Jace Fox bumps into an enemy who appears to be his personal Joker in the latest issue of I Am Batman, and while this villain may boast the same sadistic tendency towards violence as Gotham's Clown Prince of Crime, he also has a dangerous strength to him -- not to mention proficiency with an unusual weapon.
A preview of I Am Batman #8 provided by DC shows Batman confronting his red masked foe in a gallery full of art depicting bodily mutilation. The villain -- whose name appears to be "Manray," judging from the previous issue -- taunts Jace with the same language that the Joker uses against Bruce Wayne and argues that both of them are fighting for the same cause. When Jace ignores Manray's words and throws a punch, the serial killer brandishes what looks like a spiked steaming iron on a chain, slashing Jace's face and knocking him to the ground.
Thus far, Manray appears to be responsible for the grisly murder of New York philanthropist Devlin Rubel, who was dismembered, crushed and hung up like a canvas in I Am Batman #6. Issue #7 revealed that Rubel was far from a saint, and secretly engaged in sex trafficking. Manray, who seems to fancy himself an avenging vigilante in the same vein as the Dark Knight, may have used Rubel's sins as an excuse to kill him if his passionate speech to Jace is any indication.
Thus far, I Am Batman's Jace Fox has mainly tackled street-level crime since moving to New York City with his mother and sisters in issue #6. Manray marks the first time the crimefighter has tackled a masked villain outside of last year's "Fear State" event in Gotham City, which saw Jace going up against agents of the peacekeeping company known as the Magistrate.
I Am Batman writer John Ridley previously said that moving Jace and his family to New York City gave him the chance to develop the DC's newest Dark Knight outside of the shadow of the Bat-Family: "We're taking Jace and we're moving him to a real space. We're setting a new and very specific tone for Jace in New York [to] have conversations about policing -- not just sociopolitical conversations, but, okay, a mask shows up in New York. What do we do? It's Batman, it's the DC Universe, but it's a little more real. Expect his own rogues, expect his own partners, expect his own dilemmas. Who is his Joker going to be?"
I Am Batman #8 comes from Ridley, Christian Duce, Rex Lokus and ALW's Troy Peteri, with cover art by Lokus and Stephen Segovia and variant cover art by Olivier Coipel, Alex Sinclair and Mateus Manhanni. The issue goes on sale on April 12 from DC.
Source: DC