Batman Incorporated is a 2022 comic book series published by DC Comics. The series is written by Ed Brisson with art by John Timms and Rex Lokus.
While named after a similar series from Grant Morrison's run on Batman, the comic is actually a spin-off of James Tynion IV's run on the main Batman series.
In a bid to prove that he's not just an unhinged psychopath with delusions of one-upping Batman, Ghost-Maker has taken over Batman Incorporated, expanding its ranks and its reach. However, someone is targeting all of his mentors, and in the ensuing search, his new partners are being exposed to his old secrets.
Batman Incorporated (2022) provides examples of:
- Affirmative Action Girl: Beryl Hutchinson serves as the modern Knight, continuing the tradition of her late friend Cyril Sheldrake.
- Alliterative Name:
- One of the victims in the first arc is named Tommy Tivane.
- Phantom-One's parents had the codenames Mister and Missus Menace.
- Among the members of Joker Incorporated is Corvus Cawl.
- Apologetic Attacker: Neither Hollow nor Fallen nor Fissure particularly want to hurt the Batmen, but they are very eager to kill their targets and the Batmen are all in their way.
- Asshole Victim:
- Nearly all of the targeted experts in the first arc have criminal pasts, some of them quite heinous; Dr. Lentz happened to be in the middle of creating chemical weapons when he was murdered.
- In the "Joker Incorporated" arc, The Joker remotely murders the psychotic Tap Dance Man while he's preparing to gun down a room full of civilians, just to demonstrate to Ghost-Maker that each member of Joker Incorporated has a kill-switch in case any of the Batmen try to take them in non-lethally.
- Bad Boss:
- Among the conspirators against Ghost-Maker is Phantom-One, his former sidekick, who tells Clownhunter about how Ghost-Maker killed his parents, adopted him under a false name, and forced him into two years of training in isolation, intending to turn him into the "Better-Robin".
- The Joker has rigged all of his new "Joker Incorporated" associates with kill switches so that if the Batmen fail to kill them within an hour or if they try to take down the clowns non-lethally or remove the hostages from their traps, the kill switches will go off, killing everyone within a one-block radius (and since it's The Joker, some of the kill switches might take out everyone within a one-kilometer radius. Naturally, none of his associates know this; Tap Dance Man learns it the hard way when the Joker triggers his kill switch in order to demonstrate it to Ghost-Maker.
- Bald Head of Toughness: Avery Oblonsky, the former spy, is a bald woman without any actual powers, but she's able to hold her own against both Knight and Wingman, who are both armored. She's also the only target who manages to escape from the Lex-Bats.
- The Big Guy:
- New recruit Grey Wolf is a Chechen man who was transformed by Lex Luthor's experiments into a hulking wolf-man.
- Joker Incorporated has Dai Laffyn, an enormous Welshman who easily trounces both Grey Wolf and the Knight.
- Broken Pedestal: Clownhunter ends the first arc with considerably less respect for Ghost-Maker than he had at the outset, having learned what Ghost-Maker does to sidekicks who don't live up to his absurd standards. He goes so far as to get rid of the costume Ghost-Maker gave him, returning to his original, homemade costume.
- Call-Back: In issue 11, a flashback shows that Dusty Bronco was a customer of Sam Black Elk, one of Man-of-Bats' enemies from the original Batman Incorporated run.
- Career-Ending Injury: Dusty Bronco's career as a rodeo clown was ruined after Man-of-Bats beat him so badly that he was laid up for six months.
- Conveniently an Orphan: Phantom-One, Ghost-Maker's original partner, was left an orphan after Ghost-Maker murdered his supervillain parents. This suited Ghost-Maker's purposes just fine, as he'd recently decided to take on a sidekick to prove that he was a better mentor than Batman (who had just lost Jason Todd.)
- Crusading Widow: The Fallen lost her husband and children in an attack on her homeland caused by information sold by Avery Oblonsky, and thus has sworn to kill her in revenge.
- Even Evil Has Standards: While the assassins are fully prepared to kill their targets, they don't kill the Batmen for interfering with them.
- Hand Blast: Oryx appears to have the power to blast people with her hands.
- Hypocrite: While Ghost-Maker's whole brand is built around killing people for the greater good, he has consistently spared those who provided him with training, even if their crimes were worse than those of the people he'd killed. When confronted by Phantom-One about this, Ghost-Maker concedes the point, admitting that he looked the other way on his mentors' crimes because he cared more about being better than Batman.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: In the "Joker Incorporated" arc, Wingman takes a sword through the chest from Corvus Cawl.
- It's Personal:
- In the first arc, several of the assassins have a beef with their respective targets; Fissure killed Netz because his poisons killed hundreds of people in his country of Molinia, Fallen is after Avery Oblansky because she sold information that led to an attack on her homeland of Bhutran, Hollow killed Frank Oates because he imprisoned and murdered Hollow's lover, Oryx wiped out the Norwegian death cult that murdered her brother, and Black Mist murdered Tommy Tivane because he was the one who put her in a wheelchair all those years ago.
- In "Joker Incorporated", Dusty Bronco has a personal beef with Man-of-Bats and Red Raven - they severely injured him during a drug bust and ruined his career as a rodeo clown.
- Joker Immunity: Completely subverted, ironically enough, with the members of Joker Incorporated, who've all been set up to die thanks to the Joker's machinations.
- Let's You and Him Fight: In "Joker Incorporated", when Ghost-Maker, Bat-Man, and El Gaucho track down Alpaca, she threatens to kill all of her hostages unless Ghost-Maker and Bat-Man fight to the death.
- Not Me This Time: Ghost-Maker's attempts to save his mentors are hampered by the fact that he has a history of killing some of them, like the assassin Ouahbi or the sniper Swiss Mark, so they are naturally all wary when his new subordinates suddenly show up claiming that they are in danger.
- Only Known By His Nickname: In flashbacks, all mentions of Phantom-One's real name are conspicuously blacked out.
- Inverted with Jiro Osamu, who has gotten tired of being called "Batman Japan" but can't decide on a new codename, and thus just has everyone call him by his first name for convenience.
- Punny Name: The members of Joker Incorporated include French villain Charles de Ghoul and Welsh villain Dai Laffyn.
- Practically Joker: "Joker Incorporated" introduces a whole company of clown-themed supervillains who all work for the Joker.
- Red Shirt Army: None of the members of Joker Incorporated are guaranteed to survive their introductory arc.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: In the second arc, someone stole something from Professor Pyg, and he and his Dollotrons have gone on a rampage to retrieve it. Ghost-Maker initially intends to sit it out, because Pyg's only been targeting other supervillains, but eventually decides to put the company on the case because Batman would probably want them to stop Pyg from killing anyone.
- Sadistic Choice: In the "Joker Incorporated" arc, the Joker has rigged all of his new associates with kill switches that will activate and kill everyone within range if any of the Batmen try to take the clowns down non-lethally, and thus they have a choice between either killing the clowns (and betraying Batman's "no-killing" rule) or allowing large numbers of hostages to die.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After Knight and Grey Wolf track down Dai Laffyn, he reveals that he's removed the Joker's kill switch from his body because he has no intention of dying so soon after breaking out of prison, but he also refuses to help them find the hostages that he took, telling them that if they're really Batmen, they ought to be able to figure that out for themselves.
- Smurfette Principle:
- At the start of the series, Beryl Hutchinson, the modern Knight, is the sole remaining woman at Batman, Inc. In the first issue, she practically begs female Irish vigilante Black Mist to join, just so that she won't be the only woman.
- Subverted with the opposing team, which has three - Fallen, Oryx, and Black Mist.
- Played straight with Joker Incorporated, where Alpaca is the only female member.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Most of the veteran members of Batman, Inc. are less than thrilled about having to work with Ghost-Maker, particularly when they find out what kind of people he trained under. El Gaucho in particular has been agitating to take over, as he has more seniority and finds it insulting having to take orders from someone who's only been in the game for a few years.
- After the revelations of the first arc, Clownhunter refuses to work with Ghost-Maker directly, instead assigning himself to work with Red Raven and Jiro.
- Third-Person Person: Don Miguel, Ghost-Maker's former driving mentor, likes to talk about Don Miguel in the third person.
- Training from Hell: Many of Ghost-Maker's tutors offered this as their method of instruction. One of them, the trap expert Frank Oates, openly boasts about his proficiency with creating traps and inflicting torture.
