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On January 3rd, 2023, DC Comics released issue 4 of The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing, created by Matthew Rosenberg (writer), Francesco Francavilla (artist), Carmine Di Giandomenico (artist), Nick Filardi (colorist), Romulo Fajardo Jr. (colorist), and Tom Napolitano (letterer).
Whether you picked up this issue or not, you definitely heard about it in the news. This issue contains the story where Joker becomes “pregnant”.
A lot of people have expressed their disdain for this story, calling it “woke” by trying to “pander to the LGBTQIA+ community”. But this is a prime example of how some people can make judgments about a comic book without reading it.
I’ve had the pleasure of reading the whole series since issue 1, and even wrote a review about it. I’m not a Joker fan by any means, but when I read the first issue for my review for Comic Watch, I was absolutely hooked and had been reading every issue since then.
I created a TikTok video doing a complete breakdown of this scene and why the situation is being overblown (video below). But here are a few key points to keep in mind about this story:
- It is not part of the main story but is actually part of what’s called a “backup” story
- In each of the backup stories, they are quite ridiculous in and of themselves, leaving people to speculate this is some sort of fever dream sequence.
- It turns out that the Joker is actually not pregnant at all
