WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Dark Knights: Death Metal: Rise of the New God #1 by James Tynion IV, Jesus Merino, Vicente Cifuentes, and Ulises Arreola, on sale now.
The Joker has been unusually silent during the events of Dark Nights: Death Metal. In Death Metal: Rise of the New God #1, the Clown Prince of Crime is rotting away in Themyscira, which has been transformed into a twisted version of a prison that holds all the villains who refused to defect to The Batman Who Laugh's new world order. But even being held in Hellscape can’t break the Joker, who greets a new powerful character with his trademarked, flippant manner.
In Death Metal: Rise of the New God #1, the Darkest Knight -- the final form of the villain formerly known as the Batman Who Laughs -- has siphoned off the crisis energy that was intended for Perpetua and has become god-like. As the two hugely powerful titans are locked in a deadly fight -- the winner of which will reshape the Multiverse to their own twisted vision -- a powerful new character called the Chronicler, is introduced.
The Chronicler, who debuts in Death Metal: Rise of the New God #1, comes from the Omniverse to record dying multiverses within his Codex Omniversa. For countless eons, Chronicler has recorded the histories of trillions of Multiverses that have perished, and he's here to record the death of this Multiverse. Chronicler works for The Source and is one of the most powerful beings in existence. He has the knowledge of those trillions of dead Multiverses as well as telepathy, immortality, can resurrect other beings, can travel inter-dimensionally between the Overvoid and various Multiverses, and is able to incinerate others with the mere wave of his hand.
To complete his current mission of recording this dying Multiverse, Chronicler arrives in Hellscape where he encounters The Joker. The no-nonsense Chronicler approaches the Clown Prince of Crime, grabs him by the throat, and asks him if he's the reason why he was drawn to Hellscape. After a pause, the Chronicler corrects himself. "No, you are cosmically insignificant. A small nuisance on your world." Not one to be insulted, The Joker asks the Chronicler who he is, and when he gets no answer says, "Oh, I've got it. You must be the Batman Who Stuck His Head in the Oven," referring to his flaming head.
The Joker's attitude here shows that he's fed up with the Dark Multiverse, the Batman Who Laughs, and the battle that has been raging on. The Joker was put in his Hell prison cell because he wouldn't submit to The Batman Who Laughs, and now he and the others in Hellscape have all but been forgotten. But even in this predicament, The Joker is never one to back down from an insult.