In what is no doubt an effort to cross-promote with The Joker’s return to the silver screen in the Chris Nolan film THE DARK KNIGHT, DC Comics is offering this mini-series, JOKER‘S ASYLUM, with weekly installments throughout the month on July. We’ll be privy to The Joker’s thoughts on some of Batman’s most famous rogues and in the first issue, the Clown Prince of Crime shares a story about himself.

Writer Arvid Nelson crafts a very entertaining story with The Joker, “safely” inside Arkham Asylum, telling the reader about an episode in his life aptly titled, “The Joker’s Mild.” The Joker takes over a live broadcast of Gotham’s popular game show, Hold ‘Em or Fold ‘Em, and holds the contestants and the audience hostage while the country watches in horror. The contestants who thought they were going answer questions about topics like Baseball and Song Lyrics to win a new car now have to answer Joker’s questions about Obscure 17th Century Literature and the Reproductive Habits of Freshwater Mollusks just to save their own lives. Of course, as is often the case when dealing with Mr. J, things are not quite as they seem.

As The Joker is terrorizing the contestants, an intense debate is going on in the control room between the show’s producer and his assistant. The assistant, in an attempt to do the right thing, wants to cut the power to the show, but the producer and the network executives decide stay on the air because ratings are “through the roof.” The nation is glued to their television sets waiting to see the blood that will surely flow at the hands of The Joker. It all culminates in a clever, unexpected twist that won’t be given away here, but suffice to say the reader is left wondering just who the blood thirsty sicko really is. Batman then makes a cameo appearance to stop The Joker and save the day.

The story told by Arvid Nelson is a very fun read and probably one of the better Joker stories to come out in the last few years, but the same cannot be said for the artwork. Andy Kubert’s cover is amazing and it will easily catch the eye of anyone browsing through their local comic shop, but Alex Sanchez’s penciling inside the book is plagued with inconsistency. Sanchez has a rough, sketchy quality in his drawings, which is not bad in and of itself, but it becomes a problem when The Joker and other characters look different in almost every panel.

In some panels, Sanchez’s Joker looks like it was influenced by Jack Nicholson in BATMAN. Other panels feature a Joker that looks a lot more like Heath Ledger’s version in THE DARK KNIGHT. There are even more panels in which The Joker barely even looks human and other panels where he has some kind of scarring all over the left side of his face as if Sanchez got The Joker confused with Harvey Dent!

As frustratingly inconsistent as the artwork is, the story is good enough to for me to recommend JOKER’S ASYLUM to any diehard fan of the Ace of Knaves. Additionally I would strongly recommend it to new or casual Joker fans who are looking for a little more insight into his insane mind.