Last week, I talked about Fifth Week Events, the attempts by (mostly) DC and Marvel to fill out their publishing program in months that had an extra shipping week.

One such event was Tangent, a line created by Dan Jurgens. It featured a parallel earth on which the Cuban Missile Crisis did go nuclear and everything changed.

The event was popular enough that it made a return nine months later with fresh batch of one shots.

The week, I want to talk about the Joker character of the Tangent Universe, and the two books she starred in across those two events.

“Isn’t She a Harley Quinn Rip-Off?”

Sigh.

Let’s just lay out the timeline here so we can talk about the elephant in the room.

Harley Quinn debuted in the classic Paul Dini/Bruce Timm animated series. She first appeared in a comic with “Batman Adventures” #12 a couple years later.

The character of Harley Quinn debuted in the main DC Universe during the “No Man’s Land” days in the “Batman: Harley Quinn” graphic novel in 2000. You likely remember the Alex Ross cover where it kind of looks like she’s dancing with the Joker.

The Tangent universe debuted in 1997 with a second go-around in 1998.

So there are obvious influences from Harley Quinn on the Tangent Joker. She has the red bodysuit with the diamond pattern on it. She doesn’t have the accent, but she is bubbly and jokey and dangerous with a variety of toys.

But she’s not a rip-off. She’s filling a hole DC had in its publishing schedule at that point, though. That’s not a hole they’ve had in years now….

The First Flash

The first book is written by Karl Kesel, and it’s right up his alley. It’s a comic book for comic book fans packed with tons of comic book references, not all of them subtle. Look carefully around every panel and you’ll see signs and vending machines and cars with references to other DC characters and creators. People speak in exaggerating often expository comic book-ese like a 60s comic, probably in an attempt to introduce the reader to an entire new universe in a limited number of pages. But it’s also part of the style of the book, which feels a bit like a modern take on Silver Age comics.

It’s a fun comic book, but there’s still the mystery of who The Joker really is. Over the course of the book, we meet three likely candidates: Lori Lemaris, Madame Xanadu, and Mary Marvel. It’s unsubtle each time, and each has an equally likely chance of being the one.

Before I spoil that, though, let’s talk about the other fun part of the book: The Joker uses vending machines to stash her weapons. They’re all over town. And whenever the Joker appears and seems to pull weapons out of thin air, it’s because she’s pulled them out of one of these presumably soda-filled vending machines. I like that touch.

So, let’s spoil the big revelation of who The Joker is: All of them.

Maybe. The Joker walks into her secret lair at the end of the book and you can see three wigs set up, each with he distinct hairdo of one of the candidates we met earlier in the issue.

But, wait! It might not be what you think it is.

In the second book, “The Joker’s Wild,” we get further insight into the character. Here comes the big time spoilers: The Joker isn’t one woman pretending to be three; she’s three people pretending to be one. When the trouble gets so bad that all three are needed to bring the trouble down, they are all forced out into the open at once.

And they’re sisters! I think they mean it literally, too, not in the “Grrrl Power” way “sisters” gets used so often today.

I’m a little confused, to be honest. What were those wigs for? Are the girls all running around bald to make it easier to put the Joker costume on, and then wearing distinct wigs in their “regular” day to day life?

Art Cred

The first book is drawn by Matt Haley, with inks from Tom Simmons. His Joker design is great. He draws her bouncing around really well. This being the 90s, there are a lot of storytelling problems, mostly in the form of a total lack of backgrounds and lots of unnecessary close-ups. There are a few impressive establishing shots, so it’s not that he couldn’t draw it.

I’d also bet some deadline pressure kicked in here. This is a 38 page story. That’s a lot to design from scratch and draw.

He went on to be the cover artist of the Tangent revival maxi-series, “Tangent: Superman’s Reign” in 2008.

Judging by his bibliography in ComicBookDB.com, it looks like he’s out of comics now.

Joe Phillips draws the second book with inks from Jasen Rodriguez. The inker on the first book, Tom Simmons, co-writes it with Karl Kesel. Phillips’ work fits the title a little better, I think. There’s more humor in his faces. His backgrounds are better realized, and the characters look more three dimensional and less like comic book characters, if you know what I mean.

Where the Books Don’t Work

As single, stand alone issues, there’s not a whole satisfying story. The first book works as an introduction to the character, complete with a supporting case. But you need the second, third, and fourth issues to help flesh things out and tell a whole story. That’s not the point of these fifth week events, I know, but it is slightly frustrating.

Now, to be fair, I didn’t read all of the Tangent books. Joker might have appeared in other books to continue her story and I just didn’t realize it.

The second book, in particular, feels like two short stories that happen to be in the same issue. There’s a ton of interesting material to mine for a longer-run series, but that never happened. These one shots are just looks into this world with smaller vignettes.

I think she could handle an on-going series in a world that wasn’t saturated with Jokers, which today’s world unfortunately is. This Joker isn’t exactly pure evil. In fact, she’s more of a hero than anything else in the second book.

But she reacts to random things and then moves on, and the stories end in revelations that raise questions there will never be time to answer. As a storytelling exercise in getting to those revelations, they work.

Maybe it’s a good thing that both books leave me wanting more, and that’s enough?

Further Reading

It’s a fun couple of books. I think the promise of the character is far greater than what we get in these two books, though. The’re good stories to pique your interest, but without more afterwards they feel a bit empty.

Comixology has all the one shots from the 1997 and 1998 events available for $1.99 each. Somehow, I doubt anyone at DC or Comixology will remember this event existed long enough to ever put them on sale, but you never know.

The follow-up “Tangent: Superman’s Reign” is not available digitally, sadly, though there are two trades collecting it you can still find.

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