A Public Appeal to DC Comics: Please Publish the Complete Last Laugh!

Recently, DC Comics announced that "Joker: The Last Laugh" was finally going to be published in Trade Paperback form.  This is a long overdue trade.  As Chuck Dixon (one of its co-writers) has often noted publicly, the book outsold "Our Worlds At War" at the time.  It was published right away as a trade paperback in Italy and in Germany and sold well.  Nevertheless, for reasons probably editorial in nature, the series was not collected in English.

DC's reasons for holding back on the release are its own. The reason for releasing it now is obvious: To tie in with the new Batman movie featuring the Joker.

I'm glad to see this happen.  Standard disclaimer here: I'm buddies with both Chuck and co-writer Scott Beatty, and I've been Scott's webmaster for a couple years.  But I was a fan first, and my feelings of elation about the release are unrelated to the fact I know both Scott and Chuck were disappointed it took this long.

The plain truth is, this mini was exciting and funny.  Chuck and Scott whipped up a mess of new side villains to play around with.  Shilo Norman, the former Mr. Miracle 2, is given a new job as the designer of prisons for super-villains.  (I liked that so much better than the bizarre and silly "Seven Soldiers" revamp.)  There's one sequence involving Multi-Man which I will not reveal except to say that the cover price of the trade is worth it just for that.  And it centers around a unique idea: When the Joker is given only a short term to live by the doctor at Slabside Prison, he decides to exit the world with an all-out bang involving a prison escape and the release of dozens of "Joker-Ized" supervillains.

In execution, the book had many minor problems editorial in nature.  The first chapter was published in the Secret Files instead of issue #1, leaving many readers confused.  Some of the ideas they wanted to do were nixed. (Scott even told me that if they'd had their way, the Joker would have killed Elongated Man and left his corpse stretched across a suspension bridge!  And yes, somehow these guys are still my friends.)  The ending is good but it seems dictated instead of organic.  Most of all, the whole "Jokerized" villains plotline was a mixed bag.  Some editors and writers really ran with it, making a lesser villain a newly terrifying menace, while others simply put a Joker face on one of the standard big villains.

For that reason, the new "Last Laugh" TPB will not feature any of the crossover stories; it simply reprints Joker: The Last Laugh issues #1-6.

...and that's the problem, really.

The series was actually supposed to be seven issues.  An editor decided to make it six and use the first chapter (giving all the setup) as a main story in "Joker: Last Laugh Secret Files and Origins".  However, it's not an extraneous set-up; it's vital to the story.  At present, it doesn't sound like the story will be included in the trade paperback.

I would urge you all to sound off about this on the DC boards and other message boards, or send an e-mail to DC Comics.  They need to include that story so that the readers can get the complete picture.