While the Hollywood version of Batman is currently in limbo—we don't know when he will return, or who will be playing him—the comic book version of Bruce Wayne is moving on with his life. In fact, he's about to take what you might call A Big Step: he's getting married, to Selina Kyle, better known as Catwoman. The Bat-Cat nuptials are the work of Tom King, a writer with a backstory at least as interesting as the characters he writes, having served as a CIA officer in Iraq.. For the past two years, King has been writing a Batman story quite unlike any other in recent memory, and it's all building to the wedding in this summer's Batman #50. But like any wedding, there's a million things to take care of first: namely invitations.

This is the heart of King's kick-off to the upcoming wedding in today's special sampler comic DC Nation #0 (which you can download for free here) which features an 8-page story by King with wonderful art by Clay Mann and Jordie Bellaire. In it, the Joker, having learned of Batman's pending marriage to Catwoman, wonders where his invitation is. So, like any totally sane person who dresses like a clown and murders people, he visits a random guy named Roger, and forces him to wait by the mailbox for his invite that's definitely coming. This is, like a lot of things in comics, straight-up bananas—but also, full of surprising depth once you accept the absurdity of it all. To that end, GQ spoke to Tom King about what it's like to plan a superhero wedding, and how giving a miserable dude like Batman happiness might be the worst thing you can do to him.

GQ: How did you come up with this idea about the Joker wanting a wedding invite?

Tom King: The idea was, what would happen if Joker found out about the wedding. I just like the idea that he just thinks he's gonna get an invitation. That just makes no sense! But nothing has to make sense with the Joker. So if they gave him an invitation, where would they send it? And he's like, "Oh, just some random dude's house." You follow the Joker's un-logic, and it leads you to the story.

How does the Joker exist in your head? How do you use a character that's been done endlessly?

He exists in two ways in my head. He's unlike any other character in fiction—I come from novels, and the entire idea of writing is about balancing motivations.The Joker is not like that. He doesn't have motivation. You could write a twelve issue series where he's like, "I'm gonna get the Holy Grail" and the whole time he's like John Wayne in The Searchers and is just obsessed with the Holy Grail and then he gets there and finds the Holy Grail and just walks away. It makes no difference to him, whether he succeeds or doesn't succeed.

The second thing is, in my version of the Joker, the way I like to view it, I kind of think it's all an act? I like to think he's sane underneath it all. I put this in [a previous story] The War of Jokes and Riddles. The Riddler sort of figures him out: "You keep saying you know, this trauma and that trauma and whatever, but I just think you're a normal person who's just trying to be crazy." So I combine the two.