J. Michael Straczynski has made me into a big fan of this title. He chooses interesting pairings and writes highly accessible stories that are moral without being too schmaltzy. This one's with Atom & Joker. Once it gets underway it's easy to see where the story is headed, but that didn't bother me at all. Joker's in Arkham and knocked out with some rare neurological condition that's fucking up the firing of his synapses, and the doctors call in Atom to shrink down, traipse inside Joker's brain, and deliver the antidote at ground zero since the typical medical procedure tends to damage the rest of the brain. Righteous. When Atom hears that without his intervention, Joker will die a slow & agonizing death, he of course deadpans, "I'm not seeing a problem here."
His banter with the doctors and dismissal of the Joker is as funny as I've seen the Atom, and the art crew hits their stride once Atom actually gets down to business in the brain goo. I did wish to myself that Mike Allred had handled the art here - the story just reminds me of his stuff - but the book does look pretty. The full-page spread of the Joker's mind corrupting the Atom's is cool. We get a peek into Joker's fucked up childhood & an existential quickie about the function of his character in the universe, which while nothing revolutionary is still delightfully wicked, and I love how this line works into the ending:
"Besides, even if the whole world was weird, and you weren't, then you'd be the only one who wasn't weird in a weird world...so you'd still be weird."
Looking forward to next month.
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