10 Comics You Loved As A Teen (But Should Never Return To)
6. Joker
DC Comics
Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo started their recurring creative partnership at DC with 2005's Luthor, a comic devoted to the Man of Steel's greatest adversary. The duo followed this up with Joker, an Elseworlds-style look into the inner-workings of the Clown Prince designed to launch alongside the premiere of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight. Bermejo's version of Joker even boasted the same appearance as Heath Ledger's clown, to the point where some mistook the comic as a movie tie-in.
And that's one of the first problems with Joker. Despite having nothing to do with Nolan's film, and having seemingly been green-lit only days after Luthor's publication, it's just impossible to look at without thinking of The Dark Knight. The book's title was even originally meant to be Joker: Dark Knight, which DC of course changed when they realised comparisons to Nolan's film were becoming increasingly inevitable.
Outside of The Dark Knight comparisons though, Joker's grimdark approach to the Clown Prince seems almost tedious in retrospect. Factor in the book's bizarre interpretation of Harley Quinn, and it seems almost as though it was intended to shock first, and offer a compelling look into the inner-most workings of the Batman villain second.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
