Random Back Issues #108 - Birds of Prey #37

This could be labeled "Joker: Last Laugh - Aftermath", assuming anyone was stupid enough to advertise it was connected to that event. I know it's hardly ironclad, and more likely an example of recency bias, but I remember an issue of Wizard where Last Laugh ranked as the worst event in a reader poll they ran. I hadn't read it, so the idea it could be worse than the Clone Saga (which ranked 2nd) was stunning and terrifying.

Anyway, Black Canary, Blue Beetle and Robin are trying to track down some of the last few Jokerized escaped super-criminals loose in Gotham. First up is, G-Nome who accumulates DNA of different things to copy their traits. Robin warns he's been to the zoo and aquarium since escaping The Slab, but the spiked tail thing reminds me more of a dinosaur.

I guess DC has that one island with dinosaurs, the one in the War that Time Forgot comics?

Beetle tries to tranq him, but it can't get through his tough outer shell. The Canary Cry stuns G-Nome long enough for Robin to stab him between some of the plates and that's that, although G-Nome doesn't revert to normal.

Oracle confirms most of the escapees are rounded up, and the only one left in the Gotham/Bludhaven area is, well, you see the panel directly above, right? Cue sepia-toned flashback of Barbara-Batgirl and Grayson-Robin taking him out in his only previous attempt at crime, where he was dressed as a fast-food employee with a name tag reading, "Hi! I'm Crazy How May I Serve You?" I'm wondering if that was from the Batgirl: Year One mini-series that I think Dixon and Martin did. Barbara's confident the guy will be more incompetent since being Jokerized, as the toxin 'amplifies your personality.'

Hovering in the Bug above a shopping mall, Ted's thermal scope reads someone standing over a trash barrel in the food court, people huddled on the ground around them. Smash through the skylight and find the person standing a "Weiner World" employee chained to a oil drum full of mustard gas.

Condiment King then gets all three of them with various condiments, spiced up to a 100,000 on the Scoville scale, which Wikipedia says is equal to a low-end habanero chili or Scotch bell pepper. The Carolina Reaper is at 2,000,000 units, but maybe it hadn't been created when Dixon wrote this in '02.

While Robin and Canary go into anaphylactic shock and Ted crawls to the ice cream store, Condiment King goes into his own sepia-toned flashback. He was assigned to the Arkham kitchen, where the food was 'bland, soulless, and drugged.' But then he had a conversation with Poison Ivy, and she told him all about spices and plants.

In some versions of her character, Ivy would be against people eating plants, wouldn't she? But I guess if you're using nature's gifts to kill humans, she'd give the thumbs up to that.

Ted overcomes the heat with a healthy dose of milk. Turns out all that book learning didn't fix Condiment King's glass jaw as one punch sends him to la-la land. His mustard gas bomb is set to go off, and with no time to defuse it, Ted uses the Bug to haul it out of the mall. Where it blows up over the city? I'm assuming the idea is the gas will dilute on the wind but that seems like a good way to broaden the effect over several city blocks. Maybe its overwhelmed by the smog normally hanging over Bludhaven.

C.K. gets hauled to jail and Canary heads home to wash her hair, while Tim wonders how to get BBQ sauce off Kevlar and Ted complains the Bug's gonna smell like a hotdog cart. There's a subplot about Barbara trying to get in touch with Nightwing, who is shutting people out after he beat Joker to death at the end of Last Laugh (Batman resuscitated him, because of course he did.) Bold of Dixon to assume we'll care that Nightwing is angry with himself for killing the Joker.

{2nd longbox, 105th comic. Birds of Prey #37, by Chuck Dixon (writer), Marcos Martin (penciler), Alvaro Lopez (inker), Wildstorm (colorist), Albert T. De Guzman (letterer)}