“Desperate to be Feared”: A Textual Analysis of Brian Azzarello's Joker

"You really want to know what it feels like to be the clown at midnight? Where there's only ever one joke and it's always on you? Well, here you are. Now do you get it?"

-The Joker, Batman #681.

The 2008 graphic novel Joker, written by Brian Azzarello and illustrated by Lee Bermejo, presents a unique re-interpretation of the Batman mythos, giving an awkward and often unnerving portrayal of Gotham City, and the novel utilizes the comic medium to much advantage in achieving this. The novel follows small-town crook Johnny Frost as he escorts, and later serves the psychotic and sociopathic Joker who, on being released from Arkham Asylum, returns to Gotham City in order to reclaim his criminal empire. Two aspects of the comic's mise en scene highlight the awkward and unnerving effect- the unusual lack of emanata that demonstrates movement, and the irregular and erratic page layout. The stylistic choices in presenting this tale provides a refreshing and compelling addition to the DC Comics corpus, and it is a tale which could only have been told through visual narrative.

Unlike most comics, Joker does not use emanata for much of the book's artwork in order to indicate movement¹. This creates an unusual juxtaposition within the reading experience, between the impulse of assuming both static imagery and movement. The static imagery comes from the fact that without emanata, comics do not generally have an easy way of conveying movement pictorially. However, movement is conveyed in two ways, contradicting the “static” picture. One simple way is the level of sophisticated detail in which the artist has put into moving objects, such as the crinkles on the Joker's coat as it blows in the wind or Johnny Frost's jacket draping as he is suddenly picked up off the ground by Killer Croc. A more extra-diegetical way of conveying movement comes from the sequence and flow of panels, in which the reader is aware that there logically must be movement between panels, though they will not see such movement “portrayed” in the panel itself. In Scott McCloud's 'Understanding Comics', he writes “when part of a sequence, the art of the image is transformed into something more: the art of comics!”, expressing the idea that comics as a medium require sequence in order to function². Joker takes advantage of this presupposing movement in comic medium in order to ignore the semantic emanata. This idea that removing emanata can make a comic both unfamiliar, while details in artwork provide an allusion to movement, thereby instilling a sense of familiarity, invokes the idea of Freud's Uncanny in relation to the comic's nature.

The emanata, which is usually absent throughout the entire book, may act as a way in which to foreshadow the Joker's Uncanny nature to Frost. Freud considers the Uncanny to be 'the opposite of what is familiar; and we are tempted to conclude that what is 'uncanny' is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar''³. If Joker has artwork that we may consider to be somewhat uncanny, then it can also be argued that this is a visualization to parallel the Joker's behaviour within the story in relation to the narrator. A common recurring theme is Johnny Frost's admiration for the Joker, in the belief that the two are similar in many ways. As the Joker begins his descent into chaos (such as burning down his own bar, murdering an elderly couple and sleeping with their corpses in bed, and raping Frost's ex-wife), the psychologically stable Frost begins to have increasing unease with the Joker, showing the uncanny effects of Frost seeing himself in the Joker, but also seeing something darkly unfamiliar.

One exception to this lack of emanata is Batman, who seems to radiate emanata in the few scenes in which he is present, swooping from the tops of bridges and engaging in fisticuffs with the Clown Prince of Crime. The sudden inclusion of emanata is subtle, and may be considered functionally metonymic in several ways. One interpretation of Batman's presence generating emanata to a scene could be its antithetic nature to an uncanny Gotham which lacks emanata, that the Joker is responsible for. The Joker's possession of panel stems from the lack of emanata very well; Batman's emanata breaks any spatial trope that suggests he is occupying his own portion of the panel. In Neil Cohn's article “Extra! Extra! Semantics in comics!: The conceptual structure of Chicago Tribune advertisements”, he defines the use of metonymic reference in comics as “a part of something to reference a whole or stating a place for an institution. In all cases, the metonymic element has some sort of related connection to a broader conception that it invokes”⁴. Batman's emanata may be thought of as a status symbol, referencing traditional and familiar Batman material where emanata is plentiful⁵, metonymic of the idea that this Batman figure has been “borrowed” from the mainstream comics to this re-interpretation. In Dennis O'Neal and Leah Wilson's book 'Batman Unathorized'⁶, they write 'Trademarks get their power in the same way- the consumer's participation in the culture of consumption is what makes a trademark valuable...Batman has value because we look at Batman and say “Tough” or “Cool” or “Funny” or “Hero” or “Bad-ass”'. In this sense, Batman (whose appearance can be likened to a cameo role), is fundamentally ineffable in his portrayal, even in this alternate-reality, uncanny, Joker-dominant story as he is essentially a trademark.

The erratic page layout also contributes to an awkward and unnerving effect in Joker. In Marshall McLuhan's 'Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man', he popularized the phrase 'the medium is the message', suggesting that the 'cool' medium of comics requires greater audience involvement and participation than a 'hot' medium⁷. Joker uses quite an active presentation unique to the comics medium, in order to convey the Joker's personality in the story, and his relationship with Frost, as it seeps into the construction of panel composition in page layout. Their first encounter continues the white gutters, as the Joker and Frost remain quite amiable and casual with each others presence. However, the Joker's figure is able to extend beyond the boundaries of his panel, as he is draped over three separate panels in fact, each panel with a different spatial point disconnected from the last, a feat which will only ever be displayed by him. Already, the Joker is demonstrating his ability to break extra-diegetical conventions which may act as a presage as to his breaking all manner of social conventions. The medium has intertwined the message.

In contrast to Alan Moore's The Killing Joke (another Joker-centric graphic novel), Joker has gutters which change colours, or are removed altogether in favour of panels simply being overlaid on other panels to fill the hyperframe. The first page of the story opens with a hyperframe divided into four equal horizontal panels, the first three of which share the same overview of a grubby Gotham City, divided by a pristine white gutter. The next two pages also feature rather casual panel layouts, with white gutters, giving a metronomic effect on the comic's atmosphere. These three pages all give a feeling of claustrophobia as the clean white gutters seem to contain the grime which the panel contents resonate. This metronomic rhythm is instantly broken on the fourth page in which the entire page is one hyperframe depicting the Joker's exit from Arkham Asylum and entrance into the story. Later, the panels are separated occasionally by brown gutters, as if to make the transitions between moments dirty, the gutter being the space where temporal jumps occur in sequence. These temporal jumps seem to have been infected by the Joker's influence on the setting. Where there are no brown or white gutters, there are no gutters at all to leave panels in a cluttered, uneven collage in the hyperframe which resemble the subjective time being expanded, such as Abner (the Penguin) having a long scene in which he is racketeered by the Joker and Killer Croc into servitude. The hyperframe having uneven panels overlaid on one another seem to make a clenching motion, similar to disjointed editing between awkward, un-natural camera angles on film, intensifying the uncomfortable atmosphere.

Joker uses the comic medium to its advantage in telling this unusual story; utilizing a lack of emanata and strategic page layout. An unnerving and awkward effect is given through comic technique, which is appropriate as it is immerses a reader into the role of the titular character. Through artistically intelligent choices, Joker remains a graphic novel that's no joke.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

-McCloud, Scott. 'Understanding Comics'. New York: Harperperennial. 1994. pp. 5. Print.

-Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. London: Imago Publishing. 1919. pp. 7. Print.

-Cohn, Neil. “Extra! Extra! Semantics in comics!: The conceptual structure of Chicago Tribune advertisements”. Journal of Pragmatics. Volume 42, Issue 11. November 2010. pp. 3138. Print.

-O'Neal, Dennis. Leah Wilson. “Batman Unauthorized”. Chicago, IL: BenBella Books ; Distributed by Independent Publishers Group. 2008. Print.

-McLuhan, Marshall. “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”. New York: MIT Press. 1964. Print.

1Emanata is included in this text for sound effects. I would argue that artistically,sound effects being removed would not make any significant stylistic difference to Joker's textual form as dialogue, which is included, already depicts aural properties. Perhaps if the novel did not include dialogue, the removal of sound effects would indeed make a similar intriguing difference from tradition as movement does.

2McCloud, Scott. 'Understanding Comics'. New York: Harperperennial. 1994. pp. 5. Print.

3Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. London: Imago Publishing. 1919. pp. 7. Print.

4Cohn, Neil. “Extra! Extra! Semantics in comics!: The conceptual structure of Chicago Tribune advertisements”. Journal of Pragmatics. Volume 42, Issue 11. November 2010. pp. 3138. Print.

5The Man Who Laughs and The Killing Joke would serve well here to illustrate my point.

6O'Neal, Dennis. Leah Wilson. “Batman Unauthorized”. Chicago, IL: BenBella Books ; Distributed by Independent Publishers Group. 2008. Print.

7McLuhan, Marshall. “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”. New York: MIT Press. 1964. Print.