Deciphering the The Joker Presents: A Puzzlebox

You can call the Joker a lot of things—psychopathic, murderous, disturbed, obsessed, anarchic, maybe even genuinely funny. But one thing no one would call him, regardless of what side of the law you may fall on, is dependable. The Joker will double-cross his own partners on a whim, let alone anyone trying to stop him. He’s stabbed Harley Quinn in the back, played the Legion of Doom for fools and shown that he can’t even be trusted not to turn on himself (in last year’s Batman: Three Jokers). You can’t take the Joker at his word, not even when it comes to his own history. As he’s famously said, if he’s going to have a past, he prefers “it to be multiple choice.”

Yet, when it comes to solving one of the strangest, most perplexing mysteries to ever hit Gotham, the Joker’s word is about all that you have.

The Joker Presents: A Puzzlebox is a comic swarming with questions, and not just about the book’s story, but about the nature of the project itself. What exactly is this unique digital first tale that features a dream team of fabulous artists, including Jesús Merino, Joshua Hixon, Keron Grant, Dani, Vanesa Del Rey, Domo Stanton, Juni Ba and more? Is there actual puzzle-solving involved? Now that the first chapter is available digitally—in two uniquely different versions, no less—we figured we’d go directly to the guy who has the answers, writer Matthew Rosenberg, to see what we can find out.


To read the full interview and learn what makes The Puzzlebox tick, head on over to DC Comics!


Have you started solving the Puzzle? :jigsaw: Let us know in the comments below! :point_down:

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Okay so let’s start with what we know is true.

  • Pages 12-18 have no lies whatsoever. The villains were there what they were doing is the real question.

  • On page 16 while Joker is walking out Bane refers to Joker as a ‘Traitor’. This could mean several things. 1. The villains were actually working together, even though Joker is an unreliable narrator it does somewhat line up. 2. The other possibility is that Bane sided with Joker above the other villains. This could be backed up by the villains’ negative reactions on page 17.

  • The minor details might not match up but this is what definitely happened in this issue: The villains did show up to Joker’s ‘Home’ as I already pointed out. There was also a cake due to the fact that in page 5 we see Batman kicking the cake onto Joker and in the actual reality of the story we see that the red frosting is still on him. Most likely Joker was celebrating his most likely not Birthday. Batman, Nightwing and Batgirl barge in and defeat all of the villains while the police show up a little while later. All of the villains get put in jail and Joker is the only one willing to talk.

Okay, so the biggest reveal is the is the fat that someone might have killed the Riddler. On page 6 we saw Joker with a piece of the Riddler’s costume, but if we look on the second panel of page 5, we can see in the background how the Joker got the piece. It was on one of the crates. I’m just going to say it, the Joker was telling the truth, he did not kill the Riddler. Even though I think he didn’t kill The Riddler, I feel like the murder did have something to do with him.

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Without giving anything away, I’ve read the book, it’s very interesting storytelling. I’m looking forward to more puzzle story by The Joker.:slightly_smiling_face:

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