This was good but… generic. I see absolutely nothing here (besides the “Remember the ’90s?”-style die-cut cover) that makes this issue stand out all that much.

I mean, I enjoyed this well enough. I had fun reading it. It felt cool and spooky in the same way pretty much every issue of the whole run has felt so far. And there’s nothing I can really nitpick at all (though a bit of Alfred’s dialogue seemed logistically dubious to me personally, it’s nothing to complain about). It’s all fine and it goes down easy.

But I just don’t really see how this possibly warrants 5-star ratings. It was good but just… really familiar and typical. I’m not a huge Joker fan, but off the top of my head I can think of ten Joker stories/issues that had cooler, more original, and more meaningful moments than anything in here. And I can also think of about ten moments from Snyder’s Bat-stuff that have been spookier and creepier than anything here. This issue is really just the Joker running around attacking people and referencing past history for no reason other than to manufacture weight and depth that the actual plot just doesn’t really have. I don’t see how the Joker’s all that “different this time”. I don’t see how this story really stands out other than the fact that a LOT of marketing has been put into it.

It’s basically common knowledge that the Joker has known about Bruce’s secret for years. The writers have sometimes played with this but have never really called it in or had the Joker attack Alfred before because… well, doing so seems a little cheap. Towards the end of this issue Harley says that “Mr. J” isn’t the same anymore. She said the exact same thing in (former iFanboy PoTW) Batman #663, and at that time the Joker really WAS different because he had begun channeling a dark entity and working with the Black Glove. So I don’t really see how just saying “He’s different this time; this is the Joker as you’ve NEVER seen him before” really makes sense, when this is hardly the first time he’s killed people, or attacked policemen, or gone after those close to Bruce, or treated Harley like crap. It’s still a GOOD comic, but pretty much the least original one I read this week.

All of that’s not a negative criticism, though it probably reads like one. I’m just trying to explain why this issue DOESN’T deserve a higher rating, since the opinion of the masses seems to be that it does. I did enjoy the issue. I really did. But… Five stars? From everyone? Strip the hype away and for the life of me I can’t see anything to warrant that.

Even just on a visual level, Capullo’s work here seems a bit rushed and obviously (to me) not quite as good as it has been. Some of the faces, Jim Gordon’s in particular, just look a little wonky and scrunchy for no reason.

It’s still Capullo, though. That means it’s cool art that’s fun enough to look at. And it’s still Snyder. That means it’s a rollicking storyline with thrills and substantive dialogue and prose. It’s good, but I’m just not seeing genre-defining, never-seen-much-else-like-this-before excellence.