Batman: Arkham City - End Game #1 (DC)

writer: Derek Fridolfs
artist: Jason Shawn Alexander

(via dccomics.com)

It's hard to find a Joker story you really like.  Especially after The Dark Knight, in which Heath Ledger brilliantly reimagined the character.  In the comics, killing Robin and maiming Batgirl made Joker pretty infamous in the 1980s...and kind of hard to write after that.  I mean, what does he does for an encore?

I read a version of an origin story, "Lovers and Madmen" from the pages of the short-lived Batman Confidential, that I really liked, and Grant Morrison used Joker sporadically, but aside from Arkham Asylum seemed reluctant to explore the character much further, other than as Batman's opposite number.  Scott Snyder has brought him back in a big way for "Death of the Family," but for me, the recent Joker story that stands out is purely out of continuity, and is featured in a comic book based on a video game.

Now, for some people, "comic book based on a video game" can be a good thing, because they love said video game.  For others, it means that the story will be instantly irrelevant.  Yet out-of-continuity is not always a bad thing.  DC made some really good stories of that nature with its Elseworlds line.  You can almost think of this comic as an Elseworlds story.  It features the death of the Joker.

And yet, because it's Joker, that's not the end of the story.  Derek Fridolfs has been using his comics based on video games to write the stories he wants to write rather than stories based on video games.  Here he's found his masterstroke, the ultimate out of continuity story.  The Joker is set free by his death, and is thus free to push Batman to his limits.  End Game is an extra-sized story, culled from material previously presented online, and as such is the very same kind of statement event as "Death of the Family."

Does Batman survive?  That's not even a guarantee, and in fact the story teases that more than one monumental career ends.  Jason Shawn Alexander's moody art helps set the tone.  This could have been a movie, if Heath Ledger hadn't died, perhaps even The Dark Knight Rises in a totally different interpretation.  (I still contend that Paul Giamatti, perhaps only as a voice, could have continued Ledger's Joker.)

Anyway, it's brilliant, it really is, a must-read Batman story regardless of how much you know about the video game that helped make it possible.