After the end of their DC Black Label series JOKER: KILLER SMILE, the team of Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino will be teaming up for a follow-up one-shot called BATMAN: The Smile Killer, which focuses on a young Bruce Wayne and his childhood love of “The Mr. Smiles Show”.
For those unfamiliar, JOKER: KILLER SMILE is the story of superstar psychotherapist Dr. Ben Arnell trying to do something no one in history has ever done, and that’s to diagnose the Joker.
As reported by SYFY Wire, the series “focuses on little Bruce’s love of The Mr. Smiles Show. What he didn’t know is that “the show might have been watching him back! And not only was young Bruce watching, he was listening … listening as Mr. Smiles spoke across the airwaves only to him.” The team on the book as well as DC have provided us with Sorrentino’s cover:
Credit: DC Comics
There will also be a variant cover by Kaare Andrews.
The DC Black Label initially started as a Prestige imprint for Mature Readers, focusing on limited series runs featuring DC’s characters. But “the Bullet” recently announced the closure of its much-loved Vertigo imprint, choosing the Black Label as the new home for non-traditional stories told outside the more-traditional DC Universe.
Jeff Lemire has written many books for DC, like Green Arrow, Justice League Dark and The Terrifics. He also wrote the re-launch of Animal Man during the New 52. Andrea Sorrentino previously worked with Lemire on Green Arrow and Gideon Falls, a series for Image Comics.
Will this be the Joker’s last “Hoorah” against his mortal enemy? Will this new DC Black Label one-shot finally crush Batman? DC Comics News readers will find out once the book hits your local comic shops and newsstands on May 13th, 2020, for the cover price of $5.99.
