DC New52 - Batman: Death of the Family (Game-Changer?)

First thing's first.  Read this arch before reading any spoiler-filled reviews.  I have the disadvantage of reading series well after they've been published and talked about and reviewed to death.  Usually, I don't mind the occasional spoiler, knowing that it's often inevitable.  However, when I saw covers of Death of the Family with the Joker's face covering each character's face on their respective covers, I knew this arch was going to be something special.  Most of my DC New52 reading up to this point has been me wanting to get this to this particular Batman arch.  So, maybe it was the anticipation I went in reading this, or maybe it was my fan-boyish excitement for what was sure to be the greatest Batman story since Death in the Family, but I was (need-less-to-say) ecstatic to begin this.  Did it live up to the overwhelming game-changing events I pictured?  Well, no.  Not really.  But it did do a lot of things right and set up end in a way I didn't really expect.  Here are my thoughts...

As the name implied, this was to be a milestone story arch; perhaps one that would change the status quo in the BatFamily line of books.  And to it's credit, it did... but with a whimper and not a bang.  Having had his face removed and tacked to a wall, the Joker has been missing for a year.  Batman had finally begun to think that maybe he had finally retired.  In an evidence locker, the GCPD had kept his face in cold storage and made a few rookies guard it.  In a back-5-page follow-up story, Bullock actually his a receiver and played a prank on one of the newbs, pretending to be Joker's voice.  This is important to note because it shows how complacent GCPD became with having the idea of his face in the basement.  A normal morning in the GCPD, Gordon making his rounds, the power is cut, generator cuts on and Gordon briefly sees the Joker standing in the station.  As Joker begins telling jokes, he goes about breaking necks of about 16 police while taunting Gordon.  At the last moment, before the terrified Gordon begins wildly shooting, Batman appears with the lights on and pulls Gordon back from the ledge.  Unfortunately, there's not too much more involvement of Gordon in the storyline, other than seeing the Joker took back his face with Batman in the basement.  It would have been nice to see the Joker focus a bit more attention on Gordon, since there are several references to The Killing Joke throughout this series.  (Joker speaks about having been at the park when it was raining, and the rain drops on the Batcave computer's monitor - echoing that famous ending of The Killing Joke.)

So, generally, the rest of the titles are pretty much the Joker telling everyone he has a master plan, that's all written in his book, torturing them, and eventually capturing them.  This all goes along with the core Batman titles, and like most giant cross-overs, there's a bit of continuity drift and giving it the benefit of the doubt.  The Joker appears to be everywhere at once, and while this can be simply be interpreted as the above statement says, I was actually starting to believe that there may actually be multiple Jokers!  I mused about this for a while, thinking of what a bold, new direction it would have taken the comic, and with the recent "Joker can be anyone" mentality the Gotham TV series had taken, I truly believed the comics from the past few years may have influenced that TV show's decision to go that direction.  This turned out to be false, so I continued looking for the 'game-changing event' the arch's subtitle promised.

The next major event came from Joker besting Batman on a bridge and telling him he knew his greatest secret, and annonced to everyone (on intercom) that he "knew who they really were."  This was the game-changer!  This was the moment I took in a deep breath, truely pondering the implications this would cause Batman and his crew.  All the while, there were flashbacks of the Joker knocking on Wayne Manor and attacking Alfred!  He MUST know!  The most terrific thing about this revelation, is that Batman, categorically denying that Joker knew their identities was put at odds with the family - and the reader.  The Joker knew such intimate things, how could he not know?  The ending of The Death of the Family chose to leave this more open-ended that I would have liked.  I know the Joker had help from Barbara's brother at some points, with his knowledge of her identity, but there were statements made about Nightwing/Dick Grayson opening the park, Red Robin & Red Hood's fathers, etc... that just seems a little too coincidental. However, if you're truely reading most of the Joker's statements and moves throughout the series, he does seem somewhat vague (even if too coincedental!)  So I suppose I can overlook the fact that Joker may still not know who they are.  Okay, no game-changer, but really interesting way to put the reader in the shoes as one of the BatFamily... and this wouldn't be the first time.

Love this how Joker is depicted in this scene.  So carefree and nonchalant while exclaiming such a earth-shattering reveal!

As stated, the Joker pretty much effed with each member.  First, he kidnaps Alfred & leaves audio for Batman of burning Alfred's eyes out.  Then, he tortures Harley saying he wants to cut her face off too, so she can be just like him.  (The artwork and dialog are beyond top-notch here.)  He gives the burnt toys of a friend - who got blown to bits in that same fire - tormenting Catwoman, asking her to join him.  Batgirl was brought to a chapel in a wedding dress promising to marry the Joker if he wouldn't detonate a bomb under her mother's chair.  Joker promising to keep her in the basement with her legs and arms sawed off.

While Batgirl comes to the decision to finally kill the Joker, he's just sits there teasing her. The dichotomy is so deliciously thick here.

Red Robin and Red Hood both trapped in a warehouse with two people supposedly their fathers trapped there too.  Joker threatening to kill the father of whoever looses in a fight to the death between them.  Nightwing having a girl from his past show up in a Nightwing outfit, Jokerized.  After she dies in his arms, he sees an invitation the Joker carved into her chest.

All eventually get captured and presented with a silver platter with a dome, bloodied and the Joker about to reveal what he has.  This all leads to the finale where it's revealed.

I know that's alot of story condensed in a few lines, but that's not the real reason for writing this.  I want to (and I can't stress this enough) explain how utterly dark and gruesome this book became after all the above happens.  Sure there's some dark tones in what happens with Batgirl and Nightwing, but in the core Bat-books, Joker could literally give one nightmares... and that's the delicious part of his character.  For the first time in reading Batman and Joker stories - with the exception of maybe The Killing Joke - have I been terrified of the Joker.  In every panel he's in, I find myself reading the dialog and not wanting to look at the gruesome depiction of the hanging skin from his fly-invested face.  And the look of the Joker is only 1/2 of the equation.  What he makes Batman go through in the core books is deplorable, and it really rings true to how comic characters always described Joker: as a sick, sadistic, psychopath.  I hear Batman and other DC heroes say this all the time about Joker, but it never really rang true with me as a reader.  I retroactively found out and read about why Batgirl was in a chair & what happened to Jason Todd.  Maybe due to that, I was already mentally prepared what transpired in those books (That is, there's something to say about reading a story without spoilers!)

Waking in Arkham, Batman realizes the Joker has turned the entire facility into his own Batman gauntlet.  Unfortunately due to time-constraints, issue-constraints, or something, we don't get to see Batman go through much of this... but what we do see is wicked.  Stripped nude, stitched together, hung upside down, there is a mural of Batman's adventures with the Joker painted on - still alive - guards & inmates.  A burning horse lights up a long hallway, heading toward Batman!  He has to climb a winding staircase up a tower with Mr. Freeze, Clayface & Scarecrow along the way.  But it's really too fast paced.  He knocks out the A-list super-villains with one punch.  And the aforementioned house of horrors only lasted a page or two.  I was really starting to get into just what a sick mind the Joker has, presenting this all as a homage to his "Bat-King."  Granted, I wouldn't have wanted the entire narrative of Batman: Arkham Asylum, but it would have been nice if Batman had to go through something like the maze from the Court of Owls within Arkham.  So for pacing, Batman makes it up to the top of the tower to face the Joker, who manipulates Batman into setting in a chair and being electrocuted.

Okay, I'm pretty sure that's Matt Smith under the face-mask.

Right?

The finale finds Batman waking to see his family sans Alfred all at a long dining table with hoods on, each with that mysterious platter and dome in front of them.  It was at this point, that probably anyone reading this thinks that Joker's finally done it; the real game-changer: he's cut Alfred into bits and is serving it to them!  Holy crap!  I literally stopped reading and began hypothesizing the implications of such a brutal act.  Throughout each of the titles, each character contemplated going "too far," stepping over the line and finally killing the Joker once and for all.  I started thinking Alfred's death would push one over the edge.  Maybe Batgirl bringing her innocent character into an eternal internal conflict.  Jason Todd would be an obvious choice, but he wouldn't loose sleep.  Maybe Batman, himself, and each of  the family would have to come to terms with it?

The Joker leans forward exclaiming that "Alfred's right here!"  Alfred pops out all Jokerized... *cough cough*   So, my hopes again are deflated.  What was all that burning Alfred's eyes out torture tape stuff about?  I guess I'm to believe it was simply the Joker being masochistic, leaving it to torture Batman... and not a misleading plot device?  It is this misleading though, that makes what follows even more surprising: Alfred pulls the rope and reveals all the members of the family sit with their faces bandaged, and in front of them, beneath the dome, each silver platter has their skinned faces!

I was beside myself.  I instantly took a deep breath with a wide-eyed horrific realization that maybe... just maybe... to start things over, the New52 may be changing the status-quo by literally having the Joker do the unthinkable: mutilate the Bat-fakes!  For some reason (probably all the Alfred focus), I completely didn't see this coming, and it was such a genuine 'gotcha' moment, that for a few minutes, I was sitting there at the table with Batman, witnessing this horrific display the Joker had orchestrated.  I was mortified!  Batman for a moment shared my feelings then composed himself rather quickly.  I would have liked to have seen the dark knight break down a bit more, but I suppose keeping his composure fits in-line with the character and his mental discipline when dealing with psychos.  That said, if they would have expanded more on the gauntlet and had he been as messed up (sleep / nourishment deprived) as he was in the Court of Owls labyrinth, he may have been a bit more shocked and derailed.  But I suppose this epic moment is meant to be felt more by the reader than by the character, so it worked in that regard.

Batman does eventually get out of the Joker's trap, Joker runs away, and Batman frees his family.  In a truly endearing moment, Damien asks his father to tell him how bad it is; that he can take it.  Batman removes the bandages and sees that it's just another of Joker's sick jokes: all the family's faces are intact.  In some ways this really does feel like a let-down, cop-out (insert your own idiom here).  I know at that exact moment, I was so wrapped up into the book that I actually let out an audible bear-grumble followed by a curse.  But the book wasn't over yet, and instead of rage-quitting, I still had to give a title like "Death of the Family" the benefit of the doubt.

So Batman chases Joker, eventually confronting him in a waterfall cavern which eventually leads into the Batcave.  It's the same spot Batman at one point feared the Joker had come to learn of the Batcave, and through it their secret identities.  This is something Batman neglected to tell all the Batfamily earlier in this story and as a parallel conflict (that seemed somewhat trivial to me as a reader at the time) they were all a little POed at him for not telling them.  Also, he didn't tell them immediately when Joker took Alfred - WTF Bruce?!?!  But like I said, it felt so inconsequential when reading the story and writing this review.  But this is where we end up: Batman telling Joker that he knows who he really is!  Batman leans over to Joker to reveal his (Joker's) real name to him (Jack Napier?  no?) when Joker slaps an electric buzzer onto Bat's mouth to shut him up and does a swan dive off the ledge, with his face slowly following behind.  The most interesting part of this is just how much the Joker freaks out when Batman says he knows him.  You can almost see his train of thought without the book telling you, "Will this end the game?"  "Does he truly know who I am?"  "There won't be secrets between us anymore!"

So, was there revolutionary change that happened in "Death of the Family?"  Well, no... not the way I would have predicted.  All of the above suggested some gruesome fate awaited one of the members of the family, be it Alfred's eyes, Batgirl's appendages, Batgirl's mother, Red Robin/Hood's fathers, or all the members of the family having their mutilated faces served to them.  But none of the above actually transpired the way the audience was led to believe.  Every time we thought we knew the way the roller coaster was going, it would zag another way - horizontally.  I even thought the final confrontation between Joker and Batman was going to be the 'game-changer,' alas, it was a bitter-sweet ending.

But, the aftermath, to me, is how the book lives up to its title.  Bruce invites all those involved over to the mansion to have a nice, long, overdue talk.  He's going to explain to them everything; from how he knew the Joker didn't know their identities, to how the Joker doesn't want the game to end so will never actually acknowledge their true identities - a story he tells Alfred about the time he looked Joker square in the eye as Bruce, basically saying he was Batman, and Joker didn't flinch.  Everything.  Bruce is finally ready to open up and have a good cry with the family.  The kicker though: all family members cancel on Bruce.  We see each dealing with the aftermath of the trauma they've been put through and we see the final blow the Joker has dealt to the family.  Not with a bang, but with a whimper.  Sometimes psychological trauma can be just as brutal.