The New Batman Adventures - "Joker's Millions"

“If I don’t pay up, I’ll go to jail for tax evasion! I’m crazy enough to take on Batman, but the IRS? No, thank you!”

The Joker (Mark Hamill) is flat broke. Struggling to make ends meet by taking on impossible jobs, Joker loses his Harley Quinn when a heist goes wrong. But a letter arrives for him, revealing that Joker has inherited $250 million from an old mob rival, the late King Barlowe (Allan Rich). With his financial woes behind him, Joker launches into a life of extravagance – until the tax collectors show up.

I can only beat the drum for Paul Dini so often before I feel myself becoming stale, and I think the declaration that I’ve said it all has itself become a wearied refrain. “Joker’s Millions” is yet another amazing episode from Dini, who turns in yet another first-rate Joker story, which barely involves Batman but nevertheless gives an immersive portrait of the sort of city that needs him. (It’s worth noting that Batman doesn’t even speak for nearly sixteen minutes of a twenty-one minute episode.) The finest writer is once more paired with his finest star, as Mark Hamill gives an uproariously funny performance with every line (“Haha! Let the good times roll!”). His ostensible muse, Arleen Sorkin, is in rare form as Harley, fuming at her boss and lover for abandoning her before hatching a harebrained scheme to escape Arkham and give him what-for.

What follows over the course of the episode is a series of well-crafted jokes that never miss their mark. From the myriad visual gags indicating Joker’s abject poverty (a wilting acid flower, a getaway car that stalls when the tank runs dry) to a montage of all the ways Joker (mis)spends his newfound inheritance, Dini has found the funny bone with surgical precision. Even the minute detail that Joker has found lodging in a flophouse under the alias “Mr. Kerr” is hysterical, since the landlady either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care that her tenant is an easily recognizable fugitive. 

“Joker’s Millions” is one of those episodes that doesn’t misfire (even Joker’s redesign is barely noticeable, considering what a treat the rest of the episode is), so rather than run down every delight one at a time, let’s turn our attention to another redesign. The Penguin makes his debut as owner of the Iceberg Lounge, an invention of the comics in 1995, and it’s really the best version of The Penguin, who’s always maintained a pretension of sophistication and legitimacy. Gone is the DeVito-inspired birdman, replaced with what Bruce Timm has described as a “nineteenth-century gentleman” by way of the Jack Burnley comics (Burnley made Penguin stouter than his initial appearances). Setting Joker’s ersatz reform amid Penguin’s larcenous nightclub is a giddy continuation of Dini’s topsy-turvy eye on Gotham – two criminals pretending to be otherwise, in plain view of those who know better.

Like a surprising number of great episodes, Batman and his crew don’t really feature in the episode, popping in to do a bit of action but otherwise leaving the focus on Joker and his own self-made fall from (temporary) grace. Dini’s best episodes remind us that crime doesn’t pay (and in this episode, boy doesn’t it) and that villainy always defeats itself with the most punishing irony, but it’s equally viable to see in these episodes the infectious fun that tempts so many to the dark side. Joker’s clearly having a ball, even as his fortunes – literal and figurative – roil beneath him. And Dini is too, which is a sure way to bring the audience along for one of his best episodes.

Original Air Date: February 21, 1998

Writer: Paul Dini

Director: Dan Riba

Villains: The Joker (Mark Hamill), Harley Quinn (Arleen Sorkin), and The Penguin (Paul Williams)

Next episode: “Growing Pains,” in which Robin gets a little muddy.

🦇For the full list of The New Batman Adventures reviews, click here.🦇