Clown Rundown
The hunt for the Joker continues as Jim Gordon gets the Bat-Family on his side.... by informing all of us that he's known that Batgirl is his daughter Barbara and throws out the possibility that he may know more as well but all that aside, it seems that Jim Gordon isn't the only one hunting the Joker because it appears that there's a lot of scary families out there looking to avenge their loved ones who were killed during the "A-Day" attack, including the daughter of Bane, Vengeance. Let's jump into this issue and see if Jim Gordon can track down the Joker before everyone and their mothers get in on the hunt so that they can murder the Clown Prince of Crime for their own gratification.
For this issue we see Jim Gordon recollecting his time with the Joker during the Killing Joke because it was this moment (obviously) that really made the Joker his own personal Boogeyman and the real reason that Jim Gordon has taken it upon himself to take this job of finally tracking down the monster of his nightmares and possibly ending him once and for all. For the first half of the book, we have a lot of narration that's just setting the mood for Jim Gordon's hunt while we cut back to Gotham with the Batgirls, Barbara Gordon, Cassandra Cain, and Stephanie Brown being the ones to track down who this mysterious Cressida is, but even that aspect of the book is short-lived as we're essentially just getting where we're supposed to go for the majority of the issue, while the final couple of pages really amp up the action and excitement. Sadly, it's one of those situations where everything exciting here happens right at the end and then you have to wait for the next issue to get what you want.
As for the Punchline backup, I've been enjoying these because it gives us a chance to continue that story while our Gotham characters do other things in their own books but this backup story/continuation feels weird to me because previously we saw that the Queen of the Royal Flush gang got Orca brought back into prison to make an example out of Punchline, but this confrontation felt weird and was hard to understand what was really going on, while our other story in this where Blue Bird tracks down Punchline's past keeps doing odd twists and hasn't given enough information about anything yet to really keep me invested for how limited the page space is.
All in all, I dig the art in both stories in this book and continue to love our hunt for the Joker story, especially how this issue ended but it was a bit of a slog to get through with the heavy narration that wanted to set a mood for you which normally is fine, but in this, it's setting the mood its already set for the last two issues and felt more like a way to pad out the story a bit by telling you things you already know about Jim Gordon and his connection to the Joker. Even with that though this is an enjoyable installment of this series and I only hope that the Punchline backups pick up the pace a little because not only does the story seem to be stalled a bit but this chapter's action was a bit lost on me because of the art and by the end, I'm not sure what we were supposed to get out of Punchline's fight with Orca.
Bits and Pieces:
The hunt is on as Jim Gordon tracks down the Joker, the only problem is..... hunting can be a bit boring compared to what we got previously. Yeah, this is a slower issue that tries to set the mood of what it's going for more than anything else but thankfully everything came to a head by the end and made me anxious to get the next issue..... I just wish that the Punchline backup was able to do the same. Thankfully though, the art was enjoyable throughout, and the side story of the Batgirls hunting down who Gordon's mysterious benefactor is is another intriguing plotline to this series.
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