Since the first couple of issues of Tony Daniel’s run on Detective Comics, Batman’s arch nemesis has been MIA. That all comes to a close in October when Scott Snyder and company bring The Joker back to the pages of Batman with the much hyped “Death of the Family.”

As per usual, Snyder and DC Comics hype this upcoming storyline as, “This is Joker as you’ve never seen him before.” Now, I don’t know if that’s true. I’ve seen a lot of Joker stories, and unless they plan on making him a woman’s rights activist in light of his previous mistakes with the ladies, I think that’s probably just hype. What’s not hype, though, is that this is truly Snyder’s chance to tell a Joker story in a way that he absolutely wants to. In the post, Snyder name checks The Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum, which are my least favorite contributions from the writers of those books, are indeed astonishing and impressive interpretations of The Joker as a character, which is what Snyder is trying to get across.

Continue reading for a full look at the promo art by Greg Capullo teased above.

Snyder is a mega-talented young writer, and with his previous work in horror and demented stories, I long to read this storyline. In the closing chapters of the Court of Owls story, I started to loose my faith, but this news is bringing me back around again. Simply put, I’m excited. I just hope they don’t get any bright ideas like killing Damian.

“The Death of the Family” is scheduled to start this October from the same Bat-team that brought us the Court of Owls. Snyder, Greg Capullo and Jonathan Glapion are shaping up to be one of the best teams working on Batman in recent years, and I expect them to keep up their stellar work throughout this story line.

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[Source: DC Comics]