WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Batman #106, by James Tynion IV, Jorge Jimenez, Tomeu Morey and Clayton Cowles, on sale now.
The Joker is just one of the many Batman villains who have a tenuous relationship with sanity, a tradition continued by his newest enemy, a group called the Unsanity Collective. First appearing in Batman #106, this new group is part of a movement to reform Gotham in response to the madness gripping the city.
In a bizarre twist, this organization appears to have come to a conclusion about the state of the world similar to one Joker ascribed to in Grant Morrison and Dave McKean’s graphic novel Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth. While Joker’s realization was the root of his madness, the Unsanity Collective is trying to build an entire ideology around it.
Click the button below to start this article in quick view.
Led by a man calling himself Master Wyze, the Unsanity Collective has been robbing the owners and CEOs of major media corporations. After each burglary, Wyze broadcasts messages about the group’s goals and beliefs. he claims that Gotham has succumbed to the madness once housed in Arkham and the only way to deal with it is to “reject the past and embrace a new kind of sanity.”
This echoes what was said in the Arkham Asylum graphic novel about the Joker’s mental state, where one of the psychotherapists at Arkham stated that Joker may not actually be insane, but rather possessed of a type of super-sanity that reinvents his mental state anew each day to adapt to the madness of the world.
Unlike the Joker, the Unsanity Collective’s members are not people that might benefit from institutionalization, nor are they a group of common criminals. Rather, they are idealists genuinely convinced they can convert others and improve the world. As Batman pursues them in the wake of their art theft, one of their members reminds the others that the Dark Knight is not an enemy, but “part of what’s broken in [Gotham],” and that he will soon see eye-to-eye with them. By targeting rich media executives, they are responding to the insanity of economic inequality and widespread misinformation that have plagued Gotham for years.
In Joker War, the Clown Prince offered similar commentary about the insanity of Gotham’s economic state and recruited others to join him in lashing out against it. The Unsanity Collective do not think such madness can be treated with the old “sane” attitudes of the past, nor the insane extremes measures taken by Arkham’s inmates. While they have come to the same conclusions as Joker, they are advocating for something new which they have labeled “Unsanity.” Whether Batman will agree with them or not is yet to be seen.
About The Author
