Not long ago, the Batfan community saw its collective jaw hit the floor when DC officially announced Sean Gordon Murphy’s Batman: White Knight. Now, the uninitiated may wonder what’s so special about yet another miniseries featuring the Caped Crusader, but once you hear that it involves the Joker seemingly going straight and opting to take down the Batman within the parameters of the law, well, you’ll likely be singing the same tune as the rest of us. And by the way, the former Clown Prince of Crime will be doing it as a politician.
What also got our attention is that the writer/artist is giving the Joker an actual name: Jack. Immediately, this likely caused each of us to recall Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie in which Jack Nicholson played a version of the Ace of Knaves whose real name was Jack Napier. Assumed to be nothing more than a neat little tribute, nobody could’ve probably predicted the next bombshell to be dropped.
As it turns out, Murphy just received WB’s blessing to include the last name of “Napier” in his book, the first time something like this has been done outside of one of the movie tie-in comics. Well, there’s Batman: Gotham Noir, but it could be argued that wasn’t really “the Joker,” so to speak.
Here’s the shocking Tweet itself:
https://twitter.com/Sean_G_Murphy/status/898144563109535745
By now, it’s probably safe to assume that Batman: White Knight has been added to everybody’s pull list. And, given all that’s transpired, we can’t wait to see what other surprises are in store when the first issue arrives in comic shops on October 4.