Death of the Family Expands in December

When the new 52 launched last September one of the big shake-ups was having The Joker in absence for a whole year to lead up to a monumental return. Early on Joker had the skin of his face carved off by the Dollmaker which was confiscated by GCPD and kept at their station for further investigation. This left many fans wondering and highly anticipating what direction the Clown Prince of Crime would go in this new DCU.

Fast forward to October 2012 where the Joker eerily arrives at the GCPD building and takes out an officer one after the next, using the shadows to his advantage much like Batman would do. This story has promised to have major consequences all across the board of the Bat-titles, though October and November has seen minimal action with the story being contained in 2 issues of Batgirl, Catwoman, and Batman as well as a single outing in Suicide Squad. The Joker is taking his time to pick apart the family of bat characters with an unpredictability that we have never seen.

December explodes the story across each title involving a character connected to Batman. Death of the Family will continue from now through February in Batman, Batman & Robin, Detective Comics, Batgirl, Nightwing, Red Hood & the Outlaws, Suicide Squad, and Teen Titans. Something interesting to point out is that the next two months are missing the Catwoman title as part of the checklist. It could simply mean that Catwoman will be going in a different direction after last months issue, but with the psychotic nature of this new Joker she may not survive the end.

Night of Owls was the introductory arc for the new 52 Batman and would be hard to top with any story arc following it, but it looks like DC is on the right path to make this bigger and better than these already solid group of books are at the moment.