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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great goodbye from Brubaker to DC!!!, February 16, 2008
This review is from: Batman: The Man Who Laughs (Hardcover)
Was one of the last stories that Brubaker wrote for DC before he moved over to Marvel, and became the superstar writer on Captain America and Daredevil.
Great Joker/Batman origin story that is fun and has spot on portrayal of the menacing Joker. Not only is this a great read, but it has some very spectacular artwork. The atwork alone is reason enough to purchase this book.
Important to keep in mind that this is a very quick read, as the orginal story came in one Prestige Format Comic (48 pages). However this comic is hard to find and worth sowhere in the $50 range. This is great opportunity to pick up a hard to find story right before the New Batman Movie.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not all clowns are nice..., February 9, 2008
This review is from: Batman: The Man Who Laughs (Hardcover)
This is one of the better Joker stories in years. It's a sort of sequel to "Year one" and tells the tale of how The Dark Knight first met the notorious evildoer that in future years would become his arch-nemesis.
Joker is killing several rich persons, which to begin with appears to be for no reason other than getting a sick laugh out of it. But as the story progresses Batman starts to find out the motive behind these bizarre killings as well as figuring out who The Joker was and what made what he is.
The writing is perfect. Ed Brubaker does a terrific job on it. He has also added some nice references to Alan Moore's "The Killing Joke" All the classic elements from a Joker story are here. Making threats on live television, killing people at midnight and using henchmen dressed as clowns. If you enjoyed Batman stories such as "Year one", The Killing Joke" or "The laughing fish" then this one should be right up your alley.
An interesting fact: The title is a reference to a movie with the same name and it is from this film that Bob Kane got the inspiration for The Joker.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An Odd Collection, August 20, 2008
This review is from: Batman: The Man Who Laughs (Hardcover)
Buy this book to read Ed Brubaker and Doug mahnke excellent redux of the Joker's first encounter with batman. In a shocking turn, DC hires a great artist to do a high profile Batman tale. I only fault this story on being too short.
The Man Who Laughs was orignally published as a 48 page soft cover graphic novel, but deserves the hardcover format. Sadly, the cover graphics are not very well done. The white spine with the ugly blue at the bottom doesn't look good on the book shelf, particularly next to it's natural companion, the recently released Killing Joke hardcover.
As a filler, a Batman/Golden Age Green Lantern story is also randomely reprinted here. This story originally appeared in Detective Comics which Mr. Brubaker wrote for a little over a year. I remember his run as well written (as most of his work is), but laden with poor fill-in art unworthy of his scripts. The artwork by Mike Lilly is just OK, but I fail to see why it was included in this hardcover.
It would have been much better to reprint the Joker's first two appearances from Batman #1, as well as Dennis O'Neal's Legends of the Dark Knight #50, from 1993, which retold the same story of Batman's first encounter with the Joker. Dennis O'Neal wrote a spot on story with some great moments, but the particularly bad art from Brett Blevins is not something which should be seen again. At least the theme of the book would have been consistant.
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