direct sequel to An. Unbeatable Squirrel Girl arc? These are the rules.

A giant snake suddenly attacks a screaming boy — and passes right through him because they are both ghosts. In fact the giant snake is actually coming out of the neck of a normal boy ghost. “What the fuck was that?!” they both yell. “Bro,” a girl yells at the snake boy, “Dom said don’t —” He protests back at her, his snake head wobbling and his arms gesturing emphatically and hilariously in The Sandman Universe: Dead Boy Detectives #1.

Dead Boy Detectives — they’re two ghost boys from different eras, they solve crime and run from Death — is my favorite The Sandman spinoff. Like most Sandman spinoffs, DBD series don’t usually last very long, but I hope this one goes a million years because I In loveHow artist Jeff Stokely and writer Pornsak Pichetshote staged the moment that our boy detectives met some ghost children in Thailand.

Johnny Storm reveals to his minimum wage coworkers that he’s secretly the Human Torch. “We knew, Johnny,” one says. “Johnny, you wanna turn that off before you trigger the sprinklers?” in Fantastic Four #3.

I didn’t expect to read a comic about the Human Torch unionizing his minimum wage workplace this week, but I did and I enjoyed it.

A series of concentric circles depicts the Amazons rending Hercules limb from limb. An outer circle of standing Amazons, a large inner circle of furious Amazons stabbing, slashing, and beating him as he screams, and a small center circle of ants overwhelming a preying mantis in Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons #3.

Wonder Woman History: The Amazons has finally reached its conclusion, which means I can officially say, for the first time, that its collected edition will be one of Polygon’s best comics of 2023.

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