I try not to write mean reviews, but Joker was like a mugger at a state trooper convention, and just deserves what it gets.
Ugly, cruel, poorly written and self indulgent. This was not a Joker story; it was a Sin City riff dressed up in joker drag. If you have no respect for a character and want to toss all of their "baggage" out the window, just make up your own character.
It has pretty much been established after many decades, that the Batman defines and completes the Joker, so if you remove the bat from the equation? You get this book.
I know Brian says that the film "the Dark Knight" had no influence on this GN, so you have to wonder why this is the first time the Joker's face has ever been scared in comics. Even if it wasn't based on the Dark Knight's Joker, at lest tell us how his face got mangled.
Based on Brian's Batman and Superman work, one can only assume that Brian Azzarello effing hates superheroes and probably should just write his never ending crime comics. There is a reason this book was shrink wrapped, because if a reader like myself could have read the first three pages, I would have quickly tossed it back on the shelf and shoved my face in a barf bag.
As for his gritty, realistic approach, well if that's what he was going for, then he should have explained why a psychopathic serial killer, with a body count in the hundreds, maybe thousands, was released from an insane asylum. It was like watching Hannibal Lector walk out the mental hospital gates with a new suit and cardboard suitcase and someone forgot to tell Clarice Starling. Hell, he didn't even have to do any time in a halfway house. The Dick Sprang “funny Batman” didn’t have gaps in logic like this “mature” audiences exercise in glossed up slasher comics. The art is fantastic BTW.
For fans of shock as a means of storytelling, just go see the latest installment in the SAW horror franchise. He is called the Joker for a reason; he finds humor or irony in his crimes, he doesn't train serial killers. This book seriously lowers the bar on dreadful mainstream comics, while pretending to not be mainstream at all, even though it features the Batatman, Joker and someone who may be the Penguin, but for some reason is not named Oswald Cobblepot.
The best I can come up with is that this was an unused 100 Bullets script, with not much search and replace used in MS Word.
If you loved the Saw films, then this is the book for you.
If you want to be entertained by a really good, sophisticated serial killer story, add Let the Right one in to your Netflix que.

Sic Semper tyrannis

CPR