Joker is stunning – and that's no joke

You could be forgiven for imagining that nobody had ever, ever before made a film about a loner who turns violent, given some of the hyperbolic response to Todd Phillips’s new movie, Joker – a stand-alone origin story for the infamous villain in DC’s Batman universe.

The hysteria around Joker has been such that star Joaquin Phoenix walked out of an interview with The Telegraph when the reporter asked him if he thought that the film could inspire a shooter.

Quite apart from it seeming that, in the US at least, it doesn’t take much to inspire anyone with access to a gun – and while also being aware that a 2012 screening in Colorado of Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises saw James Eagan Holmes slaughter 12 people and cause another 70 to be injured – one can only assume that the Telegraph writer in question has never seen films such as, say, Taxi Driver.

But let’s set aside such stupidity and look at the film itself.

Arthur Fleck is a troubled individual: he has serious mental health issues and a condition that makes him laugh hysterically – even at completely inappropriate moments and irrespective of how he feels – yet Gotham is slashing the social services he desperately needs.

Struggling to keep a job, he’s treated poorly by colleagues, while trying to care for his ailing mother and work up the routines to become a stand-up comic.

Nothing goes according to plan and, as Gotham itself spirals toward chaos, with the rich establishment showing scant concern for the general citizenry, Arthur is caught in the crossfire. The results are both predictable and tragic.

Joker is dark art house meets comic book: Phillips has stated that the only real comic influence on his origin tale is that of Alan Moore’s comic book, The Killing Joke, which sees Joker as a failed stand up, but this goes far further.

It’s close to impossible to not empathise with Fleck’s appalling situation and not understand his eventual reaction. Indeed, this is key to why the film has such a satisfying emotional and intellectual complexity. Fleck is not, incidentally, an ‘incel’ and this is not a movie about those who identify as such. It is a film that shows a hyper-capitalist society that is failing badly, rejecting anyone who isn't a millionaire and descending into chaos.

It is a world in which anyone less than a member of some sort of entitled elite is ignored and neglected.

In terms of the DC universe, Joker also provides a nice counter to the idea of the privileged, entitled, conservative playboy vigilante Bruce Wayne.

In terms of the cast, Frances Conroy gives a subtle turn as Fleck’s mother, while Zazie Beetz as his neighbour lends real human warmth to the piece and Robert De Niro is excellent as a smarmy TV talk show host.

But ultimately, the film rests on Phoenix’s shoulders and wow … well, what can one say? It’s a stunning performance that, unless something really crazy happens, will be featuring big time come awards season.

You cannot take your eyes off him, from the opening scenes until the end. It is a mesmerising, monumental performance.

Lawrence Sher’s cinematography is superb – Gotham is shockingly claustrophobic even in the open air. Phillips’s screenplay and direction are excellent.

The use of music is also worth noting: the shift from easy listening to rock ‘n’ roll is superb in what it reflects – and I will never be able to hear Sinatra singing That’s Life in the same way again.

Ironically, in having not been made by DC Films, it is the best film made from a DC character. Ever.

This is a classic for our times – and my goodness, it feels utterly timely too.

Fabulous stuff. Possibly the film of the year – do not miss.

Further adventures in comic land

Atmospheric artwork from Andrew MacLean

The last part of 2016 saw plenty of action on the comic front – it’s become a serious pleasure to get regular deliveries of Forbidden Planet subscription packets through the post – and there’s been plenty to enjoy from what’s been inside.

Here’s a few notes on what I read and saw in that period.

Descender 3: Singularities by Jeff Lemire continues to be a cracking read, with this third collection playing with time to allow us to see events from different characters’ perspectives, and there’s enough meat here to keep the reader wondering what they’re not yet seeing, as the companion boy robot Tim finds himself being hunted by myriad forces – and the motives are not obvious yet.

And one of the things that Lemire achieves is to make the less sophisticated robots’ characters too, creating real pathos – light years away from the comedic approach of, say, C-3PO and R2-D2.

Panel from Descender 3

Dustin Nguyen’s art remains a real pleasure, his watercolours in a limited palette offering an unusual approach to sci-fi illustration, but one that works beautifully here, offering a soft-focus contrast to the story that nonetheless never jars.

Trees 2: Two Forests arrived a while back and takes us further into Warren Ellis’s apocalyptic tale, narrowing the field of vision to just the ‘trees’ – alien craft of some unexplained variety – in New York and the Orkney Isles, and with these, the central protagonists linked to them.

There’s a brooding darkness building here, with a sense of impending doom and even an incident in London that could be read as a pessimistic comment on the growing anti-immigrant sentiment that both contributed to Brexit and was boosted by it.

All this is helped by Jason Howard’s art, with strong images and a muted palette providing an excellent compliment to the words.

On a lighter note, I have also enjoyed a spot of Doctor Strange from Marvel – though not half as much as I enjoyed the film. Indeed, with TV watching and 2016’s cinema visits for the doctor and Deadpool, I’ve got really quite absorbed into the Marvel universe – albeit it cinematically rather than the version on paper.

"We are Groot" And the racoon's pretty cool too

Big screen trailers for spring’s Guardians of the Galaxy II looks so much fun that I caught up with the first one over Christmas – and loved it! It’s smashing entertainment.

Late as ever to such a party, I am however, now able to cry ‘We are Groot!’ with the best of them.

Then there’s the mere thought of autumn’s Thor: Ragnarok, which in promising to see Benedict Cumberbatch reprise Strange and Antony Hopkins Odin, looks set to ensure that this interest continues.

Christmas also saw me catching some Captain America for the first time – a bit straight-laced as a character, but when your support cast includes Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury and, in Winter Soldier, Robert Redford as a senior SHIELD leader, plus the currently ubiquitous Toby Jones as a creepy, dead Nazi scientist (though not as creepy as his Jimmy Savile-alike villain Culverton Smith in last weekend’s Sherlock), then a bit of straight laciness can be coped with.

If Marvel have mastered the way to create universes from myriad characters, DC is floundering in its efforts to catch up, with last year’s Batman v Superman having been panned.

The only highlight was reputedly the brief first sight of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, set for her own individual movie release this summer.

Now I’ve loved Wonder Woman since the 1970s and the days of Lynda Carter, and it was one of the first things that I started reading as I dipped my toes back into the world of comics over the last few years, but DC’s 75^th anniversary comic was a disappointing, disjointed mess.

Much – MUCH – better was volume 1 of Grant Morrison’s Wonder Woman: Earth One from earlier in 2016, which provided a new but coherent take on the Amazon’s origin story.

Yanick Paquette’s art worked for me – but then again, I didn’t get in a tizzy about pictures of WW in chains. Well, not that sort of a tizzy.

I really don’t know whether I’ll watch this summer’s film: setting it in WWI as opposed to Wonder Woman’s conventional entry into human affairs in WWII suggests that the filmmakers have decided that, instead of understanding that conflict as six of one and half a dozen of the others, writ large across all the main actors involved, it’s going to leap in with a howlingly simplistic Goodies v Baddies approach.

We shall see.

Normal and the head of Agatha Blue Witch

Very differently, one of my personal discoveries of the year was Andrew MacLean’s Head Lopper.

Written and drawn by MacLean – and originally self-published before being picked up by Image – this is the tale of Viking warrior Norgal, who hunts down monsters with the help (though he doesn’t actually like it) of the severed head of Agatha Blue Witch, which he carries around in a bag.

Image threw the comic convention of monthly, 22-page issues out of the window for this, instead allowing MacLean to produce bigger issues on a quarterly basis.

And while the first trade is a lot heftier a volume than you’d usually expect, it doesn’t fail on the fun quota.

Completely different to Hellboy, it would nonetheless be impossible not to see a relationship between Mike Mignola’s seminal work and this.

There’s humour, violence, great atmosphere and a wonderful sense of the folkloric – yes, all things that you’ll find in Hellboy – along with a superbly stylised visual look, all of which effectively gets the Mignola nod of approval in a contribution from the man himself in the gallery at the back of this volume.

MacLean makes storytelling look simple and his art ticks incalculable numbers of boxes. The picture I’ve used here also illustrates MacLean’s fascinating use of foreshortening and perspective, which is a contributory aspect of the work.

There is not a single thing I don’t love about this.

Black Road comes with added ravens

Not very far behind in my personal appreciation stakes comes the first trade of Black Road, which also plunges readers into Viking terrain – but the mood and look could hardly be more different.

Magnus the Black is a man placed awkwardly somewhere between paganism and Christianity, as the church militant strives to conquer the Viking lands for Christ.

Hoping to perhaps ease the trauma of this momentous change for his fellow Norse men, Black finds himself caught up in the bloody politics of religious conquest – and has to turn detective when an official in his care is brutally murdered.

Brian Wood’s story has a satisfying complexity about it, but it’s the art by Dave McCaig and Garry Brown that really lifts this, with its evocation of the bleak, vast landscape of the north.

Having enjoyed the autumn release of the first trade, I’ve hit the subscribe button for the coming issues in this Image series, rather than wait for trade two.

Actually, that’s also an indicator that I’m getting sussed enough about the comics world that I spotted it before the new arc begins.

In the meantime, Skottie Young’s I Hate Fairyland is another comic that defies easy categorisation.

A bright, bubbly tot called Gertrude wishes to live in Fairyland – and then her wish comes true.

Gertrude is not as happy as Larry. Neither is Larry, to be fair

Unfortunately, 20 years later, she’s grown mentally but is physically still a child, trapped in a bubblegum world of sugary niceness.

A crazy new take on a sort of Dorothy longing for Kansas, Gertrude has become a sweary, psychopathic monster who wants to destroy everything and everyone as she tries to find an escape back to reality, accompanied by Larry, a cynical version of Jiminy Cricket.

Life is further complicated when the queen of Fairyland decides that the only way in which to deal with the chaos and violence is to have Gertrude herself killed.

Written and illustrated by Young, volume one was fun and the second trade is out now (if you look online at Forbidden Planet, it can currently be obtained with a very nice autographed postcard too).

It’s hard to know where Young can take this story – but fluff you (as our less-than-angelic Gertude so often puts it): it’s going to be fun finding out.

And finally, the autumn also saw my own first comic strip – okay, only three pages, but my words and my illustrations. It was published in a membership magazine that went to over a million people, but I've now put up a digital version, so you can catch it here. Enjoy!