Pop Goes the Joker
“Why, even a three year old could do better than that!"
Some Batman stories are very good, but only a rare few are sublime. One of those is "Hizzonner the Penguin/ Dizonner the Penguin" which skewers the art of politics. This story does the same for the art of, er, art, and is just as wonderful.
As the title implies, it's 1967, and the age of pop art- something which even reached the covers of Marvel comics (if I may mention them here!) of roughly this time. And even the opening is wonderful- the Joker ruins an exhibition of rather conservative paintings with random splodges of paint, only to be acclaimed as an artist. Even more deliciously, he proceeds to enter an art competition with "Pablo Pincus", "Jackson Potluck", Leonardo Da Vinski" and "Vincent Van Gauche", all of whom proceed to paint with feet, back and, most deliciously, a chimp. But the Joker wins with a blank, untouched canvas- the allusion to a certain fairytale of a scantily clad monarch is hardly subtle, but it's wonderfully done and I love everything about it.
Oh, the Joker has a plot to open an art school for millionaires (I love his comment on their work!) only to ransom them, leading to a knife cliffhanger for Robin, but that's just plot. Cesar Romero gets a real classic script here as the art world is skewered to perfection.
Flop Goes the Joker
“I don't know what it means. It must be very profound."
Yes, the cliffhanger resolution is perfunctory. But so is the convention itself. Much more interesting is the Joker's delightfully cynical buttering up of silly socialite Baby Jane so he can get in and steal various Old Masters from Gotham's art gallery under the pretence of swapping them with his own "masterpiece", a defaced and chopped up antique table. And the hole episode is full of amusing little touches, such as a gleeful Gordon and O'Hara hearing fight at the museum.
The coda with Joker robbing Wayne Manr is also a delight, with a defiant Alfred showing off his fencing skills and the omission of the names from the Batpole turning out to have been a deliberate little Chekhov's gun. And, of course, we end with Alfred's paintings, created to fool the Joker, becoming popular in exhibition themselves. Delicious, wonderful satire and one of the programme's real high points.
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