The first season of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will go live on March 28, and as promised it will see the arrival of one of DC’s most infamous villains: The Joker.
The date was revealed on Twitter in a very straightforward, un-Joker-like announcement: “Get ready for Season 1! The jokes are coming March 28, HA!” That sounds more like a triumphant “in your face, Batfink!” than the maniacal laughter the Joker is famed for, although given the events of Suicide Squad (which we won’t get into for spoiler reasons) I suppose that might be appropriate.
The attached image is similarly restrained, although as we previously noted this “Elseworld Joker” seems more akin to the Cesar Romero character of the ’60s Batman television series (the best Joker, for the record) and his boner-pulling comic book inspiration than any of the more recent renditions in the Bat-canon.
We haven’t seen this take on the Joker in action beyond some brief gameplay when he was first announced, but assuming that throwback approach holds I think it’s a smart move. Batman, and DC comics in general, have evolved dramatically over the decades, and while the Dark Knight of today is as grim and taciturn as they come, there was a time when he seemed like a genuinely happy, well-adjusted guy (as much as that can be said for someone who runs around dressed like a giant flying rat) and nobody thought it was weird that he just picked some random kid to ride shotgun on his ridiculous adventures. Comics were fun back then and frankly I’d like to see that lighthearted, silly approach to superheroes make a little bit of a comeback in modern media.
(Yes, I am old. I make no apologies.)
The big question, of course, is how much of an impact this will have on Suicide Squad’s fortunes. It’s a pretty decent game in the whole—we gave it a 67% score in our review, signifying that “there’s something here to like,” and it holds a “mostly positive” rating on Steam—but the overall public reception, to put it mildly, hasn’t been entirely positive. That’s reflected in the player counts: At this moment only 399 people are playing on Steam, and the daily peak was just 579. That doesn’t tell the whole tale—Suicide Squad is a multiplatform game—but it’s definitely not a good sign.
Suicide Squad publisher Warner Bros further confirmed the dire state of the game in its most recently financial report, saying the game “has fallen short of our expectations” and that it was facing a tough year-over-year comparison in its first quarter as a result. In light of the company’s willingness to pull the plug on projects that aren’t anticipated to generate sufficient revenues, that’s sparked some doubt about Suicide Squad’s long-term future. Rocksteady plans a year of updates and new content including an offline mode and (we’re pretty sure) an Elseworld Mr. Freeze, but whether it will have the opportunity to make it all happen is at this point a very big question.
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