Legendary horror filmmaker John Carpenter is set to write a new comic book about iconic Batman villain, The Joker.
DC Comics has announced the Halloween director will take part in their ‘Year of the Villain’ series by writing a one-shot comic about the Joker, with the comic set to be released on October 9. Illustrations will be handled by Philip Tan and Marc Deering.
Carpenter will be co-writing the comic with Anthony Burch, who last worked with Carpenter on Big Trouble In Little China: Old Man Jack, a one-off comic that tied into the director’s 1986 Kurt Russell-starring action classic.
“The Joker is the greatest villain in comics,” Carpenter, who is rumoured to be executive producing two new Halloween sequels as well as composing the new films’ music, said in a statement.
“This new comic puts The Joker on a mission to get his swagger back in a world gone bad by out-badding everyone else, proving that the greatest evil is always the one that leaves them laughing.”
DC Comics have taken a darker direction with the character in recent months. An upcoming film, Joker, will see Joaquin Phoenix play the smiling villain and it’s expected to be rooted more in horror than action, with the film the first R-rated live-action Batman movie.
Recently, the director of the movie said it wouldn’t follow “anything” from the comic books. In a move that Todd Phillips has said will likely upset fans, the writing team behind the film decided to abandon the story from the original DC Comics book series (1975-76) and instead create “the story of becoming Joker”.
“We didn’t follow anything from the comic-books, which people are gonna be mad about,” the writer-director told Empire in the magazine’s new issue, which hit shelves last Thursday (July 11).
“We just wrote our own version of where a guy like Joker might come from. That’s what was interesting to me. We’re not even doing Joker, but the story of becoming Joker. It’s about this man.”