New 52 Batman: Full Story

what's going on guys this is Rob if you guys enjoy my content make sure you hit the subscribe button and make sure you hit that little bell so you never miss out on my sexy voice members of the Rob core what is up guys I'm sure a lot of you guys are just like quarter pals what quarter miles okay so here is the deal here's the explanation on this I get questions all the time I want to read Batman where do I start I want to read Superman what do I start Wonder Woman Justice League for whatever reason I don't understand cyborg you know but whatever the case may be if people are just like I'm interested in this character and or team and I want to know where to start or will you make a video on this now a lot of you guys have said that my upload schedule seemed kind of confusing that I was covering too many series and it was hard to keep track and that's true that was a legitimate complaint we had DC we birth and then green lantern we had only while different Marvel and then classic spider-man superior spider-man that kind of thing and so I figured why I'd go ahead and do I've always tried to hold off from doing this since I try to maintain some measure of expectation on when certain videos are gonna be out but what we're gonna do is we're gonna basically update my video schedule we're gonna switch things around so in the description you will find an updated video schedule where basically every day has its own video style so there is a day for the new 52 which are all the stories that lead into DC rebirth there is a day for classic Marvel basically everything before Secret Wars there is a day for all-new all-different marvel everything after Secret Wars there is a day for Geoff Johns Green Lantern run it'll take us forever to finish there's a day for indie comics and all that kind of good stuff in a day for how to kill superheroes everything that you need will be in that schedule so those of you guys who only care about classic Marvel will only find classic Marvel on the classic Marvel days those are the guys who only care about DC rebirth so on and so forth that kind of thing for all the video styles that are listed below this is really just kind of testing the waters just really kind of seeing how you guys respond to this having said that for those of you guys who were new to DC Comics the new 52 leads into DC rebirth so everything labeled new 52 will be before DC rebirth now I have playlists on Batman and stuff like that what we're gonna do is we're gonna take these these new 52 videos and we're gonna put them before all the DC rebirth stuff that way you can watch the playlist in chronological order and not have to worry about anything I'll take care of all the organization on this side so all you have to do is just click the video and watch and you don't have to try to figure out the viewing order or anything along those lines so the fact remains here new 52 Batman quarter valves it's the best Batman story there was dare I say the best thing coming out of DC rebirth technically guess I guess the best thing leading into DC rebirth there we go Scott Snyder as the guy who was writing this story alongside Gregor Pula they did not originate her at least Scott Snyder did not originate on Batman with court of owls in fact he wrote a story before the new 52 called Batman Black Mirror I was not wildly partial to it but Scott Snyder and Greta Pulos run on Batman in the new 52 is critically acclaimed people absolutely love it there was one time I went to go see scott Snyder at New York Comic Con it was right at the end of his run on Batman in game or something like that and the line was out the door and around the building it was crazy how long long it was to see him it was one of the nuttiest things that I've ever seen the fact remains here with regards to quarter Valens getting into the story proper because I'm sure a lot of you guys are just like get to the story man with regards to court of owls this is cool because what it initially shows us is just Batman being Batman right because keep in mind this was the introduction of a lot of people to Batman comics I mean people knew who Batman was he's a household name you know he's a staple of pop culture in general a staple of American society if not world society and so because of that you know people getting into this are basically you know just kind of picking this up with Batman just being a hell out of people in Arkham Asylum now really it's just kind of like a revolt you know people have managed to make their way out of their cells we're not really told how explicitly and it's not wildly relevant but the funny thing is that in the middle of all this we end up having the Joker joining the fray now on the surface this presented a really interesting scenario and the reason why is because of the fact that the Joker is very much a wild card in the Batman mythos even just the DC landscape as a whole the Joker could pop up anywhere the Joker to show up in Metropolis the Joker to show up in Keystone City where you know Jay Garrick is that the aureus Jay Garrick was at the Joker could pop up in Central City you know he could pop up in ko City he could pop up all over the place that's one of the cool things is you never know when he will appear at the same time whenever the Joker does show up whether he appears to a villain or a good guy no one knows what'll happen maybe he's there to just lend his a for whatever reason or maybe he's there to just kill everyone regardless like the Joker will show up and just implement these schemes that make sense to no one but himself and so with the Joker being here the idea is that he basically starts fighting on behalf of and the funny thing is that the the villain response to this is you know well Joker's lost his mind Joker's gone crazy one of the roles going on here why is Java fighting alongside Batman now this is kind of cool because the conflict in and of itself is just wrapped up really fast I mean it's not designed to be grandiose it's just designed to be hey guys here's what Batman is about in the new 52 he's very similar to the Batman that you remember now one thing that I do want to point out here is that when the new 52 first started superheroes had basically only been around for about five years and so the idea of Batman you know Bruce Wayne being Batman for for a decade or so you know for years and years and years and years that was gone not only that Jim Gordon was still relatively new to Bruce Wayne and so the trust that we were used to in the pre new 52 continuity the trust that had been built up between Jim Gordon and Batman wasn't there they were effectively starting off fresh and so because of that Jim Gordon does trust Batman to a degree but nowhere near the way that he did before the new 52 he still looks at him still kind of believes you know well maybe Batman's a little bit nefarious maybe Batman you know he is a vigilante maybe he's not necessarily on our side 100% of the time Jim Gordon's still putting some feelings out of feelers out there he's still trying to get a lay of the land with regards to balan of course he doesn't know where's Bruce Wayne but still trying to get a lay of the land with regards to the Batman character now following this we basically end up finding out that uh you know the Joker was essentially Dick Grayson in disguise which is cool which is actually kind of interesting to see Batman employing these different forms of subterfuge against villains and everything's like that kind of throwing him off kilter and and so on but the other half of this is basically the public face that Batman puts on the face of Bruce Wayne and this was kind of ironic about the Batman character we look at Batman and we say okay look there's Bruce Wayne and there's Batman but in truth the real person is Batman the face that the world sees is Bruce Wayne you know it's almost like the line from Kill Bill you know he was talking about a staple of superhero mythology and Superman and Clark Kent that kind of thing Bruce Wayne is the alter-ego that's the disguise that's the face that gets put onto the world Batman is the actual identity and that's what makes it so cool is because Bruce Wayne is basically Batman that's who he is at his core Bruce Wayne is just the mass that he puts on when he talks to the world but the other half of this is it shows us all the charitable works and the kind of things that he gets into of course it's this whole notion that for the most part he focuses heavily on the idea of trying to make Gotham City a better place so it's a multi-faceted attempt to basically make the autumn better it's not enough to fight crime it has to be something where he basically improves on impoverished areas he gives money to the kind of charities that can do good in the city so again it's really focusing on the idea that that Bruce Wayne trying to save Gotham is a two-sided coin you know one side is beating up criminals in the middle of the night as Batman the other side is putting money where it can best be used as Bruce Wayne and so far only this we actually pick up with Harvey Bullock and we pick up where that man with a burning sign that says you know Bruce Wayne will die tomorrow that kind of thing but the other half of this is that there's also a guy who's basically been pinned to the wall and been injected with a ton of knives now this is where the court of owls begins to come into play and this is one of the reasons why the court of owls was so cool is because we end up finding out there is a lot going on in the realm of Gotham that Batman just doesn't know about what is up happening is you basically pick up with you know Batman and Jim go I'm sorry Jim Gordon and guy that does autopsies and stuff the name escapes me but you know we pick up with them kind of analyzing this body and then of course Batman shows up and Batman Begins going through and of course what we end up finding is that in one of his teeth is a filling and inside this filling is an owl symbol and the whole notion is that this ties into an old rhyme that Bruce Wayne members as a kid about the court of owls Anasuya the way the rhyme went he was one of those things where it was like the court of owls is this a nefarious group that exists under ground behind Gotham City and if you talk bad about them they'll come and find you one of the things that this really seemed to hit home at is that it was a children's run it was designed to basically keep kids in check if you don't do your homework the court of owls will come and get you if you treat people bad the court of owls will come and get you they'll send the Talon and the Talon will take you away you know what you never know where the court of owls is that it was really really spooky when I first read this because the idea of Bruce Wayne not knowing about this nefarious organization that exists within the realm of Gotham City is just kind of mind-blowing right like Bruce Wayne knows Gotham in and out he knows it like the back of his hand and that's the beauty of court of owls is it takes the idea that Batman is Gotham and philippson on his head and says maybe there are things about Gotham the Batman doesn't know about that Batman's totally unaware of now of course what this does is it says look you know it kind of creates this timetable of sorts where Batman has 12 hours before you know whatever it is it happens leads to his death but this actually comes I guess really kind of brings us to a meeting between Lincoln March and Bruce Wayne now Lincoln March is a guy who's basically running for mayor he's running for a major position and Gotham City proper but the way that the kind of society puts on here and really the way he engaged in the Bruce Wayne is that they are very very much similar and that's kind of the cool thing here is Bruce Wayne wants to put money where Bohr can best be used Lincoln March can make that happen Lincoln March can basically say hey look here are the areas where money can best be spent in the city I've combed over you know all the different areas that are that are basically struggling the areas that are a little more abject and I guess telling an abject poverty than anything else money can be put in these different places and it can be used the most effectively the problem with this is that in the middle of this whole discussion we basically end up running directly into the talent now the talent is effectively the long arm of the court about you know he is the guy the court of owls Sims out to take out those individuals who they've deemed to be a threat which is to say those individuals that they want to have killed now the funny thing about this is that Scott Snyder does a really good job of sort of going through and teasing these different concepts teasing these different ideas of how far back the court of owls goes for example the Talon makes the statement how I love killing Wayne's and so the question that was being presented here when this story first dropped is is the court of owls responsible for the death of Thomas and Martha Wayne now it creates kind of a funny situation because historically speaking in DC Comics you know really and almost every iteration of Batman's origin Thomas and Martha Wayne were basically killed by Joe Chill there were times where the motivations of Geo Chill were changed but he was always the guy that killed him now more often than not it was just Joe Chill was a guy who was down on his luck and he was struggling and he came across them and there were people who who looked at as you know looked as though they came from wealth they had you know jewelry so on and so forth and in the midst of the situation and the heat of the moment he pulled the trigger and killed them both there's also been other things where it's like you know Joe Chill was a monster and so on and so forth but the fact remains here that Joe Chill murdering the parents of Bruce Wayne is a core aspect of his of his whole story this is one of the things that really kind of kind of intrigued people it was the question of is that the case is this really what's going on now of course in the middle of this fight between between Batman and and the talent one of the other things that Scott Steiner really hits at is the idea of how well Batman knows Gotham City for example in this whole rooftop fight we end up having a scenario where they both fall out of the building and the result is that you know Bruce Wayne basically says I know this city like the back of my hand I know where the gargoyles are positioned around this building and so I know where to jump out I know where to go I know how to make sure that I can survive by grabbing on to something the Talon doesn't know that and so where you know Bruce Wayne jumps onto this gargoyle the Talon presumably falls to his death only for us to find out that the Talon is very much alive which is revealed to us when he basically kills the paramedic so again what we end up doing is we basically follow this this path that Bruce Wayne's going on in order to learn everything that's going on let's do the half of this Scott Snyder spent a lot of time focusing on the notion of Bruce Wayne very much being a detective Bruce Wayne very much being a guy who doesn't just go out and beat people up and like you know punch around criminals and stuff like that he uses his mind as much as he uses his fists and his feet and so it's kind of cool because it's Scott Snyder basically reaffirming what existing Batman fans already know and in forming new Batman fans that Bruce Wayne is a multi-faceted guy he's a jack of all trades and a master of all trades he knows how to do it all this eventually leads into Bruce Wayne meeting directly with Lincoln March of course Lincoln March having been injured in the assault but Lincoln basically kind of issues out this warning to Bruce Wayne this says look man you have to watch out for the court of owls now one major theme here is that Bruce was like there is no court of owls I would know if the court of owls exists I'm Batman if the court of owls is there I know about it I know Gotham better than anybody and if the court of owls was was real whoo I guarantee they would have been arrested or I'd be keeping tabs on them or something like that now what Lincoln does is he gives us like this really really spooky situation you know rebate he's basically kind of told you know look I was warned by the court of owls and what they did is they basically put like a little owl nest with some bones in my home when I came home I found that there and that's really what the court of owls does they issue these little warnings you know and it's just kind of like a hey back off like we're watching you whatever it is you're doing we don't like now Scott Snyder also just kind of goes to this idea that it's like a big thing right I mean the court of owls is not gonna give you you know a warning because you went to the wrong grocery store what it is is someone like Lincoln March that wants to issue a whole bunch of change around the city of Gotham is working against the interests of the court of owls so as basically Scott Snyder dropping these clues and essentially telling us that with the court of owls that they are very much rooted in the history of Gotham indicating here that the court of owls are basically composed of some of Gotham's wealthy we know what goes on with them now but at the time of this story we didn't know that but again this all really follows the idea of Batman investigating further of Batman going through and trying to figure everything out now just by virtue of his own investigations and his own resources what Batman ends up doing is basically going to all these different buildings that are funded by the Allan Wayne trust for young architects in Gotham City basically those individuals that are that are being given charity money for the purpose of improving Gotham City's skyline and every time he goes to the 13th floor he ends up finding this small little place where evidence of the court of owls exists and all of them seem to be locations of where the Talon resides now the reason why this is kind of important is because scott snyder gives us these really kind of spooky but really cool instances of how smart batman is one of the things that he says is that cities are by definition very superstitious places people you know keep all kinds of superstitions you know they throw salt over their shoulder and different things like that it's not something that happens all the time but there are people who are there Allan Wayne was a very superstitious member of the Wayne family and the result was that throughout his own life he believed the number thirteen was unlucky as did a multitude of people and so back in the early days of when cities are being built when people were still very superstitious when they built buildings they would skip over the 13th floor he would just go from 12 to 14 and the result is that you would keep this little section of the building where the 13th floor would normally be and that would basically house the bad luck and so in the mind of Bruce Wayne if the court of owls exists that would most likely be where they would reside or where evidence would belong and as he goes through every single one of these buildings that's exactly what he finds he basically finds stockpiles of arms and armament he finds all kinds of things that belong to the court of owls and documentation that proves their existence now in the mind of Batman he's still not 100% onboard even after he goes into one of the buildings and he basically acted it activates a trip device that ends up resulting in his you know in a massive explosion that almost causes him to die he still has a hard time believing it to be true and the reason why is because of the fact that in a conversation that he has with Dick Grayson we end up learning that following the death of Bruce Wayne's parents that he believed the court of owls was behind it as a child he had heard the nursery rhyme he'd heard the stories heard the tales and thought the court of owls may have been the ones who had led all this and so what he ended up doing was going around and doing all this different research now again this is Snyder showing us how early Batman's detective skills were honed and used and so it really showed us that the death of his parents changed him in a fundamental way but he started going through and looking at all these different clues signs of owls and different things like that all of which basically led him back to a place called Harbor house now Harbor house was a former meeting ground for Gotham's social elite now it had long since been abandoned but it had different signs of owls and so on and so forth and so where Bruce Wayne as a child had basically looked around and believed the idea that if the court of owls was real and they basically you know not really worship owls so much is strongly associated themselves with owls in places that would have a lot of decoration regarding house would likely be their place of business now this was also rooted in the idea that his parents because they were part of Gotham's social elite and had associated with Gotham's wealthiest individuals that those wealthy people were probably part of the court of owls and so again this all sort of fed into this idea that the court of owls were the ones behind his parents murder the problem with this is that once he gets to where he believed that they would be meeting or where they would be located ultimately he finds absolutely nothing he simply finds that there's nothing there now in addition to this Batman had actually exhumed Allan Wayne's body and just kind of analyzed his bones and number things like that again all that basically went into him kind of tracing back the roots or the existence of the court of owls now the reason why was because of the fact that Allan Wayne himself had died under mysterious circumstances he was just found in a sewer one day and so the result was he was identified by his dental records what it ended up doing is it basically set in motion this idea that if Allan Wayne had just suddenly vanished under mysterious circumstances if people are being killed you know without any real indication of why if the court of owls does exist then the sewer may very well hold the answer now again Snyder's just kind of connecting these dots and he's is kind of bringing them together in a natural progression which does make sense but what Batman does is he says look on the bones of Allan Wayne was this kind of weird material kind of like a white powder of sorts which doesn't make any sense because the fact that there's no materials in the sewers of Gotham that has that same kind of substance attached to them and so the indication seems to be that Allan Wayne was held in a place that was within Gotham but not visible to the normal human eye meaning it was very much hidden away and so of course where he's in the middle of this whole investigation he's ultimately a surprised and subdued by the talent after which he wakes up in the labyrinth of the court of owls now this is one of the coolest moments and the reason why is because this shows us how easy it is for the court of owls to break the Batman but it also shows us how far back they go and how extensively they've reached out and assassinated various people now the court of owls as they're shown to us are basically people who were these owl masters these really really cool masts over their faces when this story came out people were just cosplaying as court of owls that's all you saw at Comic Cons were just like court avowal masks and it was so cool to see but the whole idea is that as he goes through this labyrinth he's effectively losing his mind he's losing his sanity now this appears to be a combination of isolation and just constant exposure to light the fact that he can't sleep I mean he's sleep deprived he's almost dehydrated hungry I mean it's just all these different things to sort of come together for the purpose of pushing Batman to the absolute brink of his sanity and this really comes to play when he hallucinates his parents who in turn basically begin kind of you know rema t realizing and dissolving and then turning into bats and so again it gets really really crazy but in the middle of all this you know when he's basically just kind of losing his mind starting to go insane he's attacked from behind by the Talon and at least presumably killed now again this is really kind of Snyder just wrapping things up quick fast and in a hurry but again this is really significant here because very rarely have we ever seen Batman out of control which is to say not in control of his surroundings or not calm or not collected that's a hallmark of Batman you know no matter all bad it gets no matter how terrible things are Batman is the one guy that always stays saying he's always the one guy that's like there's got to be a way to think ourselves out of this there's got to be a way for us to initiate a plan or to do something you know he's the backbone of really the Justice League in a lot of ways I mean you've got Superman who's just pure strength you have Wonder Woman whose strength and strategy you have Green Lantern I mean you know all these different characters Batman is the backbone of the Justice League in terms of his intelligence his resources his ability to basically think himself and others out of almost any situation to have a plan for virtually any scenario to see him broken to see him pushed to the brink of almost complete and total insanity is crazy and it was it was absolutely nuts to read this at the time that it came out it was like good god like Batman's lost his mind and so it's really cool but of course what we end up having here is the scenario of the court of owls playing out in the sense that when a person basically goes against the wishes of the court when they're issued a warning and they ignore it and they're brought to the labyrinth they're basically kind of pushed to the point of insanity and they're told you're going to lose your mind and then we're effectively going to kill you and basically there's kind of sacrifice now the judgment is made by the court themselves and the town is the one who carries it out and so with the town being the agent of Batman the talent basically just kind of beats him up fights him you know with the intention of killing him and then Batman more or less just kind of falls prey to his darker side now the way this is shown by Greg Capullo and the way that it's written by Scott Snyder is a perfect example of how a metaphor meets reality in the sense that Batman falling into his darker side Batman basically losing his human nature in becoming a dark version of himself is manifested in terms of how he looks now he doesn't actually look this way he has a grown teeth or anything like that it's just kind of here to show us this is where Batman is now you know he's he's basically dark he's brooding he's you know not really evil he's just kind of lost his humanity even if only for a temporary amount of time and so he's very very feral and so in this moment of desperation in this moment of panic he basically begins going against the Talon and fighting him off as best he can but the other half of this is that Scott Snyder very much focuses on the intelligence of Batman which is to say that once he recovered from this temporary insanity once he subdues the talent he also just kind of goes back to being as intelligent as he is and one of the things that he had done was that when he was going through the labyrinth he had come across an old camera now with regards to the court because of the fact that they're so rooted in antiquity because they used so many antique things the camera that they use dates all the way back to the days when they basically use magnesium in order to create flashes and cameras now in addition to being able to use magnesium there was also flash powder which is a combination of potassium chlorate and magnesium and so what Batman basically realized was that inside this camera was essentially a filament plate that was made of potassium chlorate and that because of the fact that he's so familiar with Gotham he was in turn able to realize that the statue was basically white marble instead of construction marble which makes it easier makes it softer and more prone to destruction and so by putting these two together he basically realizes he has a way out he ignites the potassium chlorate blows up the fountain and escapes down through a hole and that's the coolest thing here is it shows us how smart Batman is how capable he is now again this is also basically Scott Snyder's saying that this whole story about showing how Batman didn't know the court of owls existed really kind of hits home to the idea that yes he's not as familiar with Gotham City as he would like but he still knows it better than almost anybody not only that it also shows us the arrogance and the hubris of the court of owls and so that's kind of Scott Steiner bringing things back to roots saying hey look here's this clandestine organization that Batman never really seemed to know about they seemed almost you know supernatural in terms of their form and function but at the end of the day they're people they're bad guys they're arrogant they have hubris they believe that nobody can defeat them they've existed so long from the shadows that they can't envision a scenario where they could not only be discovered but brought down so again it's really just kind of hitting home to the nature kind of wrap everything back around to the core of the Batman comics okay so getting into new 52 Batman well technically is called city of owls but it's really called like night of the owls I think really in terms of how I how I sort of look at it really it's like this great big huge like 12 issues story arc more or less that might even be closer to 13 um but it's really just kind of called the court of owls storyline but it's really kind of split into two things but the fact remains that this video right here will basically wrap up the court in the traditional sense but the cool thing about this is that during the whole you know revelation of the court of owls Bruce Wayne had actually come across and realized the basis behind de Grayson now this was really a little bit of a controversial thing and the reason for this is because of the fact that dick Grayson's history was pretty standard in the sense that he was very much like Bruce Wayne Bruce Wayne witnesses mother and father being killed by a guy in an alleyway and it inspired him to become Batman Dick Grayson was much the same way he was part of a trapeze group called the flying Grayson's his parents were killed and the result was that he was taken in by Bruce Wayne and eventually desired revenge allowing him to go forward as Bruce Wayne's training the difference here is that as Robin Dick Grayson was like this incorruptible character where Bruce was dark and Bruce was brooding Dick Grayson always looked to the light always looked to the better idea of how things could be and for the most part that was maintained to a degree you know with regards to the new 52 you he was still relatively similar to that now of course DC started messing around with his carrots a little bit making him a secret agent you know bringing in agencies like Spiral and different things like that and that received kind of a lukewarm reception some like did some hated it but with the really with the Nightwing tie-in to the court of owls a court of owls event what we ended up finding out was that were traditionally Hayley Circus was just a circus in actuality they were functioning with a pact that went alongside the court of owls and what would happen is Hayley's circus would basically present us some of their most outstanding you know acrobats or their outstanding trapeze and those trapeze would be used by the court of owls for the purpose of eventually becoming the talent now what despit is it expanded on the talent mythos and it actually introduced a guy by the name of William Cobb now of course BC try to expand on the role of the talent it didn't really catch on and nobody really cared that much in truth it's kind of viewed him as a henchman and that was really about it but the idea was that William Cobb was one of a long line of men who had played the role of the talent just like the court of owls the modern day you know iteration of the court of owls was one of a long line of groups who have been part of the court of owls and the idea here was that the court would basically poison the the blood stream of individuals with something called electrum I believe it was and what would essentially happen is it would permeate their cells so that when the time came when that person died for whatever reason whether it was old age whether they were killed prematurely whatever the case may be the court of owls would take their body they would basically bring them back to life with something called Dionysian and then in turn they would become a talent and that was the intention for degree that Dick Grayson was basically selected by the court to be their newest talent once William Cobb served his purpose or was presumably dead or whatever the case may be and so what would happen is Dick Grayson would basically live out his life you know and whatever means he ended up living it out in and then maybe he'll die in a car wreck or maybe he'll die of old age or whatever the case may be but when that happens he would be brought in by the court of owls and then they would basically make him into a Talon and so he would go forward basically as one of their assassins and of course it wouldn't really be old age that would kill him I mean you know they would have him killed probably in the prime of his life just to make sure that you didn't have like a 90 year old Dick Grayson running around trying to assassinate people but the fact remains here he had unwittingly been selected as an assassin and so again that was kind of a huge revelation here and so what that did is it really kind of like double the efforts of Bruce Wayne right because now you know Scott Snyder and NDC it basically established that it wasn't just a matter of oh I need to stop the stop that court of owls now it was the court of owls aren't just trying to seize control of Gotham City they're turning the lives of people upside down and so again it really kind of doubled the efforts of Bruce Wayne in his desire to take them out now of course again when we end the last video of the court of owls we had basically picked up with the idea that the the court themselves had basically gone through and said okay look you know if Batman is going to work against us and if we cannot take control of the city by going in and influencing candidates and operating behind the scenes then we'll take the city by force and so what they did is they basically unleashed all of their talents and symp them all throughout Gotham City now this is when the comic books of like Nightwing and I think that girl had been published at the time and Detective Comics and a few others basically came in and covered a lot of the nine of our stuff um all that really happened with the court with regards to those world high ons it's what we haven't really covered them it's because we're focusing mostly on Batman all that it really happened with those tie-ins is the bat family had discovered that the court looked to take out certain individuals who were influential in Gotham but stood against the court or worked against the the goals and desires of the court whether those people knew about the court or not all the bat family really did everybody outside of Batman for the most part all they really did was run around and save those people who were on the hit list that was really it I mean that was really the extent of it it was interesting but is by no means required reading for you know for the whole court of owls story with up with Batman but with regards to Bruce himself the court actually goes through and really the talons just kind of descend on Wayne Manor and immediately attack him now this is kind of the important thing here because what is up happening and really what we saw with regards to you know the the first court of owls video that we did and so the court themselves knew that Bruce Wayne was Batman and that was really one of the big revelations because in the realm of DC on the DC Universe one of the most closely guarded secrets is the identity of Batman the identity of Superman the identity of Wonder Woman that's one of the most closely guarded things they try not to let the world know about that just because of the fact that if people knew that Clark Kent was Superman then Lois Lane would be in jeopardy and you know Perry would be in jeopardy and and so on and so forth you know Jimmy Olsen and so on Bruce Wayne is the exact same way if they knew that Bruce Wayne was Batman you could just literally tear down everything that Bruce Wayne's built you could launch a multitude of campaigns against him now this one is a little more tangible and it's really kind of Scott Snyder bringing in the other half of Batman's storytelling and that's why it's so cool because historically speaking whenever we read Batman stories we expect to see a blend of detective work and then fighting I mean that's really one of the things we like to see is Batman just beating people up it's one of the coolest things about his storytelling you know how ruthless he can be sometimes you know push the person to the point where they genuinely believe they're gonna die but of course we know Batman is not actually gonna kill him with regards to this kid but here the talons this sitting on Wayne Manor proper is really just for the purpose of taking out Bruce Wayne so of course what he ends up doing is dawning this massive you know he'll bat suit more or less and just taking it to town on these towns I mean really just kind of wrecking through every last one of them because in truth despite the fact that these guys are relatively Undead despite the fact that these guys you know are pretty formidable in the end they're not really able to take out Bruce Wayne now of course the reason why is because of the fact that Batman realizes that these talents are able to run around and they're able to do their own thing because they're not frozen basically extremely cold temperatures is the tool that's used by the court to keep the talents and stasis more or less and so Batman's realization you know of this information is to essentially freeze all these guys up to basically you know use a multitude of different resources today Saline stasis again by using very cold temperatures and so of course this in conjunction with unleashing his bats on you know the as members of the town you know really kind of wraps things up pretty fast and so of course once the temperature drops low enough all these guys more or less just kind of freeze and go back into stasis again and that's really the end of them and so what it does is it allows Batman to turn his attention to the most logical target of the court themselves Lincoln March now here was the kind of cool thing about these tie-ins the way the tie-ins took place is they all happened basically in a time frame which means it like at 7 o'clock this happens a Nightwing ad you know eight o'clock this happens in Detective Comics you know at nine o'clock this happens in Batgirl the problem with this is that you would literally have to break the comics down page by page in order to cover it in true chronological order otherwise you end up reading Nightwing and then halfway through Nightwing you have to stop and then read detective comics and then like a quarter of the way through detective comics you have to stop and jump to Batgirl like it gets really kind of weird the way it all comes together and it really kind of threw things off it was cool if you're gonna symbol it that way it makes it for a really really interesting and cohesive story but in terms of what we're trying to do here it would confuse the hell out of you guys so so we're not gonna do that we're really not gonna do a play-by-play like and then we switch over to Nightwing at 7:32 p.m. like we're not we're not gonna we're not gonna do that instead Batman of course travels to go see Lincoln March now again in the last video we had covered this and we had basically said that Lincoln shared an identity shared an affinity for Batman in terms of how it is they viewed Gotham City and a lot of this revelation came at the top of Wayne Tower you know the building that was being constructed by Bruce Wayne that was basically going to be this beacon of hope for the city of Gotham and a beacon to the world saying that Gotham is a desirable place to live and it was a really cool exchange between the two of them because Lincoln March had told this very interesting story to Bruce Wayne about how Lincoln's mother had died and the last thing that he had of her possession was basically this Miss shapen heart-shaped pendant and it was kind of cool to see this you know this exchange between the two of them because of the fact that it was a very human moment for both it was basically both with him realizing that they had the same goals and they had the same ambitions at heart the problem with this was that as Lincoln March had explained he was directly working against the court of owls because of the fact that the court had basically warned link and stray away from the path that you're on move away from this road that you're on because you're conflicting our interests and we will kill you if you don't and so again because of this with Lincoln March effectively on his deathbed it's almost like he's trying to get revenge by the name of the members of the court of owls directly to Bruce Wayne himself and so what we do is we transition to a group basically a family that are called the powers family and this is really interesting because it's basically composed of Joseph and his wife Maria and the reason why this is important is because it shows us that when it comes to wealthy individuals Bruce Wayne is not the only game in town now for the most part we always kind of figured that was the case right I mean we always kind of figured that Bruce Wayne wasn't like the only rich guy in Gotham but there wasn't a whole lot of expansion in terms of the really wealthy in Gotham as far as normal people go we would see them from time to time but more often than not it would be like two-face has a ton of money and he's doing nefarious things who would be like penguin has a ton of money and he's running a criminal empire something along those lines and here's how he runs into Batman this time that was really yet that was really these the only con find there when it came to Scott Snyder expanding on the Batman mythos it wasn't just about creating a new group in Gotham City or at least introducing a group in Gotham City that Batman didn't know about that had been operating for hundreds of years it was bolstering that it was basically grabbing other members of Gotham's elite and sank what if some of Gotham's you know wealthiest people out there weren't working against Gotham proper and so again it's kind of a cool scenario because what it tells us is that where Batman operates from the shadows bringing down criminals there are individuals who operate from the shadows to conquer Gotham and that was really what was going on with the court of owls the court of owls wouldn't necessarily intervene by you know sitting an army and to Gotham City like they did with nine of the Owls instead they would influence politicians they would pay off judges they would do different things either that or they would snatch them up and they were dragged into the labyrinth and say you can spend the rest of your days in this place until you go crazy and basically you know kill yourself or you can do what we tell you to do and the alternative is to basically just walk rank-and-file that's exactly what they would do so the court of owls functioned in a lot of different ways but of course with Bruce Wayne being given the names of these individuals by Lincoln March this highlights a very important part of the story what this seems to indicate from Scott Snyder is that Batman never would have realized who they were on their own they were too well hidden you know Joseph and Maria powers were just too well hidden they were too far hands-off nobody would have known who they were or that they were even involved in the court of Alice now Allah the reason why this was the case was simply because of the fact that the powers family lived in more or less a penthouse in a building that nobody could gain access to unless you were personally invited that place was a fortress the press was not allowed in there the general public was not allowed in there there's no indication that Bruce Wayne ever saw the inside of that they were very reclusive very shut off now the indication of the question that we would kind of have to ask here is well then wouldn't that make them the most logical people to be the court of owls if they were so reclusive only the first ones that Bruce Wayne would think of yes and no because you all have the thing from himself Bruce Wayne's very reclusive Bruce Wayne hides out in Wayne Manor almost all day long now for him it's because he's Batman and because he's fighting against crime different things like that but no one knows what goes on behind closed doors what seems to be going on here is that when it comes to the wealthy elite in Gotham its hey you leave me alone I leave you alone and we'll disco lit a day that really seems to be what's happening here and so of course with Batman tracing down the location of the court of owls after essentially kind of interrogating Maria powers what is up happening here as Alfred of course basically says hey look she's calling her husband your plan to basically trace the location of her husband worked the problem is that his phone is in a blocked out area so I can only give you a few blocks but I can't tell you exactly where it's located at but this is when Scott Snyder is running comes full circle when it's when his whole story comes back to full circle again and the reason why is because in the last video we had talked about how after the death of Bruce Wayne's parents he had investigated the court of owls believing that the court were the ones that were responsible for his parents death that a set of killing his parents directly they hired some you know some most low-level guy named Joe Chill to have his parents killed and then just make it look like a crime of desperation when in reality you know Bruce Wayne believed the court of owls were the ones who pulled it off what descends up telling us is that where Bruce Wayne originally went to harbor house believing the court of owls operated out of there and found nothing the truth is that he was right the entire time he was right where he doubted himself where he said no no I went there and I poked around all the clues led to this place being the court of owls I guess that was wrong this is Scott Snyder saying here's how smart Bruce Wayne is he's always been this smart he follows the clues he listens to logic he listens to reason and all the clues and all the signs indicated that the court of owls operated out of Harbor house now this is kind of cool because this is basically a scenario where it essentially scenes by the court of owls themselves are not keeping their tracks as clean as they thought they would or maybe they were relying on the intelligence of adults who would consider some things to be nonsensical and ignore them when in reality that nonsensical thing is an important clue to point to the location of the court themselves now of course when Bruce gets to the court proper he basically finds that they're all dead I mean every last one of them had them dead you know they essentially drank some kind of a substance and ended up killing them all now of course this seems to be like a ritualistic suicide of sorts that they realized or at least you know as Alfred explains it to Bruce Wayne that Batman had basically taken the city back you know Batman now knew about the court of owls and the court themselves realized it was only a matter of time before he brought them all down and so they essentially just kind of killed themselves so they wouldn't have to wait for any measure of you know of a trial you know being arrested or anything along those lines and so again the great thing about this is that Scott Steiner gives every indication that this is where the story is he gives every indication that this is where it all stops but it doesn't and that's why I love this run so much because Binney takes everything that we've seen so far and flips it on its head and that's the coolest thing the reason why is because of the fact that Bruce Wayne is supposed to have a meeting later on today and of course Alfred is talking to him about the meeting what it's supposed to be scheduled mean needs to get ready and so on and so forth but having a conversation looking at a picture of Thomas and Martha Wayne Batman takes off and it's the coolest thing in the world and the reason why is because he travels to the morgue of where Lincoln March is supposed to be and simply finds a note that says follow me down the rabbit hole now this is a universal sign in literature ever since Alice in Wonderland was written you know by lewis carroll alice from wonderland tumbling down the rabbit hole with absolutely no idea what's your fine below has been a literary metaphor for the idea of walking down a path with no idea what's there with the old basically walking down a tunnel with a blindfold on and it's really Scott's letter saying that Batman is just following a trail of breadcrumbs with no idea what's at the other end but what we end up doing is giving this little bit of an explanation about a place called the Willow Wood home for children now to be honest this is creepy and it's one of the creepiest things that I've seen so far it's almost like the like Waverly Hills Sanatorium or Santana whatever it is have you never had a chance look it up it's this creepy place in Louisville Kentucky and a buddy of mine we're actually going to spend us spend the night there on Halloween one night we decided not to because we kind of figured that that's the place that you go to when you accidentally stumble into a portal that leads you like to another dimension that's basically hell like we're not going we're not even messing with that ghosts and monsters and stuff like that not at all but this is actually uh this is this is really kind of creepy here and the reason why is because of the fact that what we're told is that the woodford home for children was basically this place where kids with mental disorders were taken but what we're shown here are like like blood prints and different things like that and as is explained to us there was basically a sinkhole that swallowed up the orderlies quarters and what ended up happening here is that because of the fact that this place was so far removed from Gotham City proper and because of the fact that nobody ever checked on any of the children here that when somebody finally did come stumbling along they basically found all the orderlies dead and the kids just either starving to death that you know or sturer dying of dehydration walking around naked absolutely disheveled you know and living in their own filth and squalor I mean it's a really really sad set of circumstances but what this is designed to do is feed into the sad nature of Gotham City in a sense the Gotham is looked at by a lot of people as a broken City I mean it's broken and it's beyond hope beyond redemption and should be allowed to die just the traditional you know line though the whole plot that we saw from Batman Begins you know Gotham City is a laboring beast gasping for breath let the damn thing die but of course we know the Batman simply won't let that happen and the idea is to always try to breathe new life into it and so again this really kind of hits home at the nature of all that now of course what we end up finding out is that link in March as he had basically you know kind of taunted Batman to come to this location begins talking to him about how you know who he really is what he's really about and what we end up finding out here is that it was Lincoln March who basically led to the deaths of all the members of the court of owls you know he had simply poisoned all of their drinks while they were in their meeting they all died at the same time Bruce Wayne basically recalls their you know really kind of brings the reason up in terms of why he took off in the first place and the reason why was because of the story that Lincoln March had given Bruce Wayne in Wayne you know in the Wayne Tower when Lincoln marcha talked about how his mother had died and left him you know this miss shape and heart pendant and that kind of thing and Bruce Wayne remembered that that was the exact same pendant that Martha Wayne was wearing in that picture and so the implication seemed to be here that Lincoln March was a false name that he was basically grabbing little and hints from the life of Bruce Wayne and rolling them in to a cohesive story now what Lincoln March does here is he basically presents the scenario that he himself is Bruce Wayne's brother the reason being because of the fact that while he does have that mist shape and heart pendant those pendants are only given to people who are from you are basically children that live within the school for homes and so Lincoln marches essentially saying here that Martha Wayne is his mother and he's basically the brother that Bruce Wayne never knew about now one of the crazy things about this is that for a lot of people the ending of this story seemed to be an instance where Scott Snyder kind of wrote himself into a corner and didn't quite know how to get out again but the great thing about this and really one of the reasons why I loved this is because of the fact that it's designed to kind of ask all these what-if questions about Bruce Wayne remember the entirety of the court of owls is designed for the purpose of bringing in the possibility that Bruce Wayne does not know as much about Gotham as he thought he did and he claims to know the streets inside and out he claims to know the buildings inside and out he claims to know the people inside and out but he didn't know the powers and other other members of Gotham's wealthiest the court of owls he didn't know the court of owls was there this is another instance where Scott Snyder's basically hitting home with the idea that maybe this guy Lincoln March is actually Thomas Wayne jr. maybe he is the legitimate son of Thomas and Martha Wayne and Bruce just never knew about it the entire time now again from here this really just kinda descends down into into an exercise in traditional comic book battling in the sense that you basically just kind of have verse Wayne funny against a Thomas Wayne junior and that's really about it now of course the conflict leads directly to Wayne tower proper and the whole idea here of Lincoln March is to essentially I guess of Thomas Wayne this to basically bring the tower down around Bruce and the reason why is because this fits in to the entirety of the narrative as it's given to us by you know Thomas Wayne what he basically says here at least what both he says and what Bruce Wayne deduces is that Thomas Wayne was presumably left within this you know that home for children by the Wayne's to keep him hidden away from the world the result was that they had Bruce Wayne himself and Bruce Wayne became the rightful heir of the Wayne family while this was going on because of the fact that Thomas was basically abandoned and left behind he adopted by the court of owls and then brought in and raised by the court and so the idea was that he basically showed up as Gotham City's Savior when in reality he was just a puppet of the court of owls and so what ended up happening here is that when he was presumably killed by one of the talons when Bruce Wayne stumbled in and Thomas Wayne operating his Lincoln marched gave Bruce Wayne the names of the members of the court in truth he had actually ingested that's very serum though the talons use in order to keep them alive and then more or less kind of resurrected himself so to speak and so the idea here was that if he was going to basically replace Bruce Wayne he was going to kill off Bruce Wayne and carry on the memory of Bruce by operating as the city's mayor you know or one of his most contributing members that he's going to do exactly that by killing Bruce Wayne and then effectively taking this place all Bruce Wayne you know Bruce Wayne passed away but I'm his brother Thomas Wayne jr. here's the documentation to prove it someone is so forth now of course Bruce basically uses the hubris of Thomas Wayne when Thomas Wayne begins detonating the various bombs of these planet in Wayne tower to bring it all down Bruce Wayne manages to make his escape and so what Scott Snyder does is he leaves everything ambiguous he leaves it with the idea that Thomas Wayne jr. basically survived now we know that by way of the story Batman eternal which I'm not really sure if we're gonna cover that or not but we know that Thomas Wayne survived and he ends up coming back what Scott Snyder did with him there was kind of interesting but I wouldn't say nearly as prevalent as his role here in the court of owls storyline but of course in the midst of all this you know Batman's basically visited that kind of thing and the crazy thing about this is that the conversation between the two of them indicates that Bruce actually believes that Thomas Wayne jr. might really exist now of course he goes through the paperwork and begins looking at the history of the Wayne's of Thomas and Martha Wayne everything that they had done and what he ends up finding out here is that indeed he did actually have a brother who only lived for one night he was basically born under duress the child was hooked up to an incubator and died within 12 hours but the question cannot be helped but ask what if it was all a cover what if Thomas and Martha Wayne gave birth to a son and then we're told well you know your son has complications which they witness those complications and the doctor you know under orders from the court of owls told Thomas and Martha Wayne I'm sorry your child has passed away there's nothing we can do the child was effectively brought back or taken by the court raised by the court and then became Lincoln March all the while being told you our Thomas Wayne jr. you are the rightful son of Thomas Wayne and Martha Wayne you're the rightful heir to the Wayne fortune and the Wayne family Bruce Wayne can't help but wonder is any of that true and Scott Snyder asks us that question do you think it's true do you really believe that Bruce Wayne actually has a brother named Thomas the issue with this is that we're never given a definitive answer in the story we're never told for any real measure of certainty instead the mystery is just kind of out there the question is just kind of there and again it all really kind of feeds back into this notion that Bruce Wayne does not know Gotham City as well as he thinks he does now again this all feeds back into the whole notion I guess the whole idea that Bruce Wayne himself is still relatively new to the role of Batman remember when the new 52 first started it's only been five years since Bruce Wayne put on his cloak and cowl for the very first time and became Batman so you know he doesn't really know Gotham as well as we would think he would know in the classic Batman stories before the new 52 okay so getting into Batman death of the family I guess new 52 Batman death of the family keep in mind guys for those of you guys who were joining us for the very first time anything marked new 52 comes before DC rebirth again I'll have it before DC rebirth in the playlist so you won't have to feel confused or throw and offer anything like that but death of the family is probably one of the greatest stories ever written in Batman history to be honest with you guys I absolutely love it because it really changes the way we view the Joker right like historically speaking the Joker depending on what error you're reading him has always been the sort of comedic sometimes even slapstick character I mean back when he first showed up and in DC Comics he was very violent very dark but because of the comics code he had to be made a little more funny now of course he was returned to his darker roots under Neal Adams I think it was uh but while the time Steve Englehart came around that basically gave us Batman the Animated Series Joker and so then of course we saw his character kind of wax and wane over the years and in the days really kind of like the years leading up to the launch of a new 52 the Joker was still very much this somewhat you know I guess a great blend of like evil and and comedy but what this gives us here under Scott Snyder is just a genuinely dark and twisted Joker and the stories are almost scary because of like how the Joker is like it's almost terrifying you know in a sense that Scott Snyder just made himself fresh and so fun and so interesting so um there are a couple of things that I do want to point out here for those of you guys were really confused about Batman with regards to like DC rebirth new 52 so on and so forth there really is no classic Batman which is to say Batman before the new 52 instead there's only new 52 Batman but what DC did is they sort of doing things like this in death of the family and will start you know talk we'll talk about these as we go through the story but they basically sort of grabbing you know comics and grabbing events from the classic Batman era and rolling them in and so that's one of the things that kind of confuse people about like the stance of Batman the hard reboot that sort of thing but the fact remains here that with regards to the return of the Joker this is twofold in Detective Comics number one because with us this whole thing starting when new 52 Batman first started there was neither hide nor hair of the Joker I mean he was just kind of gone for a while the only appearance he had was in Detective Comics number one and that was in it was like just it was your standard fare of Joker storytelling it was the Joker who was engaging in a scheme Batman was chasing after him it was his cat-and-mouse game the Joker was captured and that was in but the story ended on this very image Matic kind of tone where it seemed like the Joker's face was basically removed and then we didn't know what was gonna happen after that like we had no idea the Joker effectively just vanished like that was it the Joker was gone you know and so because that fans were just kind of like where's the Joker we want the Joker because the Joker is is consistently ranked as the number one greatest villain in comic books you know just because of the fact that he's so crazy is schemes are kind of nuts to do such an interesting character but with regards to his return here this came in a beautiful way so initially we just kind of pick up with Commissioner Gordon and Harvey Bullock and a few other people in the autumn City Police Department nothing too major but the power suddenly goes out now the backup generators do come on but we get this really eerie glimpse of the Joker just standing in a hallway and that right there really kind of hits to me as one of the scariest things about the Joker because it's scarier to me isn't like the Joker copyrighting fish or it's scarier to me than the Joker just going on like a murder spree or anything like that the fact that you would just like the power would go down to a building the generators would come on and you'd look at the doorway and there would just be this crazy guy with a hidden face standing in the doorway that's just terrifying to me what the Joker does is he really just kind of like taunts Jim Gordon and this is Scott Snyder saying hey guys look this is the Joker that we're getting now this is Joker you're gonna see this is not the crazy comedic Joker the one you're used to from Batman the Animated Series this is the dark sinister Joker this is the one but you guys have always been wanting to see the return to Batman number one Joker the dark evil sadistic you know do whatever it is that he wants to do kind of version of his character and so the crazy thing is that as he's taunting Jim Gordon he's going around and killing cops all around Jim Gordon now this is designed to really kind of be a throwback of sorts to Killing Joke I guess in the sense that during The Killing Joke story Jim Gordon was put on this roller coaster of Terror and he was made to view all these different images of Barbara Gordon in a very vulnerable state you know for the most part they were naked images there was some allusion to the idea that she had been physically assaulted in multiple ways by the Joker or the Joker's henchmen and Jim Gordon was forced to look at these different images as it was happening it was very much a ride of absolute insanity but it was the helplessness that made that scene so you know impactful in The Killing Joke and that's what's happening here The Joker's walking around in the pitch black killing all these different cops under the command of Jim Gordon and one he's not quite paralyzed with fear but there's nothing he can do to stop the Joker because he can't find him he can't see him and that's what makes things so crazy is because once Batman shows up on the scene we don't really know exactly how he got there but presumably somebody did something or Batman was just kind of kind of patrolling or you just notice the power went down at Gotham's a Gotham City Police Department but once Batman gets there of course he more or less rescues Jim Gordon who's clearly shaken by the ordeal but the Joker had also stolen his face back now at this point it's really just kind of an exercise bye-bye Alfred and by Batman to really just kind of figure out why the Joker came back and that's one of the things that makes his character so interesting is because no one knows what the schemes of the Joker are based on I mean for God's sake he had a scheme called The Laughing fish where he wanted to make fish look like him and then copy write them that was the scheme like that that was its Joker storytelling is classic Joker stuff and that's what makes him so cool is because no one knows what he's gonna do next now the funny thing about this is Damian Wayne has never really like encountered the Joker in a tried-and-true fashion and so while he's there watching the whole investigation between Alfred and and Bruce Wayne you know and while there you know Alfred and Bruce are just talking about how dangerous the Joker is and how they have to tread carefully and things like that Damian Wayne's ready to jump in headstrong and I love this because I feel like moments like this really kind of give us that um you know that kind of like yes the Joker is dangerous the Joker is someone to be afraid of because Batman's warning today Mian is do not take the Joker lightly yes he's got no powers whatsoever he does not have super-strength he doesn't have SuperSpeed any of that stuff but the fact that you never know what he's going to do is what makes him so dangerous nine times out of ten if the Joker says he's going to do something he's already done it and he's just sending you on a wild goose chase case in point they basically interrupt a broadcast made by a guy you know with the Joker's just has this guy tied down to a chair in the Joker's acting like you know his arms the guy's arms or whatever you know but what he basically says is that Mayor Haiti is going to die at midnight now this is not Scott Snyder going through and just repeating the past he is but he's doing it for a reason when I was going to this story my first thought was well this is just a throwback to Batman number one right like to the Joker's first appears I'm going to kill the mayor at midnight you know that kind of thing oh that's not the case instead what happened in originally in Batman number one is the Joker was going to kill the mayor at midnight but it was because he had poisoned them 24 hours beforehand and this story it's a lot more interesting it's a lot more intriguing and it shows us how smart the Joker is because remember when the Joker first popped up he was just a guy who dresses a clown and did crazy things with regards to this what we end up finding out is the Joker actually poisoned Mayor Haiti already but only with half the solution necessary to kill him and it sense that what are you done is he basically does kind of like poison the chemical that was used to mop the mayor's floor and then you know dab some chemical onto the clothing of the various police officers who are guarding mayor Haiti and so quite literally the police killed the mayor in the sense that when the two chemicals basically merged the chemical on the clothing of the other cops and the chemical the residue that's left over from the from the floor when those converged together it basically results in everybody losing their minds everybody being exposed to a version of the Joker toxin now this is where Scott Snyder begins to turn the story on its head because we look at the Joker toxin and it's inherently anis always really been a toxin that kills people with just this disgusting grin on their face with this they die from frowns and so it's really basically the Joker going through and essentially committing his own crimes but at the same time doing it in such a way that is just a little bit different from the way it was before now the reason why this matters in the Reese this is significant is because the Joker is key to understanding the continuity of Batman in the new 52 under normal circumstances anybody would look at Batman and say well he's just classic Batman and for whatever reason made it into the new 52 not at all what do you see did when Batman was first launched in new 52 is they said okay Superman gets a hard reboot he's totally reset this is a brand-new Superman none of the things that happened in classic DC happened in the new 52 we're just going through his his stories for the very first time the flash it was the same way Wonder Woman it was the same way all that stuff it was the exact same way with Batman it was not what DC started doing is they said okay let's grab classic DC stories like The Killing Joke and let's say it took place in the new 52 and let's grab classic stories like nightfall and let's say it took place in the new 52 it took place off panel and we didn't see that story happen but it simply just is the stories explained to have taken place in the five years between the time when Bruce Wayne first put on the cloak and cowl and the modern day when his story's picked up and so we were just kind of told somewhere along the line The Killing Joke happened somewhere along the line nightfall happened and that's kind of the cool thing here is because what we're also told is that over the course of Batman's history his first encounter with the Joker as Red Hood took place the first time or I guess you know really when they met and it led to Joker falling into this vat of chemicals surviving and then coming out with green hair and bleached skin that that happened these are the kind of things that sort of just got rolled into his new 52 by grabbing classic DC stories and making them official continuity in DC and so again with Batman basically you know going through and deciphering these chemicals that were used by the Joker and figuring out that the composition spells out the words AC E ace chemical once he gets there he actually finds out that the Red Hood that he sees is not the Joker instead of course is Harley Quinn this is designed as a distraction to remove Batman from the equation but we end up finding out the reason this is done is in order for the Joker to basically kidnap Alfred Pennyworth now anybody who knows anything about Batman comics will tell you that Alfred Pennyworth is the one guy who's off-limits I mean you do not touch out for pennyworth right like like Alfred Mann he's the bro you know Alfred is the bro you do not touch Alfred he's just one of the coolest guys and so of course with Alfred and age with Batman effectively figuring out what's going on pretty fast and with with the Joker basically leaving behind a tape that essentially just kind of taunts Batman like I have you know Alfred and so on and so forth it sends Bruce into this almost a maddening state not in the sense that he loses his mind but in the sense that for him Alfred is the closest thing he has to a father and to have this person taken away by the Joker is like losing his father all over again and so it really sort of speeds up the timeline it moves things into a really endurance based motion because in his mind it's only a matter of time before the Joker kills Alfred but the question is what happens between now and the time that Alfred dies and that's what's the most terrifying is because Batman has no earthly clue what the Joker will do and that's what makes the Joker so dangerous with two faces he's probably just gonna kill you with penguin is probably gonna interrogate you for information maybe ransom you or even puddle you know possibly kill you there's a handful of options that any of those guys might consider but the Joker is so insane that there's no telling what it is that he's going to do now of course from here it's a matter of targeting Jim Gordon and that's essentially what's happening now something that I want you to keep in mind here is the way in which Jim Gordon is poisoned he basically receives a blood thinner at the hands of the Joker and he just starts bleeding out incredibly fast now the Joker did that for a very particular reason and we'll find that out here in a second and again it really hits home at the idea of the fact that the Joker is very intelligent in terms of what he thinks and in terms of what he does but ultimately what ends up happening is Batman essentially traces the Joker's location down to a local bridge and the reason why is because of the fact that this is another one of the crimes that Joker had committed now this is Scott Snyder essentially telling us this is what the motivation of the Joker is that historically speaking Batman and Joker have just kind of gone round and round and round and round and that was really yet you know the Joker would escape from Arkham Asylum he would commit some crimes Batman would chase him Batman would catch him the Joker would be arrested thorne Arkham Asylum and the cycle would repeat that's just the way the game was played but the funny thing here is that the Joker more or less is kind of reattaching his face with strings even go so far as to taunt Batman and say look this is the game we play right I mean see the game that we always play you know I go to a bridge and I threaten to kill some people and then you call in Nightwing and then Nightwing saves the day and then you defeat me and I go back to Arkham but what if we didn't do that what if we didn't play that game what if I just basically killed him already what if I decided to do that what if I took the fun away from you now the crazy thing about this is that Joker's entire scheme here does have a method to his madness and that's what makes this so visceral that's what makes it so interesting is that where he does just dead make the bridge for the heck of it and where Batman's entire plan effectively just kind of goes up in smoke the joker effectively takes him captive and he really just kind of takes Batman prisoner you know exposes him to all these different - the - the Joker toxin you know and it sends the possibility or I guess that makes it a possibility that Batman is effectively poisoned by the Joker himself now the other half of this is the Joker starts to taunt Bruce with the idea that he's like I know who you are like I know what you're about I left you my calling card you know he target he starts referencing things like the court of owls and so the Joker was watching Batman in his whole court of owls event he's been watching everything happened the entire time you know and he references things like The Killing Joke he references things like nightfall he references all these scenarios he talks about Jim Gordon Oh Jim Gordon would bleed for the city and that's why he gave him a blood thinner was to basically make him bleed for the city if Jim Gordon wants to be a guy who's gonna put his life on the line and bleed for the city of Gotham then I will make it a reality and that's what makes it so cool is because the Joker is basically grabbing these metaphors of what people stand for and taking them from the realm of being a metaphor and making them literal but at the end of the day Joker's argument - Batman is that PE that Nightwing that Batgirl that you know Jason Todd that Damian Wayne you know they're all fake and like none of them are real none of them are who they really are and this again really hits home - the idea of The Killing Joke all it ever takes is just one bad day that this one bad day wouldn't necessarily send somebody into the realm of madness it would reveal their true selves and that's what the Joker's hitting out is this is not who you really are this face that you put on the face of Bruce Wayne the face of Dick Grayson the face of Barbara Gordon the faces that you wear at night is who you really are you are Batman Dick Grayson is Nightwing now something to notice here is that he never references any of them by name he somebody just says I know who you are but the bigger implication here is that the Joker is kind of hitting home at this idea that perhaps Batman really is just an insane person that perhaps Batman really is just crazy and so again is this really really cool situation that maybe the Joker is not as as he seems that maybe the Joker is very much a completely sane person but ultimately the Joker is able to make his escape and the reason why is of course the Gotham police department shows up but Joker has his own henchman and Joker has those guys fire rockets you know at the police cars and incapacitate them and and that kind of thing and makes his escape but what we end up having here is Bruce Wayne waking up in the Batcave to the other members of the bat family to Red Hood to Red Robin Tim Drake to Barbara Gordon bad girls to Dick Grayson Nightwing and Damian Wayne and this is really cool and this is where the death of the family concept begins to come into play because essentially what happens here as Bruce Wayne basically says somewhere along the line did Joker access the Batcave I don't know how he did it I don't know exactly you know where or where he gained his entry point but it seems to have been done through me and what Bruce does is he references this old instance where he and the Joker were fighting on top of a blend of course this is really kind of a reference back to the older 1960s 1950s Batman stories where the Joker was a little more comedic but also a little more sinister at the same time and essentially what happened was the Joker was presumed to have been defeated by Batman after having fallen off the blimp you know most likely to his death but this is Bruce also acknowledging his lack of experience the idea that will the Joker's defeated time to go home and that's really yeah and so of course you know Batman had taken a route back to the Batcave he tried to get some sleep couldn't get any sleep at all came back downstairs only to find that there was a joker card laying in the Batcave in the water and so of course again this is cool because it's the Joker basically saying I was here in the cave but even then this goes back to the court of owls right like it goes back to the whole court of owls thing Bruce Wayne's like no no the court of owls doesn't exist because if it did I would have known about it I would have discovered them the fact that I know Gotham as well as I do and the fact that I can't verify the court of owls is real indicates to me that they're not it's Bruce Wayne's own arrogance is his own hubris that always seems to get the better of him in this scenario he's just like well it probably stuck to like the boat or something like that right like there's no way the Joker would have gotten into the Batcave because surely if the Joker knew what our identities were he would have targeted us individually but that is what makes the Joker so dangerous is because maybe he does know the identity of Bruce Wayne maybe he does know the identity of Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon and all these guys maybe he does know who they truly are maybe he's been watching them every step of their lives for the last year and chose not to do anything that's what makes him so dangerous is because there's no way to know for sure there's no way to know with an absolute certainty and so what happens is of course Batman's investigations ultimately lead him back to Arkham Asylum and this is really Scott Snyder kind of hitting hitting back at Grant Morrison's story Arkham a serious house on serious earth which between the storytelling and the art that story is a descent into absolute madness I mean that story is insane if you ever get to read it sometime I feel like that's the story they would make schizophrenic screen under the belief that it would cure them like it's just it's it's almost like like turn of the 20th century attempts to cure a mental illness it's just one of the most insane things that you're ever going to see I couldn't begin to wrap my head around it like I had to put it down I was like all right I am dying to hear this story is crazy as hell but from what I understand if you finish it out all the way it's an amazing story doesn't like keep hearing people keep telling me it's one of the greatest stories ever told and I feel like I should try to read it all the way through but it's Batman makes his way through Arkham Asylum the reason why I say it's a serious house and serious earth but kind of a tribute to that is because from what I did read through Sirius houseless we're sort of it's like a gauntlet right it's like Batman going against a bunch of his rogues and different things like that the inmates of Arkham are essentially allowed to go free Batman has to face off against them all working his way all the way down to the secret of what becomes origin is really like and it's very much the same way in this story he's going against the inmates of Arkham Asylum he's going against some of the major criminals two-face penguin people who have allied themselves with the Joker along the way but as he gets through this he's of course kind of forced to look at this tapestry of experiences and this is why I say this is where DC started grabbing things from classic DC and rolling them into the history of new 52 Batman the scene where the fisherman is holding up the fish to Batman that's from The Laughing fish the death of Jason Todd these are all moments that come from Batman's whole experience near the various escapades that he's been a part of in relation to the Joker as well as his own stories and so again is DC basically taking these classic DC stories and saying these have now happened in the new 52 they just happened off panel we didn't see them take place it has happened sometime in the past and so again after going through these various guys these various members of Arkham Asylum some of whom are dressing as villains some of whom are not ultimately comes across this kind of really weird screwed up version of of Justice League which is really kind of crazy I mean it's essentially just employees of Arkham who have no families nobody would notice them missing and wouldn't have any questions as to why they're not there but this is designed for the purpose of kind of forcing Bruce Wayne's aunt you know essentially saying look you know each one of these guys is going to try to pick up the sword in the stone so to speak but it's going to administer an electric shock every time they do and it's going to kill them so either you can go through and you can sit in the chair you know sit on sit on your throne so to speak and spare their lives or you can watch as each one of them dies and so of course ultimately Batman elects to sit on the chair and that's really the end of that he's you know more or less electrocuted and knocked unconscious now of course when he comes to he is directly in you know this cave as it's being held or I guess as he's being being held by the Joker directly this is the Joker being sadistic and twisted this is the Joker basically saying look these faces of the people that you wear that's not who you really are your face is Batman your face is is Nightwing your face is Barbara Gordon and symbolically he's literally cutting their faces off and serving them to them and that's the initial implication here of course Alfred having been Joker eyes essentially you know having experienced exposure to the Joker toxin but when these different trays are opened up the idea seems to be that the faces of of Barbara Gordon Nightwing Damian Wayne so on and so forth those faces have all been cut off and they're being served to them and so again it's it's really twisted but it also falls in line with a complete insanity of the Joker in the sense that this does not make sense to anybody but himself it's just so dark and just so gruesome now of course in the end Batman really just kind of calls it a day you know we're all these different guys where there's they're effectively soaked with gasoline there's Flint's under their chairs so they try to move it'll set the chairs on fire and it'll basically burn them alive the flame is thrown Joker intends to kill them Batman knocks the Joker out of the way and a fight ensues now of course this also leads to Batman freeing out you know freeing the various members of the bat family all of whom are exposed to the Joker toxin once the Joker's too had a cat explodes and it's kind of crazy to see because what this does is it shows us their ability to overcome the Joker toxin in the sense that he was really more designed to kind of wreak havoc on them as opposed to actually kill them but at the same time the fight between the Joker and Batman has some measure of finality now it's not going to be as final as like Batman in game right but it still has some a finality because what that man does is he turns the tables on the Joker and that's what makes it so interesting that Masek we says you know You Know Who I am and that's cool but I know who you are I know what your name is now the implication here in terms of how this unfolds by Scott Snyder really seems to point at the idea that the Joker is a very lonely human being right like the Joker wants somebody else in his life somebody as crazy as he is somebody that views the world the same way he does that the face it he wears is simply a mask hence the reason he cut his face off and had it reattached you know by virtue of strings and staples that he's trying to get Batman and Dick Grayson and I guess Batman and Nightwing and these other members of the bat family to be the same as him but with Batman essentially confronting him and saying I know what your name is I know who you're I know what your secret is it's almost like it's this idea that the Joker wants to stay crazy the Joker doesn't want to know who he is now of course this is going to hit home to the idea of end game and to kind of talk about that a second because we'll refresh that once we get to endgame the whole idea in the Joker's mind is that he and Batman share relationship that nobody else will have that is just part of what they do they just go round and round and round and round The Joker escapes Arkham he's caught by Batman and the cycle continues and that's it that's their thing it's their stick it's what they do this possibility of Batman growing away from the Joker this possibility of Batman walking away from the Joker becoming something greater than what the Joker considers him to be could ultimately mean there would be no more Joker Batman dichotomy instead it would just beat the Joker running from a guy who's not chasing after him anymore and so again the Joker's effectively trying to kind of twist Batman trying to make him into somebody who's crazy trying to make him question everything about himself especially the possibility that his identity might be out there but ultimately the Joker really just kind of like falls off a cliff and that's basically it I mean the the indication here is that the Joker is essentially dead that seems to be what it is that happens where the very Lisa does kind of vanishes but of course we know that he'll make his return an end game which is probably one of the greatest stories that was ever written by Scott Snyder with regards to Batman but again what also happens is in these last few pages of this story when the rest of the bat family is freed when they're basically treated to overcome their exposure to the Joker toxin Bruce Wayne tells Alfred that he had previously gone to Arkham Asylum under the guise of making charitable contributions when he confronted the Joker after the Joker is supposedly left his calling card in the back and Bruce Wayne confronted the Joker with a card and the Joker pretended like like he had no idea the Joker gave off the indication that he had no idea who Bruce Wayne was but that's why this is so important is because if all the Joker cares about is Batman and the Joker doesn't care about Bruce Wayne Bruce Wayne's not relevant to him so long as Bruce Wayne stays the Batman and that's all he cares about that's all he wants and so again it's really this idea that it's all about the Joker reacting to who it is that Bruce Wayne really is and in his mind Bruce Wayne is really Batman you know Bruce Wayne is not Bruce Wayne but the philanthropist the billionaire that's the face that's the costume the actual person that's Batman and so because that it's it's a really really cool exploration into the mind of the Joker to a degree in terms of how he have used the world around him but ultimately because of the fact that that Batman simply didn't reveal to the other members of the bat family that the Joker had broken in to to the Batcave the Joker had accessed their identities seems to be what really puts the nail in the coffin of the bat family hence the name death of the family because in their minds it was an extreme betrayal of trust that if the Joker knew who they were individually the Joker would just track them all down he would destroy their personal lives he would kill everybody around them that they cared about that they knew about and so again Batman keeping this hidden meant that at the end of the day he still didn't trust each of these members of the bat family despite everything they've been through all the fights they've been in all the conflicts they'd worked on together Batman still didn't trust who they were and so it's really just kind of him showing where he is what he's about and for the most part everybody except Dick Grayson really kind of leaves him hanging okay so when it comes to Batman I mean covering in game you know when it comes to Batman it's a very weird situation and the reason why is because of well because of Dark Side war Dark Side war was basically the story that just threw a wrench in everything right because you had like Superman stories and you had Green Lantern stories and you had Wonder Woman stories and flash stories so on and so forth and then suddenly it was Darkseid war now for a lot of people or for a lot of characters it sort of made sense but for Batman it caused all kinds of problems and this is really where the continuity sort of comes into play with the whole DC you creativity over continuity and what-have-you but truth be told if we wanted to if we so chose we could just ignore Batman in game we'd be ignoring an amazing story but we could ignore Batman in-game or we can try to figure out where Batman in-game fits in this game of continuity with regards to DC Comics so my initial thought on this is that if we had to kind of find a place to put it what we could do is we could basically argue that Dark Side war takes place between between death of the family and endgame or we could say it takes place after endgame at some point in time we don't really know at that point is Batman's interest in the Joker is still prevalent though during the events of Dark Side war and so it would make sense that it could possibly take place before Batman in game the problem with this is that if it did take place before Batman in game then we would have seen it reference to in Batman in game and so that's one of the crazy things that goes on with regards little creativity versus continuity so at the end of the day we're just gonna go ahead and like tack this on as the story before the events of a very you know really before going into DC rebirth there are a couple of stories like I don't think graveyard shift is one of them I think the next one is bloom and the one after that is epilogue but those are not wildly important um those are really just kind of stories that are there for the offering of Bruce Wayne with regards to the whole DC you Jim Gordon Batman but that was not a really well-received line of storytelling so we can just kind of pretend like that didn't really happen I enjoyed it but you know for the sake of continuity we're really not gonna worry about that too much but if dr. mains here Batman in game is exactly what it sounds like right I mean it's it's the final event of the Batman comics I mean I know we did in game at one point on my channel here before those videos that I had scripted I think those videos sucked and so we're going back here and we're just redoing it because I think this is better and so because of that with regards to the whole Batman in game landscape it creates a really interesting scenario with regards to this final battle between Joker and Batman and that was really the nature of what it was that Scott Snyder was hitting on Batman and the Joker are the one-two punch of comic books and the reason why is because of the fact that the Joker is the most popular villain and comic books I mean consistently rated and number one at the top of everyone's list the Joker is popular because he's funny because he's dangerous because he's kooky crazy no one knows what it is that he's gonna do the other half of this is that Batman is rapidly becoming a superhero kusa the top of almost everyone's list I mean he consistently outs all Superman's comics the the exception to that is right now in DC rebirth where I think the Superman is outselling Batman because the comics are so good but during the new 52 Batman was outselling Superman by about 50,000 issues a month it was crazy how how much better he was doing but the fact remains that when it comes to these two characters they're just kind of the one-two punch of DC when it's good guys and bad guys and because of that it was always like the two went hand in hand you could not have Batman without the Joker you couldn't reboot Batman without reintroducing the Joker somewhere online Scott Snyder draws on that and says the relationship between Batman and Bruce Wayne transcends comics it transcends the Joker schemes it goes into this realm of something eternal it goes into this realm in this you know eternal battle between good and evil because that's what it represents and so picking up with this whole end game conflict we initially joined Alfred Pennyworth giulia Pennyworth and in Bruce Wayne now Julia pennyworth we can reference here but we don't really need to know much about her and the reason why is because she has banished in DC rebirth as far as I'm aware as far as I'm aware she is gone never be seen or heard from again and so because of this during the events of Batman eternal which was basically this year-long story that took place between the events of death of the family and Emma game Julia pennyworth was introduced as this girl who was the alleged daughter of Alfred Pennyworth and Alfred basically had a broader in she became a part of the bat family but she was really more of like the information backup she was really one that was just kind of there operating behind the scenes very much in the same capacity that we were traditionally used to seeing Alfred Pennyworth perform and so really she's just kind of like the information person think of her as a less significant smaller version of like Oracle from Batman from Barbara Gordon when she was in a wheelchair so in the middle of their whole conversing and talking and so on and so forth Batman's immediately attacked by Wonder Woman now that's what makes this so cool is because of the fact that this is basically Batman taking on the entirety of the Justice League now Batman fighting the Justice League raises as many questions as it answers because if you talk to any Batman fan they'll tell you oh yeah Batman would easily be able to say on Justice League no questions asked I know that because I like him but if you were to talk to like a Wonder Woman fan they'll say no no Batman could never take out the Wonder Woman Wonder Woman's way too capable she's way too strong I know that because I like her Superman the flash Green Lantern the whole nine yards people just stick with the comic book fans that they enjoy the most for example I'll say that forevermore that Professor X is the only good leader of the x-men nobody will ever be as good as him I don't care what people do with Cyclops but the fact remains here that for the character of Bruce Wayne one thing that Scott Snyder's been doing the entire time is just building on the nature of him his intelligence what he's capable of so on and so forth and it's very much a reference to Tower of Babel for those of you guys who don't know tower of Babel was a story that we did a video on but it basically detailed the idea that Batman had these different protocols more or less on how to take down each member of the Justice League but with regards to this scenario it really just kind of pops out of nowhere and so Batman doesn't really have time to enact these protocols and an argument could be made that with regards to this being the new 52 that maybe no such protocols actually exist but regardless of the scenario he does know how to take down these different members of the Justice League he does know how to incapacitate them with the character of Wonder Woman hand-to-hand combat is out of the question Bruce Wayne just does not have the capacity to take her on she is a warrior first and a woman second and so because of that the ability to reason with her isn't there because she's not in her right mind she's not in control of her full faculties and so as a result Bruce Wayne's basically required to kind of bring in this giant mecha-suit and he does what he can he's able to hold her off to a degree but then we actually have her you know what she's kind of defeated to a degree we actually have the flash jumping into the scene now of course this defeat of the flash is super quick I mean it's just some kind of liquid on the ground that's basically slick and it sends flash careening into a building and that's really it but notice Bruce Wayne does this he incapacitates each member of the Justice League in relation to what way is easiest to subdue the flash runs so put him on a ground is too slick for him to gain any traction on and suddenly he might as well just be skating on ice Wonder Woman is a warrior grab a suit that will allow him to basically combat her you know using hand-to-hand combat Aquaman is essentially a fish out of water I don't care what anybody says it's the nature of his character you know put him in a situation to where he basically will not be able to access water and eventually you'll start wreaking havoc on his body structure Superman is the kicker and the reason why is because after all these members of the Justice League had been defeated Superman arrives on the scene now this goes without saying historically speaking you allow any Batman story any Batman line of comics to go on long enough Batman and Superman will fight it's just the nature of the beast it's the way it goes it's just every single time it always happens that way because we like to see them fight I love to see Batman and Superman fight but it always ends up going that route now with regards to Superman's arrival here uh what we're also basically shown is that the Justice League is not in their right mind because of the fact that the Justice League have been Joker eyes they have been infected with the Joker toxin now this creates an even more dangerous situation because it's not as though you know Batman just there's not like you know he just like stole Lois Lane from Superman right it's all he's just like your girl's mind now and he just ran off with Lois Lane and that's the end of that and she just bailed out on Superman that's not the case you know he can't talk Superman down he can't rationalize with Superman he's just running amok he's doing what he's told by the joke Reese's influenced by the Joker's schemes and fighting against Bruce Wayne the caveat to this comes in the caveat of every Batman fight when it comes to Superman invoking kryptonite I cannot think of really any major circumstance where Batman has fought Superman and kryptonite has not been invoked in some form or fashion and so because of this we basically have Batman using kryptonite gum more or less it's basically gone that has kryptonite particles that he just spits to the eye of Superman and that's how he brings Superman down that's really yet but it also makes sense I mean that's the struggle that you have when you have a Batman and Superman a story with the two of them are going to fight the question is how do you have a man who's really smart and really good at fighting but has the normal strength and abilities of a regular human being going against a veritable god how do you in that story effectively you do it the only way you can do and you use kryptonite that is the crux of every argument when it comes to your Batman vs Superman on every form everywhere across the world it's always the idea well what if that man didn't have kryptonite it's like well then he would probably die and that thought would be over really really quick and it wouldn't be interesting at all and so because of that we always you know end up seeing kryptonite invoked here but with the idea of the Joker basically Joker rising the Justice League once they're defeated and turned it's now on Batman to begin going through and finding out why now the reason why this is such a huge deal is because for the most part the Justice League have never really been subdued by the Joker now what this tells us is the lengths the Joker's going to go to in order to try to get his hands on Batman in order to basically take this nail from the realm of being a hey let's just run around and get into a fight to the realm of actually being a dangerous scenario but at this point we transition over to what's left of Arkham Asylum now the reason why I say that is because during the story Batman eternal which basically dealt with the idea of hush rallying the various Batman villains and facing off against Bruce Wayne Arkham Asylum was destroyed in its entirety now there were a few of the things that went into that but ultimately it led to Wayne Manor being confiscated and then transformed into a new Arkham Asylum and so with that in mind one of the orderlies who had worked in Arkham was a guy by the name of Eric border now eric border had about five comic book appearances prior to this particular story and eric was just a guy that Batman had worked with occasionally where they were trying to access like this cell of the Joker or something along those lines but Eric was always a background character that nobody ever had any reason to question he would just kind of show up for a little bit and then he would do something and then that would really be it he was as forgettable as virtually any other character in comics the great thing about Snyder writing is he says yeah but remember that really forgettable guy what if he was a very important guy and what we end up having here is Batman just kind of making his way through Arkham eventually locked in a cell by Eric only for Eric to basically reveal the fact that he is the Joker and so essentially what's been happening this entire time you know throughout all the Batman comics following the events of death of the family as the Joker has been there watching Batman every step of the way the Joker's been walking around Arkham Asylum every step of the way and no one ever had any reason to believe it was him now there were a couple of steps that the Joker took in order to pull this off the first was to basically use what amounted to muscle relaxers in order to keep his grin from giving him away the other half was you know changing the color of his hair changing the color of his skin pigmentation or at least covering his skin pigmentation and making himself look like a normal person but the reason why this is such a huge deal and the reason why this was so significant when it happened was because of the fact that historically speaking the Joker has always just sort of been viewed as this nonsensical comedic character where he just kind of engages in these goofy stupid acts he's not too bright he's certainly not something you know insane criminal genius he's just a guy that you know does stuff Batman chases after him or you know Joker gets locked in Arkham Asylum he escapes and the story continues again what Scott Snyder is basically telling us here is that the Joker is not some buffoon he's not the same kind of goof that we've always thought he's been instead he's a lot smarter than he's previously been given credit for he's a lot smarter than we would traditionally think him to be in the sense that he was basically able to trick everybody including the world's greatest detective into believing that he's either dead or he's only just sitting underground when he was among them the entire time and that's one of the reasons why that's so cool and so with that man effectively you know locked in a Cell the idea is that the Joker is essentially going to run amok throughout the entirety of Gotham City he's going to unleash absolute pandemonium and absolute chaos now the problem with this little bit of storytelling here is that Snyder kind of has to jump around a bit and the reason why is because of the fact that I would imagine that to a degree this story was probably fast-tracked if I were gonna be honest with the eyes I would imagine Batman in game was probably slated to be a seven or eight issue story arc and I certainly think it would have helped to flesh out some of the the small little tidbits here and there but in this instance we don't know how Batman got out of his cell in Arkham Asylum he just did now with regards to Scott Snyder you know having this happen he doesn't in a couple different ways he's like look guys it's Batman he's gonna find a way out I mean it's you know he's not gonna be stuck in a prison cell forever especially not the prison cell of the old Arkham Asylum that he'd visited so many times before surely he would just have to know the ins and outs and he would always have a way out and even if he didn't he would just find a way out for himself whether it's using something out of his infinitely stored utility belt to blow the hole in a wall or whatever the case may be he would always end up finding a way out of his captivity and ultimately go free and so the question that ends up coming to fruition here is if the citizens of Gotham City are basically losing their minds if they are being exposed to a Joker toxin well then why don't we just cure it under normal circumstances that would be the case the Joker has been using the Joker toxin so many tons it'd be very easy to cure it'd be very easy to eliminate the problem with this is that there has been a new ingredient added to the Joker toxin that Batman cannot account for which means that it can't just be cured not only that the true spooky nature of the Joker begins to come into fruition when we have Commissioner Gordon just looking over all these different details and stories and so on of the Joker's past and what we end up finding out is that over the last you know some odd few hundred years or so in all these major calamities and all these major events and all these different terrible scenarios and in everyday life or when random pictures were taken we ultimately ended up finding that Joker was there now if what's being done in this picture is absolutely true what we're seeing is true that it means that the Joker is some two hundred years old which is absolutely mind-blowing in terms of how it all unfolds because then the question becomes if the Joker's two hundred years old then what does that mean for the character of Batman you know does it mean that Bruce Wayne's just kind of living this repetitive life or does it mean that someone like Bruce Wayne has always been there taken bath the Joker again it raises a lot of these really interesting questions when it comes to the two characters because what Scott Snyder was kind of da ting in was this idea that the Joker could in fact be this eternal god of chaos this eternal God of destruction now it does beg a few questions in terms of you know how it comes together I mean this story's older we've done this video before we're just kind of remastering it now so we really know how it ends but you just kind of let ourselves live in the moment for a second it really is kind of a cool scenario because it begs the question if the Joker is the god of chaos if he was the god of order and absolute destruction then how would that unfold is he like an entity is he an essence that just takes over one host after another you know or is he legitimately immortal will he always end up just kind of being reincarnated and you know his body will always resurrect itself how does that all come together that mystery that intrigue that kind of Wow one of the world's going on the cloak-and-dagger element of the Joker's past is what makes this so possible because no one knows the tried and true story of the Joker there's some origins that have more credibility than others The Killing Joke for example the Joker having been Red Hood but the question is is that true or is it just an idea that's maintained because no one knows the right answer is that answer used in place of the absolute truth it's basically supplying the best thing we can offer for an answer because we don't know what the real answer is and so following this if the Joker's effectively waging a one-man war against everything that Batman knows and loves and that's the basis behind this that's the nature of this Bruce Wayne is basically forced to see a repeat of his own past in the form of Joe Chill now for the living guys who are reading all-star Batman right now this is one of the reasons why we're doing Batman in game and this is one of the reasons why the question of Batman in game kanu ax T comes into play because what end up having is the introduction of Duke now of course Duke is basically a boy who's forced to witness the same word he'll force to experience the same kind of a violent scenario as the parents of Bruce Wayne in the sense that he's forced to possibly witness his own parents being killed now of course Batman jumping into the fray Batman stopping the Joker eyes Joe Chill allows Duke's parents to live the issue with this is that they're exposed to the Joker toxin and there doesn't seem to be any way to cure it they're effectively lost and so of course Bruce Wayne grabs Duke and they associate a Koff that's how Duke gets introduced to DC Comics and that's why he plays a pretty significant role in the life of Bruce Wayne because his origin is almost identical to the origin of Jason Todd in the pre-crisis era of Dick Grayson you know before crisis on Infinite Earths and after crisis on Infinite Earths he owed the idea that they had lost their parents under some you know violent circumstance and they're effectively left an orphan just like Bruce Wayne not only that these lengths that the Joker will go to to secure his own ends you know to secure his campaign are shown to have virtually no limits I mean there are babies that are Joker eyes which is pretty twisted and pretty screwed up you know but of course where Jim Gordon is is essentially making this occasion where he's talking directly to to Bruce Wayne saying hey look you know the Joker almost caught me the Joker almost killed me I managed to subdue him ultimately you know the Joker effectively comes back then ends up taking out Commissioner Gordon not really permanently not really killing him I mean he stabs him in the chest with a with an axe so you would think that would basically get him killed but then we end up having you know if we end up having Commissioner Gordon just kind of pop up with his Joker toxin now again at this point it's doing what can be done in order to stem the tide of absolute chaos of Gotham City and that's really the significance of this moment is because the city's just devolving into complete and total pandemonium you have soldiers who are Joker eyes and they're just riding around in tanks carrying out the Joker's wishes and wants you have people who are just ripping the town apart I mean it's just absolutely nuts and it's a really really cool moment to see and it's a really cool bit of chaos that goes on here and the reason why is because there's always been this sort of decorum with the Batman landscape right like like things get close you know things that close to the point where maybe Gotham is a little bit beyond redemption maybe it's a little bit beyond hope but it never quite crosses that line the city of Gotham never quite steps off that ledge there's really no one to push it there and an argument could be made that all the Joker's really doing here is exposing Gotham for what it really is a city that's just slowly spiraling out of control and Batman doing the best he can to stem the flow but what happens when this wall that's got these few punctures here and there and water spewing in and Batman's keeping the water coming in with a little bits of gum what happens when somebody starts blowing a hole in that wall well there's no one to stem the tide he's basically just revealing Gotham for its true nature the insanity of the city the fact that it's beyond any real measure of hope the fact that it is a city that's quite literally just in a state of self destruction now of course Bruce Wayne's journeys and his desire to try to figure out what's going on with this hidden chemical compound is in this virus brings him to a villain by the name of crazy quilt now as far as I'm aware crazy quilt as he exists here in the new 52 is a wholly new creation or kind of a rework by Scott Snyder but this is the first time we've seen him of course he's a Jack Kirby character that goes all the way back to really before the new 52 and maybe even shortly after crisis on Infinite Earths possibly even before um but this is really just kind of like a new iteration of him but he's really just a guy who's kind of obsessed with you know with with you know science and medicines and studies and so on and so forth but he's a guy who always sort of felt like you is playing second fiddle and kind of left out of this bigger circle of Greater guys you know in comparison like Hugo Strange and dr. death and so on and so forth because those are scientists in the community of villains who are viewed to be the best of their sort crazy quilts just kind of consider to be like this B or C less guy and so what he's really doing here and the reason why he's allied himself with the Joker is to try to solidify himself as being one of the foremost scientists in the realm of villainy and the motivation behind this is a chemical that's called Dionysian now this is where Scott Snyder begins to move the story away from like mythology and you know weird mystery and intrigue and possibly even some some ghost storytelling and basically moves it back into the realm and brings it back to being grounded in science and in reality and structure at least as close as you can get to reality with a comic book but what Snyder also does is he invokes guys like Vandal Savage he invokes guys like Ra's al Ghul and he says these are not just mystical beings you know Vandal Savage is not some guy who is just inherently immortal it doesn't work that way Ra's al Ghul is not a guy who just stumbled across a Lazarus Pit one day and just sort of dippin himself in it the reason why they are immortal is because of Dionysian but Vandal Savage was the first and only person to encounter Dionysian in its most pure form Ra's al Ghul found it but it's corrupted and it's the reason for why whenever he Dells himself into the pool he comes out with temporary madness the Dionysian that the Joker uses is an even more impure version and that's something that I hope you noticed that it's basically stages of impurity that move you closer and closer to madness the most pure version has no side effects of complete madness an impure version or Realty a relatively impure version can bring you a temporary madness as in the form of someone who emerges out of the of the Lazarus pits and if a version is too impure it'll simply drive you insane which seems to be the case with the Joker now of course with regards to Dekker himself the motivation here is that he was basically told by the Joker look if you help me out I will give you Dionysian it'll effectively make you immortal and you can use this substance for whatever you no desire whatever a dream it is that you have of course against the wishes of Batman he injects himself with this syringe and ultimately his body begins breaking down on the really on the on the genetic level on the cellular level and he really just kind of goes to pieces now of course this is really Snyder kind of giving us a timetable it's him fast tracking things what we end up finding out here is that with regards to the Joker himself in terms of like the pale man mythos it's what he's been building on his entire life and his entire existence and we'll get more to that once we get closer to the ending of this story but the reason why this is fast-tracked and the reason why we're given a really quick timetable is because we're seeing what the end result of smudger to this virus is going to be there's effectively a 24-hour window between the time that a person is exposed to the virus and the time that a person ends up with the same fate as crazy cruel the reason why he died so fast is because he had it immediately ingested into his bloodstream whereas individuals who breathe it in as a gas have a little bit more time before they effectively die and so because of this Batman takes the only route that he can take in terms of trying to find out what Dionysian is if it even really exists in Gotham City and he travels back to the court of owls now remember the court of owls was this organization that had existed for hundreds of years we talked about that with regards to our court of owls and Night of owls story it was an organization that had been existing as part of the criminal underworld in Gotham for hundreds of years and Batman didn't know about it but the talents do have access to something that is effectively able to resurrect the debt this of course leaves Batman to ask the question what is going on what do you guys know about this substance have you ever used it now of course this is again confirmation of the fact that the court of owls uses Dionysian to basically resurrect those individuals who were talents and then have them work for the court themselves in addition to the electrum chemical that they have ingested inside of their body by virtue of their bloodstream and long term exposure again we covered that in our video about night of owls but the fact remains here that in the eyes of the court the court are actually ready to let Gotham City die and that's really kind of the crazy situation about this is because you would think that it would just simply be a mutual desire to keep that city going but that's not the case the court basically makes the argument look this city is going to die I mean this city is gonna be destroyed it'll be rebuilt once the Joker leaves and then we will again be rulers of this city once it comes back to the way that is supposed to be we were literally guided and and molded into the image that we desire and so because of that you know what we end up having is the Joker essentially sneaking in the Batcave again this is basically Scott Snyder grabbing all these different elements crowding all these different things or the instance where Batman had talked about how somewhere along the line the Joker had gained access to the Batcave it's a reference to this yet again the Joker has gained access to the Batcave again the difference here is that Alfred tries to take him out with a shotgun now this is kind of cool because this is Alfred being pretty hard-ass and we really kind of know that with his character when it comes down to it Alfred's got it where it counts he's not the strongest he's not the best fighter but come hell or high water he will protect the Batcave and Batman as best he can and so Alfred of course his hand is chopped off now this is why I say we can really kind of look at the idea of endgame and we can determine its continuity for ourselves because al firs hand is not cut off in DC rebirth his hand is well intact and unless he managed to grow a new one I do not believe there's an explanation of how this reconciles with the existing Batman continuity I think it's just kind of ignored and it just really just kind of left there um it may have been reattached in a story that I'm not familiar with but as far as I'm aware like it was just cut off and that was really the end of that but with the Joker kind of going through with this massive parade throughout Gotham City as grotesque as it is ultimately the bat family kind of stems things off as best they can they do what they can to kind of save the day but it ultimately comes down to Batman actually making friends with the various members of its rogues gallery and again this is really one of those scenarios worse just a mutually assured destruction em ad if they don't act together and so it's really in the best interest of the various villains poison ivy Clayface so on and so forth to work together in order to bring the Joker down now this also begins the process of us being able to see Clayface become a good guy and that's one of the cool things it's slow it's a very very slow build but these are the baby steps these are the things that eventually lead into that and so what is I'm happening is of course Batman comes up with a plan because as Batman and he's always got a plan and the story's got to end somehow and so one of them happening here is it's really like Dick Grayson dresses Batman serving to distract the Joker and where the Joker initially believes he's effectively taking control of that man basically hasn't held captive ultimately when the ruse is revealed and it turns out to be Dick Grayson the Joker immediately picks up on the fact that Batman's found dionisije him and so of course with the various bombs planted around the die and you see em - Lee having been not really deactivated but basically kind of held off by Julia pennyworth what this does is it leads to a final confrontation between the Batman and the Joker now the reason why this is so huge and the reason why this is so important is because Scott Snyder is doing a lot more than just saying and it's Batman and the Joker fighting each other it's not like that instead this battle is designed to represent every ounce of conflict the two have ever had every instance where they've ever fight going all the way back to Batman number one every instance where the Joker and Batman have come together they've engaged in some campaign and the Joker's defeated and he goes to Arkham Asylum this is designed to be the story to end all stories the battle to end all battles between the Joker and Batman in the traditional sense now as we know in DC rebirth we will see like the three Joker's that's really what's just kind of being hinted at that's a story that's gonna be given to us and that of course comes out of Darkseid war again a little bit of a kind of a continuity going back and forth but even the Joker himself really kind of makes comments to the idea that it is it's almost comedic they've been fighting for so long they've been enemies for so long this was really the only end result this is Scott Snyder hitting to the idea of like The Killing Joke right you know when Batman goes and he sits down and he talks to the Joker and says you know if we keep going one of us is going to die it's grabbing all these themes of Batman throughout the decades of his storytelling and bringing them all together into one cohesive story and saying this was the most logical outcome somewhere on the line there was going to be a battle to the death between Batman and the Joker now the funny thing about this is that the Joker's sanity were at the very least what seems to be the illusion of sanity begins to basically come to the surface when Batman effectively prevents him from accessing the Dionysian in order to basically go through and heal himself from his injuries and maintain his longevity but in this moment of desperation the tables are turned Batman seems to be the insane one Batman is one that doesn't care whether he lives or dies he's ready to die with the Joker the Joker struggling to live The Joker struggling to come out on top and that's why this is so cool is because it's a reversal of what we're used to in the last few moments of what seems to be their lives Batman and the Joker switch places suddenly Batman's the guy who doesn't care anymore and the Joker's the one that cares about living so again it's kind of a cool little bit of a scenario here but and what appears to be the death of Bruce Wayne we pick up basically two weeks later with you know the bat-signal basically being broadcast out in terms of just memoriam of sorts the bat family of course seeming to grieve Alfred definitely not being able to get over this but it's also this idea that even Alfred and Julia have to come to grips with the fact that it was inevitable that Batman was going to die it was inevitable that Bruce Wayne was going to die as Batman because his life is tragedy that's what his life is and it was never going to be anything other than that because he was almost like a martyr it was almost like this idea of I'll fight as best I can I'll stem off against the bad guys as best I can but if I die maybe it'll inspire other people to take up my mantle and become even better superheroes then I was it was really just kind of setting himself up for the purpose of keeping the Batman legacy and keeping the Batman mantle continuously going on but with that being said guys we are gonna go ahead and bring this video to an end if you are new here to come let's explain make sure you ask the sub button to become part of the rob4 if you guys enjoyed this video make sure you drop a like again we can really just kind of drop it off here we know Batman's alive so we know that he survived the experience but we can go ahead and kind of drop it off here wrap up our new 52 Batman explanation series let me know what you guys think down in the comments in terms of scott Snyder's Batman run I think it's absolutely stellar and yeah I will catch you all later peace [Music]

Channel: Comics Explained

Views: 842,598

Rating: 4.7710223 out of 5

Keywords: comicsexplained, marvelexplained, fluidicbeats, Comics, Comic Books, batman, New 52, DC Rebirth, Court Of Owls, City Of Owls, Night Of Owls, End Game, Death Of The Family, Nightwing, Robin, Damian Wayne, Batgirl, Dick Grayson, Red Hood, Jason Todd, Bruce Wayne, Full Story, The Joker, Scott Snyder, Justice League, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman

Id: l7ROfxwI-qE

Length: 101min 29sec (6089 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 20 2018