On Friday, The Dark Knight Rises, the latest and last Batman film in Christopher Nolan’s epic trilogy, will finally be upon us. So, it’s natural for loads of sites to provide you with “5 Batman Comics To Get You Pumped For The Dark Knight Rises!” But where we differ is, we’re taking a more scholarly approach to these Batman comics. We’ve already talked about The Evolution Of Batman In Popular Culture and given you Batman 101: A Beginner’s Guide To The Dark Knight, which gave you several great places to start reading Batman comics that aren’t heavily drenched in continuity and are some of the more simple stories that The Dark Knight has to offer.

With Batman 202: Intermediate Reading For The Caped Crusader, however, we’re taking a look at some more books that offer a little bit more than just a basic starting point. These books are all great, but they’re also a little more complicated than I would suggest just starting off. This list is here to provide you with the next step into becoming a Batman scholar, and requires a little more of the reader.

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.

Comixology announced on Saturday that they would be offering a 3-day sale over April Fool’s weekend where the digital versions of several different Batman-related comic books featuring the horrible and sometimes hilarious antics of The Clown Prince of Crime, The Joker, would be discounted to only $.99 each.

The Joker is a character that’s probably on par in popularity as Batman and Superman, and he’s absolutely the most iconic villain from comics, and that’s with good reason. The Joker has been all over the map in his tenure as a super villain from murdering people with laughing, or tuberculosis gas depending on your interpretation, to stealing diamonds, to trying to copyright a fish, to becoming a detective in the wake of Bruce Wayne’s apparent death after he reformed himself into a total psychopath. Seriously, the Joker’s done it all, and that’s one of the reasons comic book fans love him so much. But there’s one thing to remember, he’s killed a lot of people. So while this weekend is the weekend for pranksters, let’s hope no one you know starts pranking anyone in the way the Joker would. Seriously.

Anyway, now that the disclaimer’s out of the way, let’s get to what Comixology is actually offering you in this deal, shall we?

Jerry Robinson, comics rights activist and creator of Batman villain The Joker, passed away in his sleep on Wednesday night at the age of 89 years old.

I hate writing articles like this, not only because it means that a creator whose work mattered to me as a reader and not only because he was a man for whom I have the utmost respect, but also because it’s impossible for me to do this man justice with anything I say about him. I cannot stress enough the importance of the creation of a character like The Joker and what kind of influence that has had on the comic book industry.

All right, so you guys know I like Batman, right? That’s not really a secret that I’m trying to hide. Another thing that I don’t really like to hide is cool art related to the character. And Austin, TX-based artist Xero has come to the task of putting together a pretty rad group of art prints of some of the best of Batman’s rogues gallery.

In a collection that the artist calls “Gotham’s Most Wanted,” Xero takes his/her own style on various villains on the caped vigilante. In this set we see Xero’s unique perspective on the heavy hitters such as Catwoman, Scarecrow, Two-Face, Killer Croc, Poison Ivy and, of course, The Joker.