Horror Icon John Carpenter To Write New Joker Comic

The Master of Horror takes on the Clown Prince of Crime later this year.

by Ewan Paterson
Joker John Carpenter
DC Comics/Philip Tan

DC's Joker announcements just keep on comic. Only a day or so after Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino's new Joker comic, Killer Smile, was announced, DC also revealed that horror legend John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing), will take on the Clown Prince of Crime October this year.

Framed as a part of the publisher's plans for 'Year of the Villain', Carpenter will be joined by Borderlands 2 writer Anthony Burch to tell a story all about Joker's plans to outdo everyone else. With the world in the thrall of villainy, Batman's arch-nemesis endeavours to prove "that the greatest evil is always the one that leaves them laughing."

Speaking to DC, Carpenter revealed his love for the Joker and how he considers him to be "the greatest villain in comics". Burch, meanwhile, previously collaborated with Carpenter on BOOM! Studios’ Big Trouble in Little China: Old Man Jack, a spin-off comic centred around the film of the same name.

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The comic itself will be a special forty-page one-shot, and will retail for $4.99. With Philip Tan and Marc Deering are pulling art duties you can be sure it's going to look the part. The cover already looks like it's playing heavily to Carpenter's horror roots, so here's hoping the director makes this brief foray into comics a regular occurrence in the future.

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Content Producer/Presenter

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.