Table of Contents
Welcome Back (0:00)
Project Updates
Event Updates
Main Story
Something You’ll Recognize (4:37)
You Ruined My Childhood (5:43)
Colouring Inside the Lines (7:00)
What Matters In The End? (8:00)
Release Info & Updates
Upcoming on Substack (8:48)
(Not-So) Secret Audio Only Update (9:14)
Welcome Back
I still can’t get over how poorly Joker: Folie à Deux has been performing. It’s not that it’s surprising at all. I had a feeling from the first announcement that this was going to be just a little too weird to work.
What I’m more shocked about is the fanboys aren’t crying that their favourite villain is ruined forever. I have theories about why (ahem, Jared Leto) and why IP should be refreshed and rebooted regularly, with caveats.
Before we get into that, let’s cover the business…
Project Updates
Do You Read Chip Zdarsky’s Newsletter?
You know, the fellow Canadian and, more importantly, current writer of Batman, Public Domain - plus Sex Criminals, Daredevil, Newburn, Spider-Man, Avengers: Twilight and so much more?
Well, he took a brief moment in his latest newsletter to give Pesto Comics a shout:
Why would he do such a thing? Because I’m one of the first advertisers in his real-life newsletter: Zdarsky Comic News!
Tell your LCS to get you a copy.
14 Days until Big Smoke Pulp Vol. 1
Two short weeks until this book is out there. The authors have signed contracts (hello to those reading or listening!) and the cover has been finalized.
It’s now just a matter of hitting the launch and getting to share it all with you. Here’s hoping for a very successful launch.
Big Smoke Pulp Vol. 1 will be on Kickstarter starting November 6th.
Naked Kaiju Woman in the New Year
Not to take any steam away from Big Smoke Pulp Vol. 1, but you can’t forget that Naked Kaiju Woman! The script for the sequel is nearly polished and I’m planning on getting it to Rafael soon.
Naked Kaiju Woman launches in 84 days on January 8th, 2025.
Event Updates
Comics in the Brewery: Wayside Creator Con
This weekend, I’ll be in Newmarket selling some comics! I’ll also be on a panel with Konrad from Wednesday Night Reviews, talking about launching your indie comics with Fell Hound (S.I.R.) and Emilia Strilchuk (Be Yourself! Oh, Not Like That!).
An absolutely stacked panel that I don’t feel like I pull my weight on. I’m honoured to be there. Come this weekend, grab a beer and some comics!
Thought Bubble Table Confirmed
I know where I’m headed next month! My table is C14a in Redshirt Hall. I’ll be sharing a table with Silvia Califano who I’m excited to meet.
And, of course, I’ll be hosting the workshop Crowdfunding Indie Comics at 11:00am in the Queen’s Suite. It’s going to be a ton of fun.
For now, let’s talk about ruining your childhood…
Main Story
DC: Two Sides of the Same Coin
You’ll often hear people complain that “there’s nothing original anymore”. Everything is a sequel or a reboot or an adaptation of a reboot. There’s some truth to that, honestly. Even the things that you would imagine are completely original are just remixes of ideas that have already been explored elsewhere.
Is that a bad thing though?
DC has shown us both sides of the spectrum in that regard.
On the film side, we have the new record holder for fastest dropping box office, Joker: Folie à Deux. We spoke about this a bit last week:
This is a film that’s taking a property that has proven itself in having a new take (which was just a homage to Scorsese movies in itself) and subverted it entirely. It’s a film that knows what you want and refuses to give it to you, instead giving you something entirely different.
On the other side of the spectrum is the new comic blockbuster: Absolute Batman.
This takes the rich billionaire turned genius bat-detective and turns him into a rough-and-tumble streetwise blue collar civil engineer. It’s the idea of Batman turned on his head - and in more than an elseworld “the same with one thing different” kind of way.
The only similarities this Batman/Bruce Wayne shares with his traditional counterpart is the name.
Basically, the comics did it successfully where the film flopped. Why is that?
Absolute Batman understands and embraces the core of Batman. Regardless of his upbringing, he feels he can be an agent for change in his city that he can’t bear to leave - even when that city takes his childhood innocence from him.
(A quick sidenote: I’ve read Absolute Wonder Woman and it also lives up to the hype. DC’s Absolute Universe is batting 2 for 2 so far.)
Joker: Folie à Deux not only ignores the core of the character, an untethered agent of chaos, and makes him a sad sack with no hope of ever becoming what he sees in his head. It’s especially offensive as it undoes the work of its predecessor in an effort to subvert expectations.
For Joker, it becomes of question for why use the IP at all if you don’t want to use the tropes it gives you?
Something You’ll Recognize
Todd Phillips probably could have done a Mean Streets/Taxi Driver homage with a plain old serial killer that never achieves the heights that those around him believed he might.
Would it have made $1 billion at the box office? Of course not.
It’s a surprise to no one that using something familiar to tell your story is a great way to bring people in the door. As much as everyone says they want something new, they only want to avoid the risk not having a good time. Seeing something they’ve enjoyed before gives them that sense of security.
The problem with that is you need to maintain that security throughout. Joker: Folie à Deux had no intention of doing that. It ruined the one advantage it had, snatching away the security blanket of something familiar, and worked against itself in doing so.
At the very least, if you’re going to work as hard as this film did to go against expectation, it better be done exceptionally well. You can’t be dull while doing it, as the “D” CinemaScore can attest. (For context, both The Flash and The Marvels, both flops in their own right, got a Cinemascore of B.)
This Joker sequel is certainly a blemish on the history of the character and will certainly put an end to this version of the franchise.
You Ruined My Childhood
This refrain is called out every time there’s a change, or in Joker’s case, a misstep.
It’s a fallacy.
Your childhood still happened. Whatever version of whatever character you loved as a child still exists. Still picking on the Joker, as a character, we don’t have to look too far back to see how.
Heath Ledger put on a truly legendary performance that no one saw coming. Much like Absolute Batman, this was an entire rethink of the character but still true to the core of what the Joker represents, while adding new levels of depth with every snicker or sideways glance.
Unfortunately, The Dark Knight was our only opportunity to see this version. (Unless you count Halloween for well over a decade after the film.)
What we got next is the best attempt to “ruin” what came before it.
Jared Leto’s “damaged” Joker takes what’s interesting about the character and barely goes beyond the surface of it. It’s crazy for the sake of it. It’s not even a cartoony-yet-scary level of chaos like you get with the animated Mark Hamill versions. It’s just a Joker who laughs in the centre of his carefully arranged knives because it looks cool.
Was that an awful take? Absolutely.
Does it do anything to diminish the work done by Hamill or Ledger with the character? Absolutely not.
(Bonus: Did the Snyder Cut fix it? No. No, it didn’t.)
Colouring Inside the Lines
I mentioned last week that there’s a skill to colouring inside the lines while telling a new story. When that’s misinterpreted, you get Leto’s Joker. That shows the limitation of the metaphor.
It’s less about colouring inside the lines and more about understanding why the lines are there.
Why does a character act the way they do?
What do they really want?
What do they need?
What are they hiding?
There’s more to dig into in a character, but if you understand these points you can change everything around them and still have it feel “right”.
Ledger got that. Snyder and Dragotta got that. It’s less lines and boundaries and more a tether. Keeping the characters grounded to a core will allow you to go in all kinds of directions while still taking advantage of the audience’s security blanket.
Marvel Comics proved that long ago with the Ultimate Universe, which spawned their own hybrid versions of the characters in the MCU. The heroes and villains you see on screen are neither direct from the 616 nor the Ultimate Universe, yet they feel right.
What Matters In The End?
San Diego Comic Con revealed stunt casting at its finest, causing everyone to quickly forget the Kang Dynasty as Robert Downey Jr. was revealed to be Doctor Doom. Any hope of a “proper” Doctor Doom had to be set aside yet again as we wait and see how this choice works itself out.
Will it undo the decade of character defining work RDJ put in with Iron Man?
No. Even if they say it does.
It happened. There’s no undoing it, even if the timeline resets and none of that “happened”. Because it did. Your childhood is intact - even if you changed yourself.
Keep an open mind. Enjoy the safety of characters you know and love, but be open to creators that understand the characters to take them into the unknown.
That’s were the magic happens.
Until next week…
Release Info & Updates
Upcoming on Substack
October 30
Con Journal: A New Market in Newmarket
Tabling at the inaugural Wayside Creator's Con
November 6
Don't Skimp on the Pulp
(Big Smoke Pulp Vol. 1 Launches!)
Why I admire the pulp era and how it influences my work
November 13
I'm No Artist, But I Try
My adventure with Inktober'24
Upcoming Conventions
Pesto Comics Release Calendar
Instant Ink Comic Book Podcast
It's Okay to Start Over