Joker is done with America. Now he’s heading to Japan, and he’s getting his own manga to document the trip.
DC and Kodansha have officially announced a brand new Joker manga, and the premise alone is enough to make fans stop scrolling. The Clown Prince of Crime, fed up with the United States, packs up and relocates to Japan in search of fresh chaos. It’s absurd, it’s unexpected, and it might be exactly the kind of Joker story nobody knew they needed.
What Is Machibura JOKER and When Does It Start?
The new manga is titled Machibura JOKER, which translates to Joker Walking Around Town, and will launch in Kodansha’s Morning magazine on July 2, 2026. Masa Ichikawa is drawing the manga, with DC credited for the character and supervision, and international publishing rights agency Fortuna credited for cooperation.
The story begins when Gotham’s charismatic villain grows fed up with life in the United States, specifically citing successive price hikes, and decides to look for a new base of operations in Japan. But before he plants any flags, the Joker opts to wander: to walk around Japan, take in the streets, and presumably cause the kind of unpredictable disruption only he can manage.
That setup is deliberately low-stakes by Joker standards. No Batman. No Gotham. No elaborate doomsday plot. Just the most dangerous man in DC wandering through Japan on what amounts to a villain’s gap year. The tonal shift from his usual appearances is the whole point, and it opens up storytelling possibilities that a traditional DC comic never could.
How This Fits Into DC and Kodansha’s Bigger Partnership
This is not the first time DC and Kodansha have teamed up, and the track record makes Machibura JOKER worth paying attention to. This will be the fourth collaboration between Kodansha and DC.
Batman: Justice Buster by Eiichi Shimizu and Tomohiro Shimoguchi was released in December 2020, followed by Wanope Joker (Joker: The One-Man Operation) by Satoshi Miyakawa and Keisuke Goto in January 2021, and Superman vs. Meshi (Superman Dining Alone) by Miyakawa and Kai Kitagō in Kodansha’s Evening magazine in June 2021.
Each of those titles took a DC character and reframed them through a distinctly Japanese lens, with wildly different results. Superman vs. Meshi turned the Man of Steel into a foodie quietly sampling Japanese cuisine between missions. Joker: One Operation Joker put the villain in the role of a single father raising a de-aged baby Batman. The common thread is creative freedom, and Machibura JOKER looks to push that further than any of its predecessors.
Past DC and Morning manga collaborations have been published in English by DC Comics, so an English edition or license for Machibura JOKER is a reasonable expectation, though no announcement has been made yet.
For Western fans, the timing also lands well. DC Studios and Warner Bros. Animation separately announced the Joker: Laugh Riot anime at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, directed by Yasuhiro Aoki at Sola Entertainment. Between the anime and now Machibura JOKER, DC is clearly leaning into Japanese creative partnerships as a meaningful part of its wider content strategy.
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