The Joker #15 Review

The Joke's On You!

Written By: James Tynion IV, Sam Johns

Art By: Giuseppe Camuncoli, Cam Smith, Lorenzo Ruggiero, Arif Prianto, Tom Napolitano, Sweeney Boo, Becca Carey

Cover Price: $6.99

Release Date: July 5, 2022

Even though we had our finale in the previous issue of The Joker, it's time for the super-secret, jokes on you finale to The Joker series where hopefully, unlike the previous issue, we'll actually have what feels like an ending to this series, where everything is wrapped up and we have a clear idea where the characters involved in this series will end up. So let's jump into this book and see how everything plays out.

Alright, right off the bat I'm going to tell you that half the Joker part of this book all you're going to get is a recap of the whole series and presented like a lot of this story is presented, in the most boring way possible, where Jim Gordon just tells Batman everything you've read up to this point until eventually, he'll get into some new territory, but even then, when we discover what happened to Bane, Vengeance, Cressida Clarke and the Joker, there doesn't seem to be anything all that important for this issue to tell you about the characters involved except for who lived and who died for the opportunity for some characters to return in the future and possibly continue from story threads that are set up in a single panel flashback in this issue. So yeah, while you'll want to get this book if you've got the rest or if you're a straight-up just Joker or Jim Gordon fan, I can tell you that you won't really get any new information out of this book and the interesting aspects to things that were in the periphery this entire series are just kind shushed so that Jim Gordon could spend this issue waxing poetic about him being tired.

As for the finale to our Punchline backup story, it really doesn't do much but remind us that Punchline is back on the streets after her trial, has the lower subjects of the Royal Flush Gang still working for her in some capacity and that Harper Row's Bluebird persona is nowhere near as competent as I would like her to be and she's no match for Punchline, but mostly this backup is here to tell people that Punchline's story will continue in the Fall.

All in all, the art in both the main story and the backup are fantastic and I love looking at this book but after reading this super-secret the jokes on us finale, I'm not sure that it was really needed and for the new stuff we learned in this issue I really feel that it could have been done in a few panels in the previous issue..... because all we got were a few panels here it seemed to tie everything up that was still lingering in this story, while the rest of the book was just reminding you of what you already read. Yeah, it's a bit of a disappointment and while I was enjoying this series overall, the closer we got to the ending the more the book just seemed like it didn't have one and our direction seemed to spin out of control until we just ended up with Jim Gordon telling Batman what we already saw and things we would have rather seen in whole instead of small flashes to accompany Jim Gordon's story. I guess the joke is on us because ultimately this issue wasn't needed even if there are a few small things that I would like to see continued down the line.

Bits and Pieces:

While this series for the most was pretty cool I can't say that we really needed this tacked-on finale issue because it ultimately didn't do much but give us some bread crumbs that some writers might continue with down the line...... or they might not. Really though, with the main Joker story and the Punchline back up it felt like more of a book that was simply here to remind people about what's been going on instead of doing something new.    

6.3/10