Clown at Midnight and DC Universe #0

In this week's DC Universe #0, we see, for the first time outside of the Grant Morrison prose issue of Batman (issue #663), the new "Clown at Midnight" version of the Joker. The character looks nothing like the John Van Fleet version, but if you look closely, the art in DC Universe #0 (did Tony Daniel draw that sequence?) shows the Joker's newly menacing grin, and the callback to the red/black pattern establishes that this is the same incarnation as the prose story.

So my thoughts are: isn't it strange that this new version of the Joker appeared only once, over a year ago, in a prose story, hasn't been seen since, and now appears a second time in this book that's basically just an ad for Final Crisis? And what does that mean for the timeline of Morrison's Batman? Does it mean that the rest of the DC Universe has finally caught up with the chronology he's been exploring since he took over Batman? If so, then how does the recent "Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul" crossover fit in? I'm not sure I really care about any of these answers, since I'd rather have Morrison's work off in it's own little corner of the DCU, but with Final Crisis, his stuff is center stage.

By the way, as I already implied in my review for DC Universe #0, Countdown is completely irrelevant to Final Crisis, or so it seems. We all knew this already, based on the fact that they ended Countdown an issue early to make way for this Johns/Morrison issue, but it's nice to see the irrelevance of Countdown so enthusiastically verified by DCU #0. So, I guess my question for those who shelled out the $150 for Countdown is: are you angry that Countdown has been rendered completely irrelevant, or are you unbelievably happy that such an abominable book has been ignored?

Voice by Proxy: Countdown #4

I teach my students to avoid the assumption that the author of a literary work is speaking through his or her characters. But sometimes the author's voice clearly comes through a fictional proxy or two:



From Countdown to Final Crisis #4. Words by Sean McKeever.