Summary: <br> Tom King bids for an all-time great Batman story from Batman’s second year as Batman fights the war of Jokes and Riddles. <br> Affiliate link included.<br> On today’s podcast we’re going to war. Join me as I take a look at The War of Jokes and Riddles by Tom King coming up next.<br><br> <br> Welcome to the Classy Comics Podcast where we search for the best comics in the universe. From Boise, Idaho here is your host, Adam Graham.<br> There are many ways to tell a Batman story: there are the goofy stories of the Silver Age and the stories that are in the spirit of the 1966 TV show such as were published in the Batman Sixty-Six series by Jeff Parker, and then you have the darker crime stories which I think have dominated Batman for the better part of the past forty years. While we all love a light-hearted Batman tale I can also appreciate a good crime story featuring the world’s greatest detective. <br> There are, of course, many ways to make a bad Batman story – it’s far easier to do so. Some of it is caused by the almost worshipful reverence that a lot of comic writers have for Batman – him being this just absolutely amazing being who can do no wrong, or others who look at Batman and create a character who is utterly dark. To writers, what’s cool is not really caring. Rotting Batman is Dirty Harry. Does The War of Jokes and Riddles fall into one of these traps or is it a classic story? I think from both the title as well as the way the story is written, this is the fourth big arc of Tom King’s run and I think it’s obvious that this is his attempt to add his own mark to the Batman mythology and to write a truly classic and memorable story. Does it succeed? Well, let’s take a look.<br> The story is collected with Issues Twenty-Five to Thirty-Two of Batman. In Issue Twenty-Four of Batman Bruce proposed to Selina Kyle aka Cat Woman, but before she answers he wants to tell him a story, a dark story from early in his career in his second year as Batman. The Joker is on the loose but he’s also lost the ability to laugh. It’s like he’s in a depressive state – he doesn’t find anything funny anymore, and when he doesn’t find anything funny he goes around killing people – which when you think about it is what he does when he goes around and finds everything funny. <br> The Joker has laid a trap for Batman but the Riddler escapes from Arkham to foil the plan and offer to join forces with the Joker. The Joker responds by shooting the Riddler and Batman goes after the Joker thinking with the range from which the Joker fired the Riddler surely must be dead but he’s not. And the result is that the Riddler begins a war on the Joker, and the two bring every underworlds’ figure in Gotham onto one side or another, except for Catwoman who is able to stay neutral in this. The war goes completely out of control; Batman is not able to stop it and efforts to contain it fail – even the efforts to call in the military leads to nothing more than more casualties from the noncombatants in this war. Finally, Batman decides he actually has to join with one side in the war in order to have a chance of ending it. <br> What works about this story? While King goes for a very Noirish feel to the story and he writes the dials perfectly, it never feels over the top but it’s definitely very stylized and it helps to build the sense of the atmosphere. The same thing for the art: there are just some great shadows, some great movement that just makes this feel like a colorized film noir story, so I’ve really liked the feel of it. I also think, consistent with the atmosphere, it avoided overindulgence in gore. Yes, there’s violence, there’s even some death, but it doesn’t go into extremely gory territory, which not only keeps it as a safe book for teens but it also allows it to focus more ...
