WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen #3, by James Tynion IV, Steve Epting, Javier Hernandez, Nick Filardi and Travis Lanham, on sale now.
When searching for reason in the DC Universe, The Joker is just about the last person anyone would go to. He's an agent of chaos, the supreme nihilist laughing at the absurdity of the universe. So it's a sign of just how out of hand things have gotten that James Tynion IV has positioned The Clown Prince of Crime as the champion of reason and order by having him voice a pretty solid criticism against the direction of DC's stories.
Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen #3 sees Lex Luthor rescued from the hands of the recently infected heroes at the Hall of Justice by none other than the Joker himself. After teleporting Lex out of the Hall, Joker takes them to a run-down amusement park he's turned into a base of operations. The Joker and Lex get to talking, and the Joker expresses his disdain for The Batman Who Laughs. Joker views the Dark Multiverse's Bruce Wayne as an abomination flying in the face of who the characters are supposed to be and what they are supposed to be doing.
If this seems a little meta, that's because it is. It's not even veiled, like Grant Morrison's similar critiques were in Green Lantern. Channeling Deadpool, Joker shatters the fourth wall by pointing out to Lex their stories don't work when they're this big. Joker points out Apex Lex is a bit over the top for the man who famously opposed Superman's status as an alien, and calls out the ever-escalating scale of DC's current publications.
As weird as it may sound, Joker has a point. The constant reality threatening crises may indeed be harming DC's stories. It seems the Joker is essentially expressing a sense of event fatigue, and one that is common in the most recent era of comics from both major publishers. At the moment DC seems to be leaning more heavily into event focused storytelling, but this isn't a DC-specific issue. Other major publishers are pushing big, status quo changing events far too often, leading to a dearth of stores where it seems the synopsis of every issue could be summed up by saying, "Things just took a turn for the worse."
This is neither a condemnation of big crossover events, nor is the statement coming from the Joker. Instead, it's an attempt to preserve their narrative weight. Let Batman be a detective nine months out of the year and then let him dabble as a cosmic warrior for the remaining three. The Joker is saying big events should be the exception and not the norm. When the perspective gets too big we lose focus on the characters who brought us to the books in the first place.