Hello Gotham, Joker's back in town! AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA!
Batman's re-launch into the New 52 was marked by a rather controversial shake up. The Joker had his face cut off by Dollmaker and he disappeared. By disappeared I mean GONE. For approximately one year in comic time the Joker was totally absent with no knowledge of where he had run off to, what he was planning, or how he was getting by with the lack of face. That all changed with Death of the Family. Heralding the return of the Clown Prince of Crime this multi issue crossover story swept up every member of the Bat Family.
Working off of the old Death in the Family title that saw the end of the Jason Todd Robin, Joker resurfaces in Gotham horribly disappointed in Batman. To his mind, his darling Batman has become weak out of his reliance on his various sidekicks and support group. What with the recent events during the Court of the Owls arc and Batman's near death at their hands on a few occasions, Joker wants to bring Batman back to his great roots, just as Joker has done to himself.
it is important to note that several tradeback versions of this story dropped, the most comprehensive one being Joker: Death of the Family which has the central story line but also includes Joker's interactions with the other Bat Family members. The same is not true of Batman: Death of the Family which is just the core story line. I will be talking about the latter, mostly because I realize no one enjoys reading my crap for three pages. On to the review!
The main focus of the arc is Joker's relationship with Batman, or at least his perceived one. The basic idea is that Joker sees Batman as his true soul mate. At one portion of the comic, Batman is describing the micro facial reactions that betray the emotional states of people. In Joker, he never found an iota of fear or anger or even joy. In fact the only emotion he has ever seen the Joker's face betray is love when he looked at him. In Joker's sick mind, he is helping his beloved. This is where the comic shines. Joker's twisted view of his various relationships is put on display in grand fashion in this comic and we see that the removal of his facial skin has removed the veneer of whimsy that made him such a compelling villain. This is Joker's madness and sadism on full and unfettered display as we finally see the intricacies of how and why he is so obsessed with Batman.
So how does he go about this? Well, to start off Joker starts re-enacting his original crimes with a bit of a twist. He kills the son of the first man he is recorded as killing within Gotham, threatens to poison the mayor but instead kills all of the security around him with a poison that forces them to frown rather than smile, and threatens to poison the Gotham water supply but doesn't bother and instead drowns the same number of people that died the first time he tried to pull that particular crime.
I mention that these are shining moments, not a shining comic.
While individually these bits seem interesting (and they are) they are hampered by some serious issues. Joker is apparently criminal god and is able to set up everything and anything he wants over a five minute conversation. Batman is reduced to being a juggernaut force just running between fights and enduring punishment with internal monologue filling in the gaps of how he knows where to go. From there it reads like a checklist. Clue, go to location, muse about how bad Joker is, see creepy stuff, fight off people, watch Joker kill people, see that Joker is worse than you thought, barely escape with your life.
Harley Quinn says it best when she says "He's not Mr. J anymore" in that Joker is indeed no longer the Joker. What made the Joker so compelling as a villain wasn't his level of sadism, it was the lunacy of his actions. Here's a homicidal psychopath that is using poisoned cream pies to kill 30 people at a fair ground. 30 dead but with such whimsy. Even in his darker, more philosophical moments the Joker always had this air of humour amongst the darkness. One of his most famous lines incorporates a joke: "If I have to have a back story, I want it to be multiple choice." That humour has been utterly lost here and with it what makes the Joker such an iconic villain.
True, the Joker has done some pretty horrible things over the years. Taking pictures of a newly paralyzed Barbra Gordan and showing them to her father as he's put on a broken down fair ride being the balance of monstrous and loony that we love from this character. What we get in Death of the Family seems ripped out of the pages of a horror film serial killer. Setting horses on fire, breaking the necks of police officers in the dark, and stitching together several inmates so he can use their flesh as a surface to paint a mural. They even go so far as to keeping those stitched together men alive through tubes in their stomachs. This isn't the Joker anymore. If you wanted to introduce a new villain by the name of "Faceless" and run this story as a test to see if Batman can survive without his support group then there was a shot at making this into something spectacular. Instead the comic feels like it's wearing its own face and all we're getting is a distortion of what we once knew.
With the subtle madness of the Joker replaced by a Criminal Minds-esque and horribly over the top sadism with no filter Death of the Family is an overall mediocre presentation with a few shining spots to what should have been a fantastic story.