WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Batman #97, by James Tynion IV, Jorge Jimenez, Tomeu Morey and Clayton Cowles, on sale now.
When "Joker War" first broke out, Batman and all the major players in the Bat-Family were systematically targeted and taken off the board very quickly. Nightwing had a memory crystal that helped shape his shattered mind stolen by the Joker, rewriting his mind to make him a loyal sidekick to the Clown Prince of Crime. Lucius Fox was dosed with Joker toxin and brainwashed to create a new arsenal of weaponry and vehicles for the villain and his goons. Even Batman himself was poisoned with a new toxin developed by the Joker's latest confidante Punchline, making him largely incapacitated and forced to endure a series of vivid hallucinations that led him questioning what was real as Gotham City descended into fiery chaos.
With its main defenders preoccupied, brainwashed or completely neutralized this has left many of Gotham citizens to fend for themselves as the Joker's personal army runs amuck through the city streets. One neighborhood, however, has found its own unlikely hero in the new vigilante, Clownhunter. After growing up in the Narrows, the roughest and most dangerous neighborhood in Gotham, Clownhunter made his debut by rescuing a mother and her child from some of the Joker's henchmen by killing the Joker's goons with a Batarang protruding from a baseball bat, visibly unhinged and openly employing lethal force.
And in Batman #97, Clownhunter proves that he's just getting started by killing even more of the Joker's men.
Despite his unorthodox methods and relative inexperience, Clownhunter has quickly transformed the Narrows into the safest neighborhood in Gotham as the Joker's rampage engulfs the entire city. As Punchline receives an update on how her and the Clown Prince of Crime's plot is unfolding, she learns that a dozen henchmen have been discovered killed in the Narrows. Quickly realizing that Batman isn't responsible because of his cardinal rule of not killing even his most heinous antagonists, Punchline learns about the teenage vigilante as he begins to target Joker's trucks moving through his neighborhood with explosive results, the body count steadily increasing as the Joker begins to suffer casualties.
Punchline voices her concerns about Clownhunter directly to the Joker who appears more amused than frustrated, tickled that Batman's ineffectiveness led to the rise in lethal crimefighters that have no qualms about crossing the line. Of course, the Joker's amusement over Clownhunter doesn't make him exempt from consequences. The villain orders Punchline to send a squad of goons into the Narrows to hunt him down and have him publicly crucified as a warning to anyone else that would dare take up arms against him. In one fell swoop, Clownhunter's crusade has made him the Joker's new, number one priority, which is an exceptionally perilous place to be.
If Punchline represents a new breed of villains in Gotham and the immediate byproduct of Batman and the Joker's ongoing conflict, Clownhunter represents a new breed of crimefighter, both significantly more murderous and unhinged than their predecessors as extensions of the war for Gotham's soul.
Just as Punchline got the drop on Batman to score an early victory for her boss at the start of "Joker War," Clownhunter has been able to stay one step ahead of the Joker's men and rack up a body count so high that even the Clown Prince of Crime is begrudgingly impressed. And, as Gotham continues to burn, the Joker may discover he has just sent a new group of victims for the vigilante to kill, with the hunters quickly becoming the unwitting prey.