Batman General Discussion

He’s a Batman who finally has a sense of humor & is ready to cut loose.

Of course it’s a bad sense of humor but it’s still a sense of humor.

Plus he’s very creative with his kills. Sicking a black kryptonite corrupted Superman & Superboy onto Lois Lane is a pretty gruesome death all things considered.

I kinda get it - he's like Batman but with Joker's craziness - or Joker with Batman's smarts and resources and preparedness.

he's a batman who has weaponized the fact that batman always wins.

And now I've realized there is literally no mention of what happened to Dawnbreaker or The Merciless in the tropes pages.

Anyone know for sure?

What about that time Wonder Woman beat him in a one on one fight? Does getting stood up on his own wedding count as losing?

I think the rest of the Dark Knights are locked up with Barbatos.

So i read Batman Grim Knight. Basically, Grim Knight is every bit the fascist,that certain people think regular Batman is. Also respect for James Gordon increased.

@ Deadpoolrocks: So he's become aware of DC's favoritism of him? God, no wonder he's a nightmarish loon

Plot twist: The Batman who Laugh's superior planning and tactical skills don't work on regular thugs and Gotham supervillains. Only on other Superheroes

Well he couldn't be prepared for Batman and the Joker's team up because nobody thought of it, so you may be right as there's no way he'd consider something so easily to fail to take him out, and thus would be unprepared.

While he's edgy, he's probably one of the few characters who can get away with it completely unrionically

He was born from Batman's nightmares so everything he's capable of & incapable is all from Bats himself.

So logically he would have no way to deal against a solution caused by his unnatural existence.

I think how The Batman who Laughs can get away with being so edgy, is that he's such a perky goth. I mean yeah he's the worst nightmares Batman has, killed everyone in his universe, and wants to do it again, but it doesn't mean he has to be a drag about it.

My comment was also a joke about the Power creep seep Batman has, like he can outmaneuver DC's meta humans, yet guys like Two-Face, Penguin, Ra's Al Ghul, Joker and Riddler can still outwit Batman. So logically The Batman Who Laughs must have this weakness too. I mean his comic didn't show him fighting his rogues, they were killed off during Joker's rampage, but one wonders if the Dark Multiverse deliberately engineered that so Bats could be successful.

First:

Second:

It's evil Batman. It's "Batman if the Joker got his wish." Plenty of people have wanted to see that so they love it.

I think they squandered TBWL by not having him interact with the Joker more. That's the fun part of this - Joker getting to see the fruit of his labors, said fruit criticizing him for being small-minded. But of course the story pivots so that every other person will catch a fleeting glimpse of TBWL. Combined with the fact that I genuinely have no idea what's going on in this storyline or why anybody is doing any of this besides being evil/zealous pricks - it's led to a dissatisfying storyline.

Grim Knight/Punisher!Batman's origin was the least interesting out of all of them. I've no idea why TBWL felt the need to save this guy for last.

This concept could work extremely well. Though, TBWL's 1st costume that looked "Joker-rized" was better than this ghoulish one he sticks to now.

Edited by Soble on Mar 19th 2019 at 9:55:41 AM

Eh I'm a fan of the current "Cenobite" look - its wonderfully creepy and really cements the idea this is a Batman from a perverse, cruel hellscape made of fears and nightmares.

"We have such sights to show you, Batman."

Speaking of villains we (by which I mean I) don't get the love for...

... am I the only one who outright loathes Ra's al Ghul and thinks he has no business being a Batman villain? I find I can't muster even grudging respect for him anymore; he is, to me, the epitome of a Villain Sue, and his stories a miserably misguided attempt to kitbash Batman with a guy who is, in many respects, Batman's complete antithesis.

(I won't write off Denny O'Neil altogether - he's got way too many Ra's-free stories to his name for me to do that - but it still rankles me that Ra's remains his biggest legacy.)

Edited by Rubber_Lotus on Mar 19th 2019 at 1:46:40 PM

Agreed, The Batman Who Laughs should interact with the Joker more. Though there was a story where Luthor captured TBWL and Joker was so pissed and terrified at what TBWL could do, he outright quits the Legion. It's hard to tell what Joker exactly thinks of TBWL, In Dark Nights Metal, Joker doesn't seem to think too highly of him and mockingly refers to him as The Batman who talks, but in Legion of Doom and the new TBWL mini, he's terrified of what he can do, that the Joker resorts to quitting the Legion, and risks his life by shooting at his own heart to release a toxin to corrupt regular Batman.

Speaking of Villains, i like Hugo Strange, he's such an underrated villain and utterly ruined by adaptations. He was Batman's first arch-enemy, was designed to be the Moriarty to Bat's Sherlock Holmes, most of the tropes that made Joker, Scarecrow, and Riddler so popular were from him, and he actually predated Doc Ock, in impersonating the main hero. Dennis O'Neil laid the groundwork for the dark Batman again despite what Frank Miller would have you believe, and his run was what inspired B:TAS the most.

I don’t necessarily hate Ra’s, but whenever he shows up I kinda roll my eyes. I can’t put my finger on why, but he just never works for me. He feels more like someone Richard Dragon would fight, not Batman.

I also think part of my issue with TBWL is that I don’t like the modern incarnation of Joker. I don’t find him funny, and since he’s not funny, I don’t find him creepy when he does terrible things. He’s just a random killer clown. But when I read stuff from the 80s and 90s, I do enjoy him. So mixing Batman with that modern idea of Joker is just nothing to me. I find it boring.

tbh, I still maintain that Two Face should be Bruce’s primary arch enemy. He’s a much better foil, in several areas.

Just being a foil to our hero is not enough to be the arch-enemy, it's how personal they make things, and that's why Joker is no 1 while Two Face is fittingly no 2. And also the hatred between the two has to be more mutual, Batman sees Joker as a murderous psychopath that needs to be locked up, but with Two Face, Batman sees him as his greatest failure. It's regret that fuels Batman's interactions with Harvey, not hate. Two Face has goals outside of Batman, unlike Joker who is obsessed with torturing the Bat and their games. Personally, i like the idea of Two Face being a vigilante mob boss, like how Tell Tale and Long Halloween and it's sequels portrayed him.

Interestingly, while he achieved acclaim for writing the Super-Family and Supersons, Peter Tomasi actually isn't a fan of Bruce and Selina as a couple, he confirmed this today at C2E2's 80th Anniversary Panel

He likened it to Sam and Dianne in Cheers.

Bats has plenty of other love interests, like Wonder Woman, or Zatanna, who aren't Supervillains. But will never happen.

Doesn't Tomasi 'ship Bruce and Talia anyway? He did try to remove a good percentage of what drove Talia mad in the Son of Batman title.

Diana and Zatanna will never be viable love interests for Bruce because they don't belong to the Batman franchise.

Yeah, it never will. But that won't stop DC from teasing it and then pulling the rug beneath us. Still i can enjoy Bruce's dynamic with either one of them, Zatanna a little more, for me personally. The Cat and mouse game with Selina can get bothersome.

Mood. I actually think this is the one thing I agree with Tomasi on, actually.

I always saw Bruce and Selina as ships that passed in the night, sort of. They had several chances to make it happen (and on Earth 2, they did), but neither one could commit, and now it’s too late. They’re different people, and their lifestyles aren’t compatible anymore. So Selina moves on, and has relationships with Eiko or Slam, and Bruce ends up trying to find someone else as well.

And there are so many great pairings for Bruce, too. Aside from the obvious (Talia, Diana, Zatanna), he’s been with people like Vesper Fairchild, Julie Madison, Vicki Vale, Sasha Bordeaux... And they’re all interesting paths. Hell, I’d love to see him and Dr October as a thing, personally.

But I’d never want either Bruce or Selina to end up with someone definitively. They aren’t on that same level of Lois and Clark to me.

I have never understood the Bruce/Talia ship. Selina is one thing but Talia is a frigging terrorist.

Well, you know that weird appeal of the Dark Chick? as in sexy evil female on the bad guys team but has a soft spot for the hero and by proxy us? To be fair, Talia isn't exactly on the level of her dad and has opposed his plans on RARE occasions, which is part of why Bats can like her, but nowadays Talia is a terrorist and the ship has died, and Talia is a deadbeat mom. And as fandoms show, both males and females can forgive a villain if they are hot enough, look at Reylo from Star wars or well, the Bat Fandom.