Posted in: Batman, Comics, Comics Publishers, DC Comics | Tagged: chip zdarsky, geoff johns, jason fabok, joker, Mindbomb, three jokers

NYCC Batman Gossip: The Return Of The Three Jokers

Bleeding Cool got a little New York Comic Con Batman gossip sugesting we may well be getting a return to the Three Jokers in DC continuity.

In Justice League #50 by Geoff Johns and Jason Fabok, Batman learned something from the Mobius Chair about the real identity of The Joker.

Which continued over, a little bit, into DC Rebirth from Geoff Johns and Gary Frank. That there were three Jokers, not just one.

And then the news that after these revelations, which would also see the Mobius Chair, giving the powers of Dar Manhattan to The Flash and kicking off the Flash Forward series that would have reset the DC Universe again for 5G.

From all this, we would get The Three Jokers, by Johns and Fabok… but would it be in continuity with the rest? Hard-and-fast continuity of Doomsday Clock, so meticulously laid out by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank, fell apart as a combination of delays, other creative directions, a new President and Brian Bendis set in. And the continuity of Doomsday Clock became a lot lighter, with changes to the Legion Of Super-Heroes and the Justice Society Of America – and even Black Adam. Jason Fabok posted regarding the continuity of Three Jokers, saying, "It's in continuity like Killing Joke is. You can take it or leave it. We are going to introduce some pretty gutsy stuff in Jokers that's never been done before. So the fans can react to it, and they can decide if they want it part of main continuity or not, like Killing Joke."

, The Three Jokers revealed that there were always three Jokers, not one, and revealed new truths about both the Joker and Batman. The sequel was meant to answer all those questions you had about Batman: The Three Jokers' place in continuity. With one Joker remaining, Batman reveals that he keeps an eye on the Joker's wife and son. The news is that Batman always knew who the Joker was. That Jim Gordon knows Barbara Gordon is Batgirl, but Barbara never gets a chance to reject Jason Todd's advances and Bruce Wayne's closure over Joe Chill.

Geoff Johns and Jason Fabok were meant to have been working on a sequel to their Three Jokers comic, called Batman Universe, which would have answered such canon questions. But Johns moved on to the Golden Age comics at DC, and Fabok signed exclusively to work on Ghost Machine titles with Geoff Johns from Image Comics. Gary Frank, too. So it's probably off the table. So, if they don't want to mention The Three Jokers at DC Comics, maybe Chip Zdarsky will?

Batman #125, kicking off Zdarsky's run on the series, included this image from a Batman dream sequence. There is a big Joker story coming with Mindbomb to follow Gotham War. But what of Three Jokers? Well, Bleeding Cool understands from New York Comic Con gossip that, yes, the events of Justice League #50 are still meant to have occurred. Batman did learn from the Mobius Chair that there are Three Jokers. And that's not counting the extra Joker in the recent Joker: The Man Who Laughed series or the one in Harley Quinn a while back. But the events of Three Jokers did not happen in DC continuity. So, the three Jokers are still in the air. Jason Todd died at the hands of the Joker, and no son of Joker living with his mother, who did not die in The Killing Joke. And Zdarsky is going to do… something else with it. But the fact that Batman knows that there are three Jokers will come up, and a comic will come up soon.

Meanwhile, this week's Justice League VS Godzilla Vs King Kong does show that Superman has the Mobius Chair now…

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