Warning! Contains a preview for Jurassic League #1
For most of their feud within the DC Universe, Batman and the Joker have always shared an intrinsic link to each other, but that link is reinforced when they battle as dinosaurs in the upcoming Jurassic League series. As the title suggests, the premise of the series envisions the classic Justice League line-up, along with their foes, as dinosaurs. Of course, that's not the only thing about the DC Universe getting a makeover.
Batman's origin story is pretty old hat at this point. Everyone knows that the Batman's caped crusade first begins when he, as a child, watched his parents be shot dead in front of him by a mugger. Traditionally in comics, it has been established that Joe Chill was the mugger who murdered Thomas and Martha Wayne. But Jurassic League puts a somewhat new twist on an old tale.
In Jurassic League #1 by Daniel Warren Johnson and Juan Gedeon, Dinosaur Batman has a bloody encounter with Dinosaur Joker, whose scent seems familiar to him. This forces the newly T-Rex Dark Knight into a flashback to when his parents were killed. That was the last time he smelled the Joker's scent, helping him realize that the Joker was the dinosaur who murdered his parents years ago. Jurassic League #1 first hits shelves starting May 10, 2022, but feel free to check out some preview images early below, courtesy of Polygon.
This isn't the first time in Batman lore that his origin story was tweaked with his arch nemesis being his parents' assailant. Those who have seen Tim Burton's Batman movie will recall that during his pre-Joker days as a petty criminal, it was a young Jack Napier who shot and killed Bruce Wayne's parents in the middle of Crime Alley, leaving the boy with a trauma that would follow them both as adults.
In the comics, Batman and the Joker are often portrayed as two different sides of the same coin who more or less created each other. The Joker often crafts delinquent schemes trying his best to push Batman to his limits, goading the Bat to break his unbreakable code. Meanwhile, the sheer psychopathy of the Joker works as a constant reminder to Batman as to why he must work so vigilantly to enforce his personal brand of justice. At the very least, these two certainly can't exist without the other.
That's always been a more symbolic aspect to these characters, but that symbolism becomes literal when the Joker is written as the man (or dinosaur) who killed Martha and Thomas Wayne. Introducing this component helped make things even more personal than they already were in Tim Burton's Batman. In Jurassic League, it instantly makes the series far more complex and nuanced than one would expect out of an initially silly concept of depicting Justice League members as dinosaurs. Readers can see dino-ized versions of Batman and Joker in Jurassic League #1 on May 10.
Source: Polygon