by DC has released a trailer for writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Jorge Jiménez’s upcoming Batman run, which kicks off July 5 in Batman #125. That song launches “Failsafe,” a story that introduces a villain of the same name previously described by Zdarsky as “Batman’s Doomsday,” but the trailer hints at something unusual en route to Batman’s most classic nemesis, the Joker.
As brief as the look at this trio of Jokers is, it raises some questions about what’s to come in Zdarsky’s Batman run, based on the events of the Three Jokers limited series.
Around 12 seconds into the trailer below (or in the screenshot above), there’s a close look at a trio of three different Jokers seemingly matching the archetypes of the trio shown in Geoff Johns, Jason Fabok and Brad Anderson’s 2020 limited series Batman: Three Jokers (opens in new tab) – The comedian, the clown and the criminal.
Here’s the trailer:
As brief as the look at this trio of Jokers is, it raises some questions about what’s to come in Zdarsky’s Batman run, based on the events of the Three Jokers limited series.
Right off the bat (pun semi-intended), the first question is whether Batman: Three Jokers was originally intended to be canon. That said, whether it was initially intended to be part of mainstream DC continuity or not, DC’s current Omniverse concept means any story told in a DC comic can be considered canon. if and when the current makers want it.
So the question then becomes: are these the same trio seen in Three Jokers, or a new incarnation of the same concept? If it’s the original Three Jokers characters, there are still more questions to be answered.
(And when it comes to the Joker, aren’t they always there?)
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In Batman: Three Jokers, it is determined that the original Joker (who is typified as The Comedian, the most violent and sadistic of the three) was responsible for creating the other two, with the trio conducting a series of experiments to create more Jokers .
In the events of Three Jokers, The Comedian kills the other two, leaving only the one original Joker – meaning if the Jokers seen here are meant to be The Comedian, The Criminal, and The Clown, we’re left to wonder how The Criminal and The Clown returned.
Three Jokers themselves may have provided a backdoor answer to that question in the form of the “Jokerizing” experiments conducted by The Comedian, The Clown, and The Criminal, which resulted in countless apparently dead or inert copies of the Joker being created. . Could two of these three Jokers be new incarnations of the two murdered The Comedian?
We’ll have to leave the mystery to the world’s greatest detective – or at least his title – as the story just seems to start with Batman #125.
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