Joker Hc

*It's 1:00 am, Anenome by the Brian Jonestown Massacre is playing in the background and I need to take a shower so we'll make this quick*

The story is about a smalltime thug that's trying to reach the Joker's status so he decides to be his henchman and watch him at work and feel some of the power the Joker has over Gotham. The Joker got released from Arkham Asylum for some unknown reason and Jonny (Frost - the smalltime thug) escorts him while he does business. He soon realizes that this is not what he wants.
The plot is predictable and obvious and a very short read. A waste of time.

On the art side - it is very detailed - too much to look real but the style is somewhat realistic in an exaggerated way.
The coloring sways back and forth between realistic and with many shade changes to cartoony and uniform coloring - in one panel the Joker's face is in the same bright shade of white, and in the next that white color has many shades and the Joker has shadows on his face.
The occasional very bright coloring (almost bleached) that is used and the big noticeable use of inking doesn't help - using that much ink makes the colorist less able to play with the shades of color and to make the drawing look realistic, and a thick outline or lines in general make characters seem less real and more cartoony.
Throughout this we see nice versions of Harley Quinn, the Penguin, Killer Croc and the Riddler, but their appearances are very short and somewhat forced and have nothing to do with the actual story - just a "hey look! it's ...".
There are nice choices - making a batarang in mid-flight blurry which will confuse the reader for a few seconds, showing the bat-signal in the sky in a blurry way, showing Batman through the light of the bat-signal as he reaches whoever turned it on etc.
The lettering is generic and computer made, doesn't suit what is happening and is repetitive and was just put there without much thought. The narration boxes of Jonny and the Joker get hard to distinguish during one time in the beginning because their coloring becomes very similar.
Also one narration box is put between two panels and it has equal parts of it in each panel and it confused me - in which order am I supposed to read the narration boxes?

The comic is very short and seems to lack panels - the Joker's weirdness (in acts and words) make this seem like we're missing a beat between most of the panels and it takes some time to realize what happened.
The story is pretty pointless showing us a character we don't care for - Jonny Frost, serving the Joker while he tries to regain Gotham and gets his ass kicked pretty swiftly by Batman which seems weird based on his reputation, and the addition of all those familiar Batman villains - although nice - is gratuitous and seems more like fan-service.

In the design front there's nothing too exciting as well - it's a hardcover with a dust-jacket that is a little rough, the text in the front-cover is upper-case and in a weird thin hand-written look.
The back-cover is nice - taking a photo of the Joker and cutting it in half and placing the upper half (the part that shows his eyes) in the bottom, and the lower-half (the part that shows his smile) on top, and the text is between them.
If you'll look on the part of the dust-jacket that folds into the book you'll see a Joker drawing and a Batman drawing and info on two of the creators - their names are written in the same way as the front-cover text's is.
If you'll take the dust-jacket off you'll see that this hardcover is green and that it has a panel from the book engraved in the front cover - a la the Harry Potter series - but here it's done in a way that sinks most of the things in the panel so that some of it will stick up and be noticeable (unlike the Harry Potter series and other books where parts of the cover are pushed upwards), but it's barely intelligible - a bad and boring (panel) choice for a front cover.
If you'll open the book you'll see that before the regular glossy pages there's a thin cardboard page that's green - continuing the Joker theme (I don't know that actual name of that type of paper but that's how it feels - like a thin cardboard).
In the end there are texts about four of the creators with photos, and their name is written in the same way the text in the front-cover is written, and there are some other book suggestions and nothing else - not much for a hardcover book...
There are two drawings before the comicbook starts but they're both just closeups of part of the front cover (the Joker's teeth) and they look pixelated and a bit blurry - a stupid and weird choice, and there are the credits and name of this book in the same font as the front-cover's text (that font is overused).
The design part of things is poor - just several basic things and a bad choice of a drawing to engrave on the actual cover.

I want to give the art a "very good" but I just can't. All the drawing/coloring swaying back and forth and the other stuff prohibit me from giving it a "very good" score despite having "very good" artwork sometimes.
There's one nice simple touch I liked - in the beginning before they're going to see Croc for the first time - with the Al Capone patented "something naughty is happening behind it" door with the sliding part (the archaic "just stick a gun in my face and I'll forget that you didn't use the secret knock" type of door - why not use a door's peephole fitted with a fisheye lens, or the crowd pleaser - a security camera and monitors - I guess they wanted it to look like an earlier time period but whether they succeeded is debatable). They are colored very brightly - (somewhat)bleached and when they step inside the building they are colored very dark - the color of their clothes changes.
It's a small thing/touch but the one I loved the most.

Don't waste your time - buy a Batman themed slide-viewer - the cheap plastic mechanical one you can buy for dirt-cheap (sold to kids and often has some big franchise's characters in the photos - Pokemon, Looney Tunes etc) , with one hole through which you can view the drawings/photos. If you're feeling wasteful than buy a 3D view-master version instead. Have fun.

And yes - this is my idea of quick.

*I switch to the Framing Dr. Hackenbush scene to cheer myself up - about 8:30 minutes of pure joy... Why the hell not? I think I'll read a regular book next*