The Batman Who Laughs: Full Story | Comics Explained

you know I haven't even had a shower yet I was gonna put part 7 in C as his own video but I decided not to I just have to put at the end of the full story video so the Batman who lives the full story okay so we are picking up with the Batman who laughs which is a miniseries this being written right now is originally I thought it was an ongoing series but it's a mini series I don't really know how you make an ongoing series out of the Batman who lasts and yellow character like him could only ever really be like a mini or a maxi series like 6 or 12 issues long but this is a monthly series which means that we have December in the January February March April and May is when it concludes assuming that they stick with a six-issue format and there's no delays having said that this character was crazy popular and I knew like as soon as Batman who last struck like Oh soon as dark nights but will happen it was a version of Batman who became the Joker like I knew his only ever matter Tom before we got a mini-series or something like that because people loved it like I mean you guys loved the idea of the Batman who laughs I do this is amazing but the other cool thing about this is that this is kind of like a return to form for Scott Snyder when it comes to Batman not to say his Justice League is bad or anything I love his Justice League I love the work that he's been doing so far but to me Scott Snyder is is best when he's on Batman because he just writes the characters so well and so what this does is this initially picks up with a handful of guys who were basically smuggling things out of Gotham now this is the way Scott Snyder writes Batman those of you guys who read his new 52 runs so quarter bowels knight of owls death of the family and in game that a lot of us just kind of like Batman being a detective while being a hero at the same time they kind of explain to you what's happening as it's going on and what we end up learning here is that among the various schemes that different criminals have in Gotham City that one of them involves smuggling things out of out of town and into other cities by way of using order basically transport trucks these giant flatbeds are designed for the purpose of moving houses and you have we have these old you know houses that are being moved out of Gotham City in order to build condos but what's been going on here is that inside these flatbed trucks are like these small little segments these small little compartments they can be used to house contraband and no one's the wiser because as far as any cop looking at them is concerned they're just moving houses out there is removing houses to make way for condos and and that's really the end of that but where Batman kind of shows up here it's really kind of Batman par for the course where just to say him going through and and tracking these guys down talking to Alfred on the other end and then locating you know what's inside these compartments what's basically here now where Batman takes these guys out almost right off the bat he in turn analyzes the compartment figures out where it's at and then basically cracks it open and when he does there's basically a kind of stasis pod of sorts and inside this pod this casket is basically a version of himself and that's when things really begin to pop off and that's when it gets cool when you start to get in the introspective stuff because that's what Schneider does right I slide is like okay so business as usual until it's not until like things pop off and it starts to go crazy and then you kind of have to figure out what in the world is going on and so what ends up happening here is where he basically dresses up as like a board guy and then going through and analyzing his own body Batman he almost kind of has a little bit of a crisis of self here right like he looks at this whole thing and he says okay so this is basically me and Alfred has the hardest time grasping this because remember Alfred is looking at all this through the camera provided by Batman on his on his own body as osan like Alfred can see Bruce Wayne and then the version of himself on the table for Alfred he's looking at Bruce Wayne on the table and not only that where they start going through and they start looking at this version of Bruce Wayne they start seeing things where he's basically the opposite of the main DC universe Bruce you know these the opposite of Bruce Wayne for rebirth in the sense that this version of Bruce he had a happy life and in a lot of ways it almost kind of seems to be the life that Bruce Wayne envies this version of Bruce Wayne had wrinkles on his eyes which indicated laughter he had a ring on his finger he was married to Selina Kyle he has a tattoo called May that's the name that Bruce would have chosen had he and Selina Kyle got married and had a child this is one of those things where you look at that and you say this Bruce came from a perfect life basically he had the perfect life that somewhere along the line that he has all the same scars as a DC rebirth Bruce Wayne off to the point when he was big when he basically had his back broken by Bane and that seems to be the change in in status quo right like in the in the main DC Universe Bruce Wayne fought against Bane right let you know Bane was this guy from Santa Prisca prison and he figured out Bruce Wayne's identity is Batman in like three months and basically instituted this this kind of guerrilla warfare campaign and that's when when he basically broke the back of Batman and when he did it was expected the Batman would be out of commission instead Batman eventually took time to recover and he ultimately went back to being Batman again and this alternate reality that doesn't seem to have been the case that Bruce's back was broken by Bane and then he just never went back to being Batman he stayed as a person who has essentially hands-off which kind of begs the question what happened at jean-paul Valley because in the time when Bruce Wayne's back was broken and the time he came back to being Batman jean-paul Valley took up the mantle for himself but you know this version of Bruce from this alternate reality seems to have taken up more of a human in role he worked on civil projects different things like that so he accepted his fate with his back broken and just kind of went forward accordingly somebody somewhere had basically killed him and we don't know who it was and so again it's it's kind of crazy because this is the life that Bruce always wanted no athene ever got and to see it on the face of someone basically meant that the life he had was essentially taken away in a lot of ways it's a personal loss here he found tried and true happiness and he was yanked away why like that's the question that he wants the answer to more so from here we switch over to Arkham Asylum we have a couple guards running through and then we have Batman who basically appears here and it's kind of funny because in this initial conversation between Bruce and Alfred Bruce says you know where we have to go we have to go see him and so then we switch back over to Arkham and then we essentially have like Batman go on a warpath and start killing all these guards he's decked in guns he's got all kinds of arms and armament the guy is loaded for bear and this is something that we don't normally see like you never see Batman really use guns you do like once in a blue moon but aside from the 1940s late 1930s early 1940s during the Golden Age when Batman did actually kill people they usually use more for like fear tactics is to show how extreme Batman is at the time as opposed to the fact that he would actually use it on a person but going through and killing every last one of these guards these guys are innocents you know these guys are not people who are inherently vindictive like they're not people who are bad people they're people with their own lives her own family so on and so forth so this is a merciless version of Batman he kills a member of his own rogue's gallery he's going through and it's literally a one-man army from there he basically breaks into one of the cells and freeze the Joker at least it seems like he's freeing the Joker that was kind of interesting because from the Joker's perspective it really is the arrival of Bruce Wayne and Bruce Wayne snapped right and as we know from The Killing Joke it's like the one thing the Joker always wanted to show Batman then all it takes is one bad day to essentially kind of snap to break and to become some sort of villain and that's the de Joker's mantra but on the other side of that coin it's the thing that Joker doesn't want the most The Joker needs Batman he has to have him there without Batman Joker's and complete he has no real purpose Batman is the yin to Joker's yang and so where he kind of taunted for a second at least hawkster that says you know are you here to kill me you know somebody just says no instead the Batman who last shows up and it's just like wow as soon as I saw this always like holy cow you know it is crazy because because Joker starts begging for his life and that's uh that's that's very uncharacteristic of the Joker right like the Joker never begged for his life the Joker he would just start laughing maniacally you know because well this is the end of the Joker this is how it ends almost as if it was kind of like some ironic sad tale that the Joker always imagined that Batman would be the one to kill him and instead it ends up being a Batman who lasts that's one thing to bear in mind is that the Joker knows who the Batman who lost is he knows who he's about but before he even has a chance to respond the Batman who lost smashes him in the head without with a hatchet and kills the Joker and it's just like wow and so switching over to Batman basically following up on the death of the Joker this is what we ended up learning it wasn't actually the Joker now in reality this is an important thing in reality if you're new to comic books this would seem like well that's dumb but in truth like this this is the nature of the Joker right like this is not so many scott Snyder's pulling out of his backside he's not taking the cheap way out did the Joker if he if he senses that his end is coming if he senses of somebody anybody besides Batman is gonna kill him what he'll do is you'll take one of his dummies and he'll switch them out we've seen him do that multiple times over the years so again that's par for the course it's like the coin of two-face is like big gun of Victor fries it's just part of the Joker's character as part of what he does so that's a very important thing to understand because it'll shift your perspective on why this happened and why it played out the way it did again it's not Scott Snyder taking the easy way out it's just the major of what the Joker does constantly and so where Batman ends up traveling back to the Batcave what he ends up doing here is is basically speaking with Alfred and saying you need to open the door to the waterway and when and when Alfred responds is one of protests Batman's responses you have to do this and that's what we end up realizing that inside the waterway is the actual Joker himself now there's a reason why this happens so we need to kind of jump all the way back to the new 52 really going forward from like death of the family to endgame and the reason why is because when it comes to Scott Snyder is storytelling a Batman it all feeds in right like Scott Snyder kind of goes on the assumption that you're familiar with his Batman story is Batman run at the start of new 52 in order to understand what's going on now so to kind of explain that um when the new 52 first kicked off there was a single issue like a like an annual or like a special or something like that from a tech to college that featured the Joker and then we didn't we didn't hear from him for like two years and it wasn't until death of the family when the Joker returns but you basically end up realizing the Joker has been doing a lot of things behind the scenes the Joker's been removing his face and he basically has a kind of sewn back on again he Institute's like the systematic destruction of the Batman family he goes through and he wages kind of a one-man war against Batman which culminates an endgame you learn things like the Joker is essentially immortal by consuming dionisije M different things like that but one of the things that Snyder establishes is that in the early days of Bruce's career is Batman between the time when he was full-on Batman and the time that there the Batcave was formed then what had happened was he had basically face off against the Joker you know things he kind of got awry that Joker seemed to have been defeated but the Joker he basically stowed away and followed Batman to the Batcave and figured out where Batman resided and so again it was it was kind of interesting because that fed into death of the family when the bat family realizes this they realized that Joker's always know where they operated out of and at any point in time their identities could have been leaked at any point in time their personal lives could have been destroyed and Batman didn't tell anyone it was a betrayal of the bat family was like the big betrayal the Batman hid the fact that the Joker knows where the Batcave is and so that's why this is significant here is because it's like the common meeting ground is the one place Batman would expect the Joker to show up if the Joker believed his life was in danger and the Joker was looking for some measure of safe haven and that's what Batman tells him you're safe here and and the Junkers I don't want to be safe pulls a gun on Batman and hits Joker in the heart and that's exactly what the Joker was aiming for and what is up happening here is the worst fear of Batman exactly as it played out with a Batman who last that would the Joker dying the toxin in his chest begins to leak out to infect the next person that killed him to turn them into the Joker and when that happens in infection Batman and wouldn't infect Batman he turns into the Batman who laughs and when the questions asked why did Joker do this the Joker said because you can't stop him unless you become him okay so we are continuing the Batman who laughs miniseries and uh yeah okay I'm I'll be honest man like let it sit the same thing I said in the first in the first issue like this is so cool and jock is the one who okay so jock someone doing the art those you guys don't know I'm pretty sure jock was the one who did the art for witches and if you guys never read Scott Snyder switches you are seriously missing out your Scout Snyder's which is is ridiculously good I can't wait to get into witches too but it's it's it's pretty wild anyway so so what are these to pick up on here and kind of rehash because it's been a little while been a few weeks since we did the first one and we do a cert catching up to do because I mean it is January so was the time of year we just kind of lay back and just do like three videos a week or something like that then we start picking things back up again something once we get into like February and March with this whole idea the Batman who lost the Batman who last was like the most popular character to come out of Dark Knight's metal right like I think we can all agree on that but the Batman who last was just resoundingly popular because there was the answer to the question what would happen if Batman became the Joker and the idea this is the Batman who last it always has kind of been in the background following Dark Knight's medal he was never actually defeated and it wasn't really until recently until this miniseries but we actually have him doing things he was kind of in the beginning him of immoral men a little bit but he was more in the beginning of a mortal man for the purpose of like drawing in leadership than actually doing anything worthwhile but the long and short of what we've seen so far just in the first really the first a second issue so far is that the Batman who last has a plan we just don't know exactly what it is but remember the entire basis behind how the Batman who last became what he was was when the Joker had essentially been killed and then released a kind of Joker toxin that infected Bruce Wayne and turned him into the Joker which turned him into the Batman who laughs and so the idea is that when Joker kind of appears to Bruce Wayne at the end of the first issue and then offs himself that is essentially like okay the Joker's like you're the only one who can defeat the Batman who laughs you have to become me in order to beat him and then Joker basically tries to off himself in an effort to like spread the toxin out the difference here is that it doesn't happen right off the bat because of the fact that that Bruce Wayne is aware of who the Batman who laughs is and the origin story of his character he's trying to like stem the flow and so what's basically going on here is Bruce is kind of transforming they're trying to keep it at bay while at the same time the Joker's being worked on if the Joker dies but that's when the toxin really gets released and there's no coming back but in this instance what Bruce Wayne has been doing is literally pumping himself with every kind of Joker toxin they have but that's one of the important things to bear in mind here is that the toxin within the Joker's heart is so potent that it can't really be stuck all the other versions of the Joker toxin that exists out there those have antidotes right like that's what Bruce Wayne's been using over the years is using those antidotes to those versions of the Joker toxin synthesizing an antidote if the toxin is new and then using it to cure people this is a perfect strain it's a perfect and pure strain and so there is no antidote for there's no conceivable way to overcome it and so the best that Bruce can do is stave it off and so while that's happening what he's trying to do here is understand what the Batman who laughs is trying to do and so in the midst of all this while all that's going on what we end up having is some guy who's driving and suddenly like a version of Bruce Wayne lands on top of his car now this freeze in Commissioner Gordon and it brings in what appears to be Harvey Bullock now with Commissioner Gordon he's kind of working on the other half of this case or the first part of the case kind of the front side is the Batman who laughs is back what's his plan the back side is all these different versions of Bruce Wayne from what are basically what seem to be like the dark tubers are popping up now that's kind of the the caveat here is initially it seemed to be dark multiverse versions of Bruce Wayne this does not appear to be true instead what it seems to be our verses of Bruce from across the multiverse not versions of Bruce Wayne from the dark multiverse and the reason why is because with that multiverse itself it was basically full of what like like worst-case scenarios what if Superman became a bad guy and killed everybody on earth what if Batman became the Joker and then became an evil version of Batman like that's the kind of thing you see in the dark multiverse this version of Bruce like the other version who had died and the other versions that have appeared off panel that have been discovered by Commissioner Gordon are good versions of Bruce this one in particular was actually mayor of Gotham City the problem with this is that while all that happens one of the rookies basically walks up to Harvey Bullock starts talking to him and Harvey Bullock starts freaking out and that's when we end up learning this is actually Bruce Wayne with the Joker toxin and that's what's so crazy about this is Bruce is walking a knife's edge right now at any moment he could fall over he could literally flip over the other side and become the Joker he's doing the best he can D to kind of hold it together but there's a limit to all this the other half and this is this is one of the cool things about Scott Snyder writing is Bruce reveals something that we didn't really know before and so one of the things he does here is he draws what's basically called the last laugh and the idea was that if Gotham City were ever attacked which is to say if it was like a chemical weapon or if there was some kind of toxin that was released across the city or whatever it is but the city itself just sort of fell into absolute madness now there were all these tunnels that have been designed over the years they were basically allow for for fast travel of like food and supplies and means by which the city could essentially be fixed but what Bruce Wayne has been working on is his own version of last life because the fact that the Joker toxin is so so powerful and presumably coming out of the events of Batman in Game one of the things that Bruce Wayne devised is that there had to be a means by which the city could be cured he could literally pump an antidote into the entire city itself and cure everyone and so by working on that one of the things he says is that this is a system by which Gotham can be saved but it's also a system by which Gotham can be destroyed and the initial response of Commissioner Gordon is well then what's the huge concern here and the response to Bruce Wayne is to say that you can only access it using DNA and that's when we pick up with the Batman whoo laughs and that's what's so great about this is because the Batman who laughs is an evil version of Bruce he essentially had all the same experiences as Bruce Wayne up into the point when the Joker died and he was hit with the toxin and then went crazy and so because he thinks he feels he functions in the exact way as Bruce Wayne in the main DC Universe he would do the exact same things Bruce would which means he's he's aware of the exact same things Bruce's and so that's when really Snyder kind of tells us indirectly that all these things that Bruce Wayne's doing in the main DC Universe the Batman who lasted in his universe and so with that happening with that in mind Batman who last shows up at Wayne Manor which is the only access point to this last laugh tunnel that Bruce Wayne's been building and then in turn basically begins to access it now the only real guardian here is a guy named Bill and the initial inclination is like how does Bill not know this is Bruce Wayne only for us to find out that Bill's blind as it was kind of a cool thing because what this would do is it would actually allow Bruce Wayne to access this aspect of Wayne tower and for Bill to never really know Bruce Wayne's face or at least to never really know that it was actually him now the fact that Bill refers to him as mr. Wayne indicates that Bill knows exactly who Bruce Wayne is and the Batman who last makes his way in there and what he does we see an aspect of his character we don't normally see when it comes to this version of Bruce and when we saw him in Dark Knight's metal he was really more like the second-in-command he was a guy who was running alongside Barbados but when you throw him into the story what it does is it shows he's just as capable as we would expect it's all the formidable formidable abilities of Bruce Wayne combined with the insanity of the Joker which basically makes for him going through and killing every single member of Wayne security inside this section of Wayne Tower with no limits whatsoever one of the other cool things here and it really kind of underscore the fact that he and Bruce thinks so much alike is that once all these guys are dead he counts down and three two one BAM enters Batman and that's kind of the cool thing here is because what it means and what it really shows here is that ruse Wayne fighting this evil version of himself that it really seems to be an even match and in fact as this fight unfolds Bruce comments on it proper that he says well I'm stronger but I'm not faster and so because of the fact that he's able to fight so capably what this means is he can overcome me because of the fact that he knows exactly how I function he knows the weaknesses he knows what kind of weapons he needs in order to overcome my various suits of armor and the kind of defense mechanisms that I employ and it's kind of a funny thing here because Bruce gets the upper hand on the Batman who lasts and when Bruce kind of basically says like your whole plan stops here the response about I knew last is what makes you think this is not part of my plan and that's the cool that's what I loved so much about his character it is Scott Snyder writes them in such a way that you have to assume everything that happens happens according to the will of the Batman who lasts that if he's defeated is because he wanted to be defeated because he wanted to be taken to a particular location and he knew he would be taken to that location if he was defeated because he knows how Batman works as a you have to assume that he knows everything that's going to happen or at the very least has planned it all out ahead of time and this all really comes to a head when Bruce Wayne is shot and this is cool because what that man who laughs does as he says there's basically this guy out there this version of Bruce Wayne who's out there he's called the grim Knight he's basically Batman as the Punisher that this version of Bruce Wayne is far more extreme and the way he came into existence was by virtue of the fact that when Joe chills shot Thomas and Martha Bruce Wayne picked up a gun and shot Joe Chill the implication seems to be that Joe Chill shot Thomas and Martha and then dropped the gun out of perhaps panic or fear whatever the case was and ran and in that moment Bruce Wayne picked the gun up and shot Joe Chill and that set him on the path of killing every criminal he finds and so what that man who lasts does does kind of reveal everything to Bruce and say you built this entire place in order to ensure that Gotham could be saved in the event of an emergency by pumping out some antidote how many uses as a means to destroy the city and the response of ruse is well you can't do that because the building can only really be used in that regard if it's empty and the response about and he lashes I know and all these safeguards that you have in place have all been dismantled by the Grimm Knight he's done it all over the pillow over the last couple days so I'm going to destroy this building I'm to destroy your ability to basically save the city of Gotham in this moment there's nothing that can be done there's nothing Bruce Wayne can do the best you can do is escape he grabs bill he uses one of those little grappling hooks they escape they escape Wayne Tower and the entire building comes crashing down around them and so what this means is the means by which Gotham can be saved based on whatever plan the Batman who last has is gone there's no real way to believe that it can be done in any real measure of time because you have to assume that whatever planet is the Batman who last has whatever plan he has has base is going to be predicated on what Bruce Wayne would most likely do so again overcoming the odds by knowing how his enemy functions and so with Bruce Wayne returning back to to Wayne Manor and running up to Alfred its wick the Joker up you have to wake him up now what we end up realizing here is Joker's been awake the entire time he's been listening to the discussions of Bruce and Alfred and where he's been kind of laughing and they've been assuming it's a reaction in reality he's laughing at the futility of their choices he's laughing at the futility of their efforts to try to stop the Batman who lasts because the responsive you know really with Bruce here the idea is you have to know the answer you have to know what it is that the man who last wants he's basically you from an alternate reality only you really seem to be the one that knows how his mind works tell me what he's going to do and the response to the Joker is I don't know what he's gonna do there's only one person out there in the entire world who knows exactly what it is a Batman who last is going to do and that person is none other than James Gordon jr. the son of Commissioner Gordon and the guy who's basically nuts okay so we are uploading this kind of late um because I just got back from Disney World I had an amazing trip it was awesome I probably have a video about it on my vlogging channel but we are covering the Batman who laughs part three and in the last video we basically picked up with essentially the return of James Gordon jr. now James Gordon jr. is the son of Commissioner Gordon of James Gordon and of course the brother of Barbara Gordon Batgirl but the cool thing about James Gordon jr. is that he's imagine the Joker if he was rational which I know kind of takes away from the premise of like a psychopath but when it comes to James Gordon jr. he's one of these guys where all he did was like think and plan ways to like wipe out people destroy things cause as much like you know pandemonium and chaos is he possibly could and so because that of course he was basically in prison and of course he was put in a program where it was basically a a drug that was produced by Wayne pharmaceuticals that could essentially cure a person who was a psychopath and if I were correctly from Batman eternal and from forever evil the idea was to test the drug on James Gordon jr. to see if it would work on like the Joker or somebody like that he was kind of a test subject more or less but for the most part it's been working while he takes two shots a day like test his blood you know to make sure that everything's still in effect and so on and so forth he gets kind of nuts in terms of how he how he lives his life but it's super super strict to make sure he doesn't go back to doing what he was doing before but the idea behind this is you know for those guys who were catching up the idea behind this was that the Joker when he was taken prisoner by Batman I really kind of brought in by Batman and then so on everything kind of unfolded is that James Gordon jr. is the key to stopping the Batman who lasts and we didn't really know how far this key extended right like we really know what doors it unlocked but that's essentially what this kind of does when you have James Gordon meeting with his son it's really kind of Scott Snyder giving us this refresher and say here's what James has been doing but then of course the group is met with the arrival of Batman and this is when things get kind of cool because what Bruce says under normal circumstances when Bruce Wayne approaches someone yes he watched them for a particular purpose but he wants to make sure the things stay on the up-and-up when he approaches James Gordon jr. what he says is I don't want the version that's doing what he's supposed to do like I don't want the one who's a good guy I want the murderer like I want the murderer of the killer that could a crazy psychopath that's the version that I want and the whole idea behind this is as Batman explains is that the Batman who lies is implementing a plan to essentially like to destroy Gotham now we don't know exactly what this plan is in its entirety we just know like the Batman who last wants to unleash pandemonium and chaos and the way this Snyder plays this out is it looks like it'll be something that's far more extreme than like Batman in game those you guys you never read Batman in game what we ended up finding out was the Joker had this plan to assist release Joker toxin across the entire city of Gotham and to send the city into like like mass hysteria and in like you know chaos and and panic and so on and so forth and it worked he actually did it like it was it was kind of nuts the way it all played out but of course with Batman using the last laugh plan which was essentially using like the tunnels of Gotham to essentially pump out like a cure to the Joker toxin we're all that's kind of out the window now the idea is to know what the joke what the Batman who last plan is going to be and because James Gordon jr. is a legitimate psychopath who spent a majority of his life just like analyzing and trying to find ways to destroy things he's the best person to go to because right now they can't really they can't get answers from the Joker it was kind of cool because what this is is an act of desperation while James Gordon jr. is a psychopath he's not exactly like the Batman who lost the Batman who last is a combination of the Joker and Batman it's an answer to the question what would happen if Batman became the Joker and so the best person to go to is the Joker but the Joker is not spilling the beans he's not giving any real answer and the only answer he did give is go find James Gordon jr. he's the answer you were looking for and so that's literally why Batman's following these breadcrumbs and following these directions is because he's a really have a choice here it's kind of funny because James Gordon jr. does not want to do any of this stuff James Gordon jr. is like I don't want to do this like I do not want to jump into this scenario again I don't want to go back to being that version of myself so he's very much against the idea which really kind of ties Batman's hands and so when they try to reason with him and they say like put down the scanner and and like talk to us he says like I'm not the one with this red dot meaning somebody's targeting them and that's whenever when when like all hell starts to break loose because of course the group is met by the arrival of what's basically Punisher Batman and this is cool because Punisher Batman and like Batman himself actually face off against each other it's basically a guy who's shooting to kill versus a guy who's not and they're able to like dodge the attacks of each other so for the most part it's it's a stalemate insofar as one of them kind of gets the upper hand yo Batman kind of gets the upper hand on Punisher Batman but not really and the reason why is because we're Punisher Batman it's kind of caught unawares we're like a grappling hook and basically kind of left dangling over over a bridge and whatnot you end up having him basically like bringing all these different vehicles and so on and then say like there's a jet flying above us and if you do not give me James Gordon I'm gonna destroy the jet I'm gonna destroy one of its one of its uh one of its engines this is cool because what this does is it again hints at the idea and really kind of point to the idea of how capable this evil alternate reality version of Batman is but in his universe there are no villains there's no Joker no scarecrow no penguin no two-face no nothing he's killed them all that he has basically gone through and like Isis like controls the entire city of Gotham right even hits it like no hits home at what he calls the colony and so that's really kind of Scott Snyder basically bringing in the idea of like Tom King and James tan Ian's Batman runt or Batman Detective Comics run when you have the colony right like this organization that essentially kind of took over a kind of a paramilitary group the father of that woman who took over it wanted to take over Gotham City and then like basically weaponized Batman's technology to essentially control the city of Gotham and then alternate reality this Punisher Batman has done that and so being that capable he's basically began colonizing Gotham City in like the main DC Universe by basically saying like I know everything that's going on everywhere at least you know I'm getting to the point where I am and so him basically saying like if you don't do what I tell you to then I'm going to take out this plane 72 people are going to die 41 of them are Gothamites I'm gonna kill them all all you have to do is give me Commissioner Gordon and it all goes away and work where Gordon is kind of like where he believes it is his son that he's talking about the response about man is it's not the Sun it's you and he literally knocks out Commissioner Gordon and hands him over to like Punisher Batman and the idea behind this at least you know in terms of why this is being done his Batman says that when it came to like the whole last laugh device that he had the device it would serve the purpose of like allowing a cure to be implemented throughout the city of Gotham required like a two-point activation it required Batman and someone he trusted the only person he really trusts being Commissioner Gordon now switching over to the iceberg lounge to - penguin it's kind of cool here because of course the Batman who laughs basically busts in and starts torching the place literally using the various weapons and gimmicks of the Joker I'm sorry of penguin to start tearing everything up is sort everything is setting everything on fire now some of the gimmicks that really seem to be brought here by Batman who laughs seem to be gimmicks from his own universe which is to say like one of the I guess you know an umbrella of the penguin that can shoot alcohol which in turn if given a flame can set everything on fire just small little things like that that are that are really interesting and really really smart for him to use in this scenario by literally taking out all the forces of penguin and then bringing in another version of Bruce Wayne and in his alternate reality version of Bruce this is a version that actually tried to reason with the penguin they tried to like work alongside the penguin and actually became a criminal lord himself and then rose to power and gain more powers in the penguin did and then the tables turned so that when penguin was basically losing all of his clout all this power and all this money he tried to reason with his version of Bruce but was always pushed out so this version of Bruce Wayne is basically a mob boss and it's kind of cool to see like he's dark he's sinister and it's interesting to see that happen because of course the Batman who lasts kills that version of Bruce and then tells tells penguin if what you're looking for is the person who basically set all this in motion a person who seems to be like skewing your dice to where is taking away the effect of like the house rigging the games and so on and so forth then go talk to one your guys name matches Malone now those guys who don't know matches Malone is the colonel underworld identity of Bruce Wayne he uses the name matches Malone to infiltrate the criminal underworld so no one really knows that he's actually Bruce Wayne it's a long-standing secret identity it's one of those those little Easter eggs and hallmarks the fans love seeing brought up all over the place but it's a cool little thing here because what Batman who laughs does is basically send penguin on the trail of matches Malone now that probably won't come to fruition for quite some time but what it does mean is that somewhere later on around the corner presumably when Scott Snyder starts riding into other Batman stories and so on that penguin will start looking for matches Malone all the while totally unaware of the fact that he's basically tracking down Batman and just not knowing him so it's kind of cool here because what is up happening is that when Batman basically gets James Gordon jr. back to the waterways and says hey look I need you to look at everything here and use your psychopathic intelligent mind to figure out what's the best way to spread some toxin around Gotham and like destroy the entire city James Gordon jr. initially begins to kind of bend and say okay but then he asks a question he says like tell me one thing did docker get to you did the Joker get you an Joker infect you because if he did that's the key to the plan there's nothing I can really do here if anything I'm like a stopgap measure you know I can't really do a whole lot of things here like there's not a whole lot that I can that I can offer in this scenario he does what he can but like that's really yet but in the middle of it all suddenly like Alfred pops up the back came has basically been trashed the Joker's literally like he's got his heart like his chest is open he's got his heart sitting there he's been riding hahaha in blood all over the place like it's absolutely bonkers and so so what is up happening is like when the questions asked by James Gordon jr. what do we do next Batman says we do the only thing we can do the one thing that we should have been doing the entire time the one thing the Joker told me to do at the beginning of all this the one thing everybody's been telling me all this time the one thing that I was supposed to do this whole time and never really wanted to do in the first place and so what ends up happening here is that when Alfred finally makes his way back to the Batcave and then finding out that he cannot access the the proper location and then has to go to like one of the exterior entrances when he gets down there we end up finding out that what Batman's done has removed all the toxin all the toxin blocks from his body and totally given in to like the Joker serum this is the only plan that I have I have to become the Batman who laughs I have to become this version of the character in order to be able to defeat him crazy okay so I just saw best man like I was just watching best man with Mariah that movie's really good or actually I'm ready to watch the second one but I have to record this audio I recorded it the first time and it turns out I recorded it to the bike the microphone on my on my laptop on my Mac Pro and so I screwed it up anyway okay so getting into Batman the the grim light this is actually kind of interesting because Snyder usually plays these things pretty close to the vest and it's kind of a change of pace to introduce like a one shot I mean he did that with like the origins of the the various you know villains from Dark Knight's metal so I guess it kind of makes sense to keep the trend going but before that there weren't really any one shots right like court of owls Knight of owls in game death of the family it was all kind of contained and like the particular run so this is kind of a cool maneuver here and I'm really interested to see where it goes but what this does is it initially picks up with basically Punisher Batman I'm calling her calling um Punisher Batman because that's basically what he is but the cool thing about this is that this initially picks up with like the death of Bruce Wayne's family now of course this is kind of a hallmark of the character it's like Krypton exploding for Superman and the idea is that under normal circumstances in the main DC Universe Bruce Wayne was just kind of left there right like Joe Chill pulled the trigger killed his parents and then ran and that was kind of the end of that and then of course it was Bruce Wayne basically saying like I'm gonna swear vengeance so this never has to happen on anybody else again or anything along those lines but in this instance this is not what happens instead Bruce basically experiences like this rush of anger and here and in doing so picks up the gun turns it on Joe Chill and shoots him now this is kind of a cool thing because what this does is it Simms them down the pathway of becoming this dark and evil version of Batman now one of the important things to bear in mind here is how this kind of feeds into like the no kill rule right like it's not really a hard and fast rule it's not like it was established in a particular comic that Batman will kill no more it was just kind of a gradual series of events that led to a sort of editorial decision made by DC the Batman won't use guns anymore but the overall gist in terms of why this exists and how it was kind of explained with regards to the Batman mythos was twofold the first is that guns are so final you pull a gun you shoot someone there's no undoing that right like you can't come back from that you can't undo it that's Batman's perception but at the same time the other reason why Batman really kind of steers away from guns is because guns kind of hold a particularly iconic role in his life because that's what killed his parents and so the idea so always basically stay away from that concept and then of course use the role as Batman to try to save as many people as possible but following this whole thing with his with his parents basically dying and him shooting Joe Chill what it does is it almost kind of mirrors Batman year one by Frank Miller which is a retelling of his origin in the post-crisis landscape and so what you have here where he's like breaking you know breaking bricks and where he's like kicking a tree and everything's like that those are all basically like homage 'as to to Batman year one those are scenes from that comic but the kind of difference here is that where all that training was done by Batman traveling the world learning all these different forms of martial arts learning espionage and stealth and all that kind of stuff training with like ninja clans or different things like that where all that was geared towards using all that for the purpose of instilling fear and then using that fear to prevent a crew or to eliminate a criminal element in Gotham this version of Batman is using it to kill now again one of the big ways they kind of pay homage to the old Batman origin story is that in that old story you had like a bat that flew through the window writing it was kind of one of those hallmark moments of Batman's origin stories a bat flies through the window and then it crashes and then Bruce looks at it and says yes father you know I will become fear I'll become Batman the same thing kind of happens here except Bruce Wayne shoots it and says that's the idea I'll become fear I'll basically become a bat in order to eliminate the criminal element in Gotham and one of the first things he does is he goes to like this mob house and basically kills everyone right like he literally like kicks over this this fire stamp of this fire pit and then like burns the whole place down and like burns all these people alive it's cutthroat and so what this does is it really kind of skips forward a little bit but one of the things that the Grimm night says is that there's really no version of the Joker in the universe he comes from but the reason why is because in the early days of his criminal element he killed the Joker at Ace Chemical that in the early days Batman essentially took out like the Red Hood who would become the Joker he took out Killer Croc he took out the penguin all these different guys so you took out all these different criminals right in the very very early days and what this is done or at least what it did is it kind of turned him into an extreme vigilante that was being tracked down by the Gotham City Police Department but in this instance where he's a he's a pure like a pure dyed-in-the-wool killer it's one of these things were like the the the only real consent concept here is the moral incorrupt ability of Commissioner Gordon that it seems like in every single universe as a commissioner gordon's in he all he's always a good guy he always has like this moral compass it's one thing you can't betray you know you don't kill people without without any kind of recourse or anything like that but at the same time it's actually a pretty cool scenario because the great thing about the Punisher Batman evade the great thing about the fact that he kind of takes along to his own hands and kills all these criminals is he's really just kind of saying hey look the justice system had the opportunity to ensure these guys wouldn't be released again but because the nature of the justice system is all about giving second chances what it does is it basically says hey look yes you're criminals we're gonna give you opportunities to continue committing crime Batman's a Batman stance is I'm taking those opportunities away the criminal justice system is basically a means by which you can escape your guilt and then in turn do the exact same thing over again and they'll always be a lawyer somewhere to get you off they're not doing any good for anybody and so it's a it's a pretty cool concept here and it actually works exceedingly well and so what you literally have this funny scenario where Commissioner Gordon tries to draw Batman out this is one of the cool things about this he tries to draw Batman out and in doing so quote-unquote captures him well the funny thing is is that Gordon basically says like all this stuff is controlled by Wayne Enterprises all the while never realizing that the Batman that the grim Knight is Bruce Wayne now this is one of the big differences between the grim Knight and the actual Batman from idiot from the DC Universe because the grim Knight exists to eliminate crime everywhere he finds it and because he's so effective at it he had to believe that somewhere along the line criminals would get their hands on Wayne tech Wayne tech you know Wayne tech you know weapons and equipment different things like that it's a what better way to kind of continue the war on that criminal element and destroy it damn I basically saying hey were effectively gonna turn Wayne Enterprises tech into like a two-way street that while they use it for their own ends I can control it from the back end and that's exactly what happens using his access to Wayne technology all the guards are taken out like they're all like all these cops are eliminated on the spot that literally like this this kind of fight breaks out between Jim Gordon in Batman but of course Batman basically ends up making his escape and Jim Gordon's kind of left with it with this information that was kind of brought to his attention or at least from the the ramblings of the Batman who last that he can essentially access Wayne technology now putting two and two together because Wayne technology is so advanced and because my technology is not something that's just easily accessible from the backend what it means is the only one who could really be able to access it is Bruce Wayne and so what ends up happening here is Commissioner Gordon essentially draws the parallel he draws a conclusion that Batman is Bruce Wayne and in doing so basically says he's public enemy number one for it for Gotham City and where he goes to guys like Rupert thorne who under normal circumstances in the DC Universe are villains and where he goes to guys like two-face who are usually villains but in this instance are actually like mayor's you know that they they hold powerful positions in the city of Gotham but they're not criminals because why would you want to be a criminal in the city of Gotham when he got Batman killing all the criminals he finds that what he basically you know what Commissioner Gordon says is like we have to track this guy down we have to capture Bruce Wayne I've got the backing of the FBI either you can join me in this or you can be left behind as well as one of those things where the krita know that that element kind of stays hands off the FBI shows out to Wayne Manor alongside Commissioner Gordon and they basically call Bruce Wayne out and it's kind of a cool thing because like this knock-down drag-out fight happens between the two but it's kind of a funny scenario here is because under normal circumstances and it's it's sort of strange that it works out this way under normal circumstances Commissioner Gordon should never been able to get the upper hand on Bruce Wayne because Bruce Wayne is just such an effective fighter right like you know hardcore Batman fans will say that's ridiculous you know but my answer to this is that most likely Commissioner Gordon got the upper hand because he has prep time you know I mean if prep time works your Batman prep time works for everything else and so Commissioner Gordon gets the upper hand for a prep time I actually have no idea that's the answer or not it's kind of strange I mean technically speaking it shouldn't really happen which is kind of a an interesting concept an interesting idea I'd really like to believe that one of the one of the reasons why Commissioner Gordon was kind of able to get the upper hand on really the grim Knight is because of the fact that the grim Knight doesn't really rely on stealth and and martial arts and things like that in the same capacity that Batman from the main DC Universe does bitties more of just like a like a broadsword right there just like this this thing that just kind of SWAT you know just swings and just is dying to take out huge swaths of enemies whereas the main DC Batman is more like a scalpel he's more like surgical precision that's kind of kind of his whole MO and so that more likely more or less more likely kind of seems to be the way in which would happen but what it did is it created a kind of animosity between the grim Knight and Commissioner Gordon the issue with this is that we're not really told what happened with it could with Commissioner Gordon in like the dark multiverse we don't really know what happened to it we don't know if he died we don't know if like somebody took place they kept the grim Knight from being able to enact his revenge and the reason why is because once he's here he intends to basically enact revenge on the main DC Commissioner Gordon that he wanted to on the dark multiverse Commissioner Gordon he associated wants to like kill him on the spot but the funny thing about this is that the Batman who lasts basically says like that's kind of pointless here we can do much much worse to this guy than just kill him if we kill him it's an easy way out if we kill him then like he doesn't suffer anymore but if you truly want him to suffer then give it time let's implement our plan and let's bring down everything around him it's kind of a cool thing because what this does is it sort of kind of hits to the idea that what we could be seeing is something akin to like a return to The Killing Joke right like we you see like Commissioner Gordon being torture with all these images of his daughter being violated in different things like that we don't really know okay what's going on guys we are continuing the Batman who laughs and I love you guys can tell but I am not feeling very good right now what to Wrestlemania which was awesome got caught in the rain storm afterwards which was not awesome and so for the last couple of days I have had like a stuffy nose on a sore throat and I've been coughing up some delicious lung butter I am under the weather so videos will be scant this week ah there's this video today they'll probably one on Saturday and then we'll have like a video on Monday I think and then hopefully by Monday we'll be back like hopefully by the weekend I'll be feeling better we can you like get back to normal uploads if not all they'll be scant until I feel better so anyway uh Batman who last part for okay so this story actually kind of takes it in same turn and it's kind of funny because people were kind of getting a little irritated it was taking so long to come out but one of the things you guys need to bear in mind is that DC's actually slowed down their releases they've decreased the number of books that are coming out and they've also slowed down how often those books are coming out so it's one of those things like sure they're trying to sort of navigate the waters on how come a book should be distributed and so on it's always an ongoing process it always happens every I don't know every 5 to 10 years you know it's always something along those lines that sort of sees a shift but the fact remains that that initially where this picks up and it's kind of cool is remember Batman had basically ingested like the Joker toxin right like turned himself into the Batman who lasts because from his perspective and the advice of everybody around him it was the only way he could really win and so one of the things that it kind of does is that with him sort of ingesting this this substance and then going through and kind of musing to us for a minute one of the things that he says is that when he is whatever he's going through and things get tough right like things get hard what he tries to do is see the world through the eyes of like the Robbins of of Jason Todd and Tim Drake and and Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne now he says seeing the world through the eyes of the Robbins but he refers to them as his children and so really seeing the world through their eyes kind of allowed Batman to see innocence to sort of move away from the perspective of like the world is dark and dreary and everybody's bad and seeing it from the perspective of hey like sometimes people just trying to do their best but like not everything is so so black and white as adults really tend to see it there's a lot of different shades of gray there cause it was kind of cool because following this you basically pick out with Alfred who's just now realizing what Batman has done and this is actually a really really cool exchange and the way the Scott Snyder does this is really nothing short of amazing because the way this plays out is Alfred freaks like Alfred panics right because for Alfred is like one of the worst case scenarios and really contextual II speaking given the current situation it is the worst case scenario Alfred Sphere is that Batman will be lost forever that's the biggest thing that he goes through and literally like Batman says hey look I have this visor on because it allows me to differentiate things that was kind of cool because initially we didn't really know what the function of the visor of the Batman who lasts we don't really know what his purpose was honestly I always thought it was just kind of for visual effect and what Batman actually tells us really Scott Snyder kind of says here is that the visor serves a purpose that what it does is it kind of allows the Batman who lost to filter through all the different wants and desires that people have but a person can use it for a variety of different ways the Batman who last uses it in order to determine what people's most violent desires are Batman can use it to see what they're hopeful desires are so busy kind of allows you to see the the desires the wants the needs of anybody that you look at and so when it's taken away from Batman it's kind of like his only real weapon but from the perspective of Alfred it's like we'll know I'm trying to keep you from completing your desire to be the Batman who lasts like it's not a really a thing that you need the thing that you want because you're becoming the Batman who last and it's kind of a cool thing because where Batman tries to reason with Alfred Alfred and turned like smack him across the head with it and this is cool because what it does is it turns into a knock-down drag-out fight between Alfred and Batman as this plays out like literally Alfred is beating the crab like beating the crap out of Batman and then Batman just not doing anything to stop him because he knows that the reality of this is that it's kind of coming from a place of love but as he looks at bat looks at Alfred what he sees is that where Alfred says hey look I love you he sees like you know kind of what the the venom is wanting him to see which is Alfred wants to hurt you he wants to bring you harm you have to get rid of him you have to kill him and it's kind of crazy because he sort of goes are like this rant and tears Alfred down where he's like all you've ever done is pulled me back I've carried you all this time like literally spewing out every ounce of vindictiveness and anger that he possibly could and that's really kind of the nature of the toxin is that while it sort of twists you out as a person and it really kind of kind of real warps your perspective it brings out all this anger and all this wrath because in reality it's almost like Batman's being deprived of something that he feels he needs one of the things that I hope you guys are noticing here is this really seems to be a pretty strong allegory for like drug addiction and is it is kind of crazy when you look at it that way like we just sort of shifted up drug addiction alcoholism things like that like things that people are addicted to that negatively impact themselves and the people around them and that's why it's kind of crazy because Batman's kind of lashing out at Alfred like you don't want me to succeed you don't want me to bid if you want me to do well all you want to do is pull me back you know and all these different kinds of things just spewing out anger but it's not really Batman talking it's literally the the talk should kind of talk to you through Batman it's driving his mind to a place then it doesn't really have any have any reason to go to it so again what's Batman sort of regains his sanity kind of comes back you know really sort of returns to himself so apologies are given back and forth between himself and Alfred and Batman basically explains this is what I have to do because there's no other way that I can win there's no conceivable way that I can beat this guy and now the cool thing is that following this we're bad that's kind of racing through the city it gives us a chance to sort of see how this visor impacts him right like when he goes through there and he uses this visor he looks around and he sees like people who were hopeful like basically like good people he sees their dreams what they what they look to aspiring uh parents who hope that their child becomes something great in the world but then like what he also sees is the darker side people who want to murder each other who want to like pillage and destroy each other but it's kind of a cool scenario where this visor working the way it does with the nature of Gotham City and the question I would pose to you is which one of these is the truth the version where like Batman sees hopeful people or the people who are violent and destructive and just want to kill everything which one of these is true when it comes to the realm of Gotham because Gotham is a dark and violent place and it's kind of interesting because it's kind of Scott Snyder sort of asked him that question like which one of these is real like which one of these is the actual real place now at this point we actually switch over to Commissioner Gordon's son right Louis which we switch over to James Gordon jr. and again we talked about him in previous videos that James Gordon was a legitimate psychopath but with Batman bringing him out as kind of using his mind to kind of predict where the Batman who last will go kind of using a crazy person to predict a crazy person more or less but as he's talking to James you know one of the things that James asked it really kind of makes us this argument on his Batman's no kill rule and one of the things he says is that back when he was a psychopath and a serial killer that he was kind of like the no kill rule is stupid because like all Batman really seems to do with his no kill rule is give criminals a second chance but he's giving criminals a second chance to commit crimes the only way to really deal with criminals and to get rid of them completely is to kill them a dead man cannot be a repeat offender and it's kind of a cool thing because when when he says that it's sort of hey look like this is how I view the world I thought your Nokia will was stupid because all you were doing was just basically letting criminals back out on the street you had this sort of you know really hopeful gosh golly they'll repent one day you know kind of kind of belief system but it never did any good you were a gerbil in a hamster wheel you were just running in circles hoping things changed one day if you run long enough or run hard enough but they never really do but what he also says is at the same time one of the things that I've learned is that there are people out there who deserve second chances it's not that clear-cut not everyone deserves a second chance but not everyone deserves to die for what they did you kind of have to take it on a case-by-case situation what he asks is he says hey look I know what you're trying to do here and I get where you're going with this the question I have is what's the Batman who laughs is defeated and when you defeat him do you have a failsafe do you have a way to bring yourself back and to basically cure yourself of this joker toxin and Batman doesn't answer and so the implication seems to be that know that once he becomes the Batman who laughs there's no way to undo this so he's going to be stuck this way the fact remains that what this ends up doing it's kind of switching to like three hours prior and we have this awesome this awesome side where that takes place between Batman and Joker and it's so cool because when Batman spins around and starts talking to Joker like again he kind of hallucinates that like Joker wants to kill so on and so forth but what the Joker says is like I'm just here to talk and when that mess was asking questions like could you just want to talk you want to laugh do you want to see like that you finally got what you wanted the Joker says no this is not what I wanted I did not want you to become the Batman who laughs that if anybody's gonna kill you I want it to be me more so than that like you and I are intertwined forever like it's kind of crazy because it's like we are sort of irrevocably tied together right like you know I'm the the Clown Prince of Crime like on the ultimate evil you try to be the ultimate good even though you're not really and like we fight against each other and that's basically it but he basically says that like this is really the only way that you could win Riley this is the only way that you could possibly pull it off but you know I believe that one day like I will kill you and that will be the end of that but until that day comes I came here to simply tell you good luck and it's kind of interesting here because what Batman does is he addresses the Joker and he says look the people in my life like Alfred will not have the cojones to do what it takes right like if I full-on become the Batman who laughs like if there's no way to bring me back from becoming the Batman who lasts Commissioner Gordon Alfred like none of these guys will have the have the balls to do what it takes so I need you to do that and the Joker says yes if you become a Batman who laughs I will kill you it's a mercy killing it's really Batman like relying on the Joker like I wouldn't go as far as you say like they become friends but they become more allies than anything else so again like trying to track down these these portals trying to try and track down these sources Batman is a traveling the Blackgate prison to the section that was really more of like a transition period right like it was basically like a halfway house so to speak between those being brought in and then being sent to Arkham Asylum and so as he goes through here he ends up running into like this one cop you know who's kind of like hey look you're the bad man who laughs I'm gonna blow your head off and that man basically reasons with him and kind of reveals information like his wife and his daughter his daughter has a little little bit a little Batman doll that she squeezes and at last which of course Batman never laughs Batman doesn't like the fact that it last and so he's kind of like hey look that's how you know I'm Batman because I don't laugh you know and it is kind of funny it's kind of a cool little thing but still like as he goes through this portal he ends up in this version of Blackgate that's six times the size of the one in the main DC Universe and we end up finding out that in this one particular universe in the dark multiverse that this version of Arkham Asylum is ran by Bruce Wayne himself and in this moment like when he starts addressing him and saying hey look like you're in danger people are gonna come here they're gonna try to take you and they're going to try to eliminate you again we don't really know the reason why these different Bruce Wayne's are being killed being taken and killed but we do know Batman is trying to save this one and that moment they're yanked back in the main DC Universe and where Batman tries to take this version of Bruce and basically hands them over to to this conference as they look keep an eye on him make sure nothing happens to him and then in turn deals with like the other officers who were showing up we end up finding out this cop is not actually a cop instead this cop is the Batman who laughs and that's crazy because basically like it's set it's set Batman up and it's kind of a cool thing because what he says is like I know everything that you're going to do that man who laughs knows everything Bruce Wayne is going to do and that's the difference here is that Bruce Wayne is basically like he transformed himself into the Batman who laughs but he's not actually thinking like the Batman who laughs he's thinking like Bruce Wayne and so it's basically Snyder kind of saying hey look you're really gonna have to give yourself over and become this dark and sinister version with a tiny ounce of yourself governing your actions in order to fully be able to defeat this guy otherwise like there's no real way for you to win and so what the Batman who laughs does masquerading as this cop as he tells all the other officers that Batman is that Batman who laughs he basically killed Bruce Wayne he's got a trigger device he's gonna blow himself and everybody else up kill him take him out now and all the other officers around them opened fire on Batman okay so we are covering the Batman who laughs part five and again like like the Batman who laughs is solid I guess it's one of the coolest things but in the in the last video that we had the way we kind of left off was that the Batman who laughed essentially like tricked these cops at Arkham Asylum into believing that like the actual Batman was the Batman who last and again this is kind of a kind of a cool uh cool scheme because what better way to make an escape then a look at your current circumstance and then finding out that way right like it's the best way to do it it's the art of war by Sun Tzu right like don't fight on there toward a territory fight on your territory use your skills against the Batman undertook the the task of becoming the Batman who laughs in order to figure out a way to defeat him and in doing so almost engineer his own demise and this this this first bit of the comic really picks up with him just being like shot at by all these cops and the Batman who last teleporting away and Batman tries to reason with him but but remember because he's sort of turning into his evil counterpart what this means is that this darker side is beginning to take hold a little more than it had before now it's an internal struggle that's constantly going on between the two of them but the idea here is he says okay look there's a part of me that just wants to kill these guys and be done with it but I can't he was basically fleeing for his life now because it suits Kevlar it makes it almost impossible for them to basically penetrate so then they start in like armor-piercing rounds now here's a kind of crazy thing here is the way this is happening the way this is going down it's kind of difficult for a Batman to differentiate between what's actually happening and what's not actually happening because remember he's basically you know using a mask of the Batman who lasts he sees people's darker intentions and he hears what he wants to hear and so what this means is that he's hearing them say things like shoot for the mouth you know we can't we can't penetrate his suit so this shoot him in the mouth who's always made sense one other shoe Batman in the throat but the question that's kind of being asked here is are they really saying that or does Batman believe they're saying that and the implication is that it goes either way from there Batman realizes the only way to really make an escape is to pretend to be the person they fear so much and that's exactly what he does he sits down he says okay fine it's my only out here so he starts running off the names in the addresses and all the things that he knows about these cops that are familiar to him and basically says if you do not let me leave here I will find you I will track you down and I will kill everyone and everyone you ever met like I'll kill you and everybody that you ever met here and it's cool because it scares them out of their wits and he says I'm the Batman who laughs follow me down if you want to and then basically makes his escape and that's kind of the cool thing here is because Batman's not actually becoming the Batman who laughs he's pretending but it allows him to kind of tie into that character it works both ways if the Batman who laughs can use Bruce Wayne as his own means of escape by basically treating everybody to believe in that Bruce Wayne is actually the Batman who laughs then Bruce Wayne can build on that use that to his own ends it's one of the ways to show that Batman's very quick on his feet but for here of course it really kind of catches Commissioner Gordon making his escape this is one of the things that's kind of interesting is because when it comes to like the little Robins that the Batman who last had at his disposal we never really knew who they were or where they were from what we're actually told here is these are all different versions of the son of Jim Gordon now in reality I would probably say that this is kind of Scott Snyder just throwing it out there that there was never really any intention to explain where they came from so just kind of tied in to the story and then to say well they're all your versions of you know all the versions of your son Jim Gordon from like different places in the dark-- multiverse but it's cool because it's a way to torment Jim Gordon I remember this is basically like the Punisher Batman more or less whose people you can calm whatever you want to you know but like its Punisher Batman more or less it is really what it is but basically it's him just kind of tormenting Jim Gordon remember the vendetta between the two is really only one-sided that in the the university comes from the grim Knight is basically a guy who was like defeated by Jim Gordon he was a vigilante Punisher Batman who was eventually caught up to in defeated by Jim Gordon and Jim Gordon's eyes he's just kind of a kind of a crazy guy in a maniac but in the grim Knights eyes is hey like you you defeated me in your universe so I'm gonna defeat you in yours it's kind of a twisted sort of scenario but again in the midst of all this is Jim Gordon making his escape he's caught up to by his son and basically you know his son kind of helps him get out of there and and you know recover and so on but from here we switch over back to the Batman who laughs in one of the coolest parts of the story because the questions asked like why have you come here and it's like well I came here because I wanted to address you because I wanted to talk to you because I have a small favor you know and so on and so forth and it's kind of kind of this disembodied voice and as soon as I heard that as soon as I saw that I was like okay he's talking to the court of owls and that's exactly what it is it's one of the coolest things the Batman who laughs meets the court of owls and this is awesome because the court of owls is like this really clandestine organization that ran Gotham behind the scenes we know that from Scott Snyder's run on the new 52 Batman and it's so cool to see him kind of wrap back around than what he originally created and sort of tie it in to the cons to the content going forward it's awesome now the funny thing about this is that the court of owls traditionally allows the youngest member of the court to choose what's going to happen to a particular person who's either been brought there or who has strayed into the path of the owls and doesn't really know what they're getting into and so the youngest person basically comes out you know you literally have the Batman who lost she says hey look you know all I have is a small favor less that's all I really have you know and the youngest person says no no we're not giving you anything we're gonna take you out and so what ends up happening is they basically say like the talons are gonna kill you now of course those of you guys who are unfamiliar with the court of owls the town's are basically their henchmen they're the people they send after you to either kill you or bring you to the court or whatever the case is but that's what the Batman who lasts says but that's the thing though guys like I've already talked to your talons and I've removed their arms this is how crazy that Batman who lasts is how dangerous he is he gets in there and says okay what's the most immediate threat to me if I walk into where the court of owls aren't okay well then the most immediate threat is the talents but Batman who lasts is not walking into this blind and that's cool because what he says is that in another universe in the dark multiverse because of how extreme you guys were and how crazy you guys were there was a kind of respect between yourself and like Bruce Wayne and so in an alternate in a in a dark multiverse there was a time when Bruce Wayne took over the court of owls and he became the head of the court the new town and he controlled everything and so like I'm well aware of who you guys are I know what you guys are about you guys are just rich folks you guys use talents to do your bidding but when your talents are gone what are you guys you're nothing you're you guys are weak you guys are you guys can't do anything on your own without people protecting you it's kind of interesting and so of course this leads directly to like the arrival of this Batman from the dark multiverse who took over the court of owls facing off against like the Batman who laughs now of course he's defeated pretty quickly and so what we do is we switch back over to Batman enter to Jim Gordon now the cool thing about this is that remember one of the big talking points here was the last laugh program right like the idea that basically this this could be activated and initiated and it would cut Gotham Gotham off from like the rest of the world right like it would cut him off or cut it off from the rest the united states water electricity the whole nine yards everything would be cut off and Gotham would become a totally self-contained ecosystem and Batman's plan with Commissioner Gordon was to do that was to activate the last laugh program to cut Gotham off to make sure that nothing that that man who lost put in the waterways could be expanded and and basically extended out into the rest of the country but that's when Batman begins to think well that's what the Batman who laughs wants it's kind of crazy it's kinda like what what if this is what he wanted all along what if what the Batman who last one and all along was for gosselin to be closed off was for Gotham to become its own source of power for Gotham to be isolated and removed from everything and to become its own place but if he did then the question is why and that's when he gets a call from the Batman who laughs and he's told do not answer that call do not respond to that call where he kind of takes his hand off the device and says no no you know we we will we will give it a minute or two you know cuz you got a two-minute countdown right like once once over the first hand is put on there it takes a to hand system once the first hand is put on there you've got two minutes in order to activate the whole thing and that's when he basically says okay let's see where this goes let's see what happens with this he's talking about man who lost the Batman who laughs says you don't understand the true basis behind Gotham now this is kind of a cool thing there will be those who will kind of look at that and say oh man here we go again bat doesn't know everything about Gotham whatever like the cool thing about this is I love the idea this Scott Snyder introduces this idea that Batman doesn't know as much about Gotham as he thinks he does and that's what's so awesome is because what it does is almost kind of paints Batman in this light of being arrogant did Batman you're not as smart as you believe you are and that's what the Batman who lasts basically says that the way that Gotham was originally built the way it was original design Gotham was designed to be a seat of power the Gotham was designed to be a city where the person who ruled it could essentially extend their influence out to the rest of the world in a myriad of different ways you could cut it off you could shut it off from the rest of the world and you could say like Gotham is totally isolated and alone and this is awesome because again like it gives like whoever it is it controls Gotham or who's who's sitting on Gotham if this last life program is operated will essentially be able to like operate outside of the United States and do their own thing like you can poison the rest of the world and Gotham will be fine and that's kind of the cool thing here is because one is up happening is like Batman liz is literally being talked to you by Jim Gordon they're saying like don't listen Alfred Alfred's coming in offers chiming in don't listen and Batman can't help but listen Batman can't help but hear what's going on and and what he ends up doing is actually agreeing with the Batman who laughs so that man who laughs says like press the button put your hand cut Gotham off from the rest of the world let Gotham be what it's supposed to be let it be it's darker side and Alfred is kind of crazy Alfred chimes in for a second and says hey look like you're not us we'll see this year you are the living heart of Gotham you're the guy that tries to make the city a better place and Batman has responses and it hasn't worked he's not fixing anything and so what what is up happening is like in the final moments of this Batman puts his hand on the machine and basically follows through with the plan of the Batman who laughs and shuts down the entire connection between Gotham and everything else and so essentially Batman has joined the Batman who last and it's pretty awesome like it's it's pretty solid okay so we are getting back into dark nights not dark nights metal the Batman whoo laughs and again like in the last video that we had we were talking about the nature of like the last laugh protocol right and how Batman had activated it now for those who guys who were catching up the last laugh protocol was a protocol designed by Batman for the purpose of like cutting off Gotham from the rest of essentially like the world right like just totally isolating the city in its entirety in case something happened like the Joker decided to release Joker toxin into the water system or something like that Batman could activate it and keep the toxin from spreading throughout like the rest of the country the surrounding cities different things like that and so because of the because of the whole situation the way it's unfolding when Batman activated this did it suddenly turn into okay Batman's basically sighted against everyone and that was kind of where we were left right we were left with this idea the Batman is sighted against like like everybody and he had basically joined the Batman who lasts and that's kind of the funny thing because we you have Alfred in his ear telling him hey look like your toxicity levels are getting super-high if you keep doing what you're doing like if you go into any kind of situation that heightens your adrenaline then you're gonna switch over to the Batman who laughs right because your cells are almost completely irradiated with his whole formula and you're gonna end up turning into him and that's when Batman kind of chimes in and says no no no I didn't activate this because I'm becoming the Batman who lasts I activated this because it's the only chance we have and that's kind of the cool thing because then you have the son of Commissioner Gordon who comes in and says yeah it basically buys us time now remember the son of James Gordon yo James Gordon jr. is basically crazy at like a serial killer right and so bringing him in here it's kind of big it's kind of Batman's way of being able to see into the eye of a crazy person but the issue with this is that as Batman has slowly started to become the Batman who laughs what is done is this kind of altered his perspective to where he can sort of see directly into his mind and not not literally but insofar as functioning akin to him and how he thinks and that's what he says I pretty much am him like I almost am a Batman who lasts I know his one real weakness I know where all of this is leading to and so what this does is it allows them to essentially set a trap taking over the entirety of the power grid and allowing it only to really be controlled from from from the Batcave what it means is like they're the only person that can do anything with it now of course Batman also acknowledges that the grim knight right like the Punisher bat for Batman from an alternate reality can basically like hack into the power grid and do whatever it is they need to do but it'll take time to achieve that which buys them time they didn't have before and so again it's kind of a cool little moment because we basically switch over to like an alternate reality when you end up having like some version of Bruce Wayne they basically bought everything right like literally bought everything in Gotham City like everything runs under under like the funding of Bruce Wayne like he privates privatized the entire like all the city services the police the fire department the whole nine yards and where somebody could do that and use it for nefarious ends he actually did it for it for basically a benefit essentially saying like so long as my company makes money you guys will be funded you're no longer relying on taxpayer dollars which means taxpayer dollars can actually be used towards things they can truly benefit society as opposed to just you know funding cops and all that kind of good stuff and so as a result of that we end up having this alternate reality version of Batman that basically vanishes right it's also the reality version of Bruce that just kind of gets whisked away when the Batman who laughs those who take him out and of course that's when he really kind of chimes in and says that is Bruce Wayne who did it now following this is a really really cool exchange that takes place between Commissioner James Gordon and his son James Gordon jr. and jr. tries to like talk to his father right and almost seems to try to make that you know pitch this case that when it's all said and done and they're you know in the end the smoke clears that like they should consider setting him free and the response of Jim is no because I just don't trust you because I think you're still crazy I think you're still insane like the like all indications here are that he still believes his son is a villain that he'll try to get him the help he needs he'll try to make sure they're treated fairly but it's like he doesn't view him as his own son he views him as like a criminal he happens to be working with that seems to share the same name as him and it's one heck of a way for a father to view a son in a way that's almost kind of like hopeless it's pretty dark and is pretty twisted and is pretty grim but from there again we kind of switch back over to Batman in this fight he has with the Batman who laughs and this is kind of a cool moment because when when Bruce Wayne shows up here of course the Batman who laughs is hot on his trail and basically says hey like like you know bruises like I knew you're gonna be here and Batman who laughs is like yeah I knew you're gonna be here too and you're slowly but you know turning into me and it's almost kind of like mind games and that's one of the things that you don't really see when it comes to Bruce Wayne when it comes to him like like toying with people it's usually based on fear right it's usually based on the idea of like I'm going to use fear to try to overcome you so it is mind games insofar as he plays on people's psychological perspective of like fear and all that kind of good stuff but with a Batman who laughs he's really more just maniacal and so seeing him play mind games with Bruce Wayne like yes man you're becoming me like you're slowly turning into me there's nothing you can do about it you know like you believe you have this great big huge grandiose plan set but I promise you this was all according to me like everything that's happening here is is happening because I wanted it to you it's kind of a cool little exchange now we know the Batman who last really loves doing that I mean we've seen from the stories you know the way the stories have been written that he loves focusing and kind of messing with people's individual minds he talks about things like killing the entire bat family you know when you had like Bruce Wayne who was kind of like you know I guess when when he was sorting into the Batman who last when the toxin first began to infect him it was kind of like okay I can maintain my sanity I can maintain Who I am and and all it takes is the smallest push the smallest nudge over the edge kind of a homage to to you The Killing Joke with all it takes is one bad day and so what he ends up saying here is that like hey when it came to the bat family in my universe where I come from I wanted to make sure they were aware of what was going on so I invited them over for tea and setting the T out was enough of an adrenaline push to push me over the edge and when they showed up I killed them all it's just it's it's little things like that right like just kind of like this is how twisted and screwed up you're gonna become and there's nothing you can do about it there's nothing you can do to stop it and so following that we yell again kind of switching back over to Commissioner Gordon and James Gordon jr. we get this really cool segment right we're like they entered into the bat armory and then of course when they come out in the grim Knights they're kind of going crazy and doing all kinds of bonkers stuff they end up busting out with like these Batman Beyond costumes and it looks so amazing like it's it's it's pretty badass I'm almost inclined to call this like the Batman who lasts beyond right like because it's it's so cool to see like these little these little homage is right because when you're Scott Snyder and you're sitting down and you're writing a story about the Batman mythos it's huge in its expansive right and Batman Beyond is a is a beloved show for a lot of people right they grew up watching that show they thought it was amazing I'm curious like like how much do you guys love Batman Beyond I'm kind of curious about that because it was after my time but a lot of you guys really seemed to enjoy it I mean it's pretty cool play it is a pretty cool concept but again like they're showing up here with the intention of being able to take out the grim Knight they actually get dealt with pretty quickly right in and assume that they're kind of taken out pretty fast but it is a cool moment because what you have are these kind of battles going on in two fronts right you've got you've got the grim Knight versus Jim Gordon because remember in the grim Knights reality he was defeated by Commissioner Gordon so he kind of holds a grudge against seemingly anybody who's Commissioner Gordon in any universe regardless of where it is and then of course you've got Batman and you've got the Batman who lasts but between the grim nine and Jim Gordon what he does is kind of hit on him and say hey man like you're not as great as you think you are in my reality you gave up on your son but you look at your son as a person who couldn't be fixed who was incorrigible essentially everything that you're saying now about your son is all the things that you said in my universe so yeah you're as crappy as I think you are you're nowhere near as great as you believe you are and it's kind of a cool thing it's kind of a cool moment because what it does is it puts it in a perspective that like Jim Gordon really liked kind of you know harkening back to the things he said to his son is not that great of a human being he just kind of gave up on his son which is something that no person should ever kneel no parent should ever give up on their child as it was kind of like what kind of a parent is he really now again of course the fight between Batman and the Batman who lasts I think is a lot more desperate because in this fight what you have here is essentially Batman not really fighting the the Batman who lasts so much as fighting to become that version of himself right I mean because it's the one he seems to be the most terrified of becoming some twisted version of himself this bent by nothing but chaos and evil and all it wants to do is just like inflict as much damage death and destruction as it can like Batman's terrified of that the Joker takes hold basically and like he's infected forevermore and like having an earth where there's two Batman who laugh running around there would be bonkers like I mean you're talking about probably the death of the Justice League you're talking about the deaths of most of the superheroes because you have all the ingenuity and all the intelligence of Batman combined with all the insanity and the chaotic nature of the Joker and then you double that and then you set it loose on the superhero community what hope does anybody have right so like Batman's not just fighting for himself he's kind of fighting for the world in a lot of different ways and that's really when he kind of hits heady you know when the Batman who laughs talks about a lack of hope and he says you have no real hope here and there's nothing you can really do to win the response of Bruce is I have one hope like like I found a universe where there is a version of Bruce Wayne that is hopeful well there is a version of Bruce Wayne that hasn't given up yet that hasn't like gone down this dark path that I've set myself on and it's basically the child version of himself from a different universe and of course this version comes running in and Bruce's like hey go with them go take off to the Batcave it's designed to be hopeful and that's kind of the crazy thing because what this does is it seems to hit it the idea that Bruce Wayne expects to die that bring that version of himself over into the universe will basically lead to him dying where that khana seems to be the case now again I doubt that's exactly what will happen but it's almost kind of like Bruce Wayne is expecting that right because it's like okay I'm probably gonna die in this fight and if I do somebody else used to carry on the the Batman mantle and there's a version of myself out there I want him to have the life that I never had for myself right like almost kind of like a parent of sorts and so it's cool to see this this little a little bit of a scenario play out and so again like I get real with Commissioner Gordon and with the grim Knight Commissioner Gordon's basically toppled he's essentially taken out it kind of goes back and forth and back and forth and so when this last little bit of the story where things begin to kind of close out the Batman who laughs ultimately gets the upper hand and like going to attack Bruce Wayne he manages to subdue him grab a serum he has in his possession and inject it into Bruce Wayne essentially turning Bruce Wayne into the Batman who lasts it's one of the coolest things like it's one of the most awesome things ever and I am hyped for this so again a relatively short issue really more action than anything else but it's pretty solid okay so we are getting into the madmen who last part seven okay what we've really covered up to this point is we were basically talking about like the near collapse of Gotham City right and those of you guys who read Batman in game this felt a lot like it right and that's one of the reasons why it for the foreseeable future people will usually reference that story because there were stories that came before in game like Batman no man's land of different things like that but in game was like this first real big instance that we saw where a singular villain managed to almost completely topple the entirety of Gotham City and in fact Joker did he suppose the entire city of Gotham to the Joker toxin and drove the whole town insane so it was kind of a question of how in the world can Batman possibly pull that off now again it was it was it was cool in terms of how Joker was defeated and how it all came to an end and the fight between himself and Batman that kind of led to their respective deaths which allowed Commissioner Gordon to take over Batman during the DCU initiative but the idea behind this is is really kind of Scott Snyder drawing on what he's done before and that's really where this sort of picks up right at me at this moment you've basically got the idea of the the kind of initiative the Batman set in motion that would cut Gotham off from like the rest of the world right like if it was initiated basically it would take water from the various locations around Gotham and he would dump it into the rest of the city and essentially quote-unquote try to fix it it would isolate Gotham you know from the rest of the world basically he'd be totally cut off and it was a Batman who laughs using this as a means to basically turn Gotham City upside down now the reason why this is so significant and the reason why that's really differs from the events of Batman's Batman in game is because Batman in game was a result of the Joker toxin right and like Batman's found cures for that there's always a way to cure that with us the the really the serum of the Batman who laughs there's no real cure for it nobody knows how to get rid of it right so if he succeeded and he did the exact same thing the Joker did he would destroy Gotham and that's one of the things that Scott Snyder had kind of been hitting on and basically trying to tell us like look if the Batman who laughs wins there's no turning back right you can't unring that Bell it's all over for the city of Gotham and so it's basically in Batman trying to stop him ever since but with Batman having been exposed to the serum he's been slowly losing his mind and becoming the Batman who laughs and that kind of leads to the fight between the two of them that's taking place here in this cemetery more or less now remember the idea of this child version of Batman being here let's talk about him here in a second but the idea of this child Batman being here is really that Batman who last brought him here for the sake of taunting Bruce and of course you know taking out the kid but what is up happening here is about when you last basically says hey look I've got the serum and basically I've got this this light on here when this light turns red it means you're fully changed and then like you gotta go so it's basically kind of a countdown timer to the end of Bruce and it's this cool little moment because when this plays out like when this happens it's really more of a Bruce trying to play the game with the Batman who lasts and trying to use psychological warfare to win ultimately doesn't really work but it's kind of a cool little moment because he's sort of like okay cuz you got the Batman who laughs standing here pointing a gun in his head and saying like once this is done like I have this kid here this kid's gonna be infected he's gonna be my quote unquote offspring for lack of a better word he's gonna carry on the mantle of everything that I've done uh and and like you're gonna do the exact same thing in this universe and Batman's kinda like Jess man he's gonna kill himself this is awesome this works he's like yeah I'll do it man I'll do it and of course we end up finding out the Batman who laughs was playing the joke and it was kind of a cool thing because what Bruce had done here is in these little vestiges it's well the reasons why Scott Snyder is so good at writing Batman is Bruce had thought of almost everything of pretty much everything in this circumstance right like the everything that the Batman who laughs is is Bruce Wayne and the Joker right so the Batman who lasts would do what Bruce Wayne does and in fact will actually see Batman pick up on this and and use this to his advantage with a plan that he had concocted later on in the story but basically what he done is he had used a piece of Wayne tech inside his own suit to turn the device read basically tricking trying to trick the Batman who lost into believing that like it's time for him to go right like he can just like shoot himself because everything's taken care of now and all that kind of good stuff and of course Batman who lost catches you know it catches up to it so right off the bat that kind of gets snuffed but again this is what Snyder's hitting on with regards to the relation between the two everything Bruce Wayne could think of the Batman who laughs has thought of and that's why Snyder always told us about man who laughs is the most dangerous foe that Batman's ever faced none of those villains think the way the Bruce Wayne does none of them like know what his moves would be before he makes them and then knows how to counter them that's why Batman who laughs is so dangerous because he is Bruce Wayne he's just Bruce Wayne from a different universe their lives unfolded almost the exact same way up to the point where their parents died and then the Batman who laughs basically snapped and then his whole origin story unfolds so it's cool to see this this whole scenario take place here but it's this cool little moment because while all this is going on remember you also have Commissioner Gordon and his son facing off against the grim Knight I call him Punisher Batman because that's basically what he is ah but it's kind of a cool thing because remember the grim Knight comes through a universe where his version of Commissioner Gordon defeated him his version of Commissioner Gordon managed to get the upper hand on him and took him out so he's kind of harboring a grudge here it's really one of these things with a bad whoo laughs is what if you could come to a universe where I could destroy that version of Bruce Wayne and you could destroy that version of Commissioner Gordon the grim Knight was on board he was like I'm down right so that's kind of why the grudge exists between the two of them now remember the son of Commissioner Gordon James is a serial killer he's a psychopath and so it's one of these things where Commissioner Gordon's kind of working reluctantly with his son but his son is truly on a side here he's truly trying to do the right thing you're essentially watching two battles being fought at the same time and so where you have these drones that are showing up here they're grabbing the water believing that it's safe water and they're gonna take it to Gotham City in order to basically ensure that the water supply is pure so we don't run into things like Batman in game that's the whole reason why Batman set this whole system in motion you end up having Commissioner Gordon you know kind of exposed to this water of course you hold his breath but it's kind of a crazy thing because in turn the grim Knight basically says like we'd like I know you're a psychopath I know you're crazy I know you hate your father for locking you away show him show your father how much you hate him and in turn like like literally James Gordon jr. just sorts like stabbing away and it's one of the craziest things right to see this all go under well then you switch back over to to Alfred and then you've got you know Alfred kind of showing up with with a machine gun and spraying down the Batman whoo laughs we're not really wishing a time machine again I'm sorry with a shotgun and like spraying down the Batman whoo laughs now it's only a couple shots and it's kind of a cool moment of course he doesn't really kill him but this is the nature of Alfred and this is one reason why Alfred is so cool is because when you look at his character in in the Batman comics it's very easy to dismiss Alfred Pennyworth as like the father figure like the mentor guy but the important thing about Alfred it's he is the Swiss Army knife of the Batman family he can do it all right he's a trained medic he was in the military so right there he's got all the medical and military experience under his belt it's cool here because when that all goes down Alfred does what he can but then in turn the Batman who laughs basically tells a story of Alfred and he's like you don't know about what happened to you on my universe this is one of the darkest points of the story right like the whole Batman who last think it's one of the most screwed up aspects the Batman who laughs basically says like in my universe I killed all those superheroes that's true I killed everybody in the Justice League I killed Superman I literally twisted everybody inside out and the entirety of my universe either they're dead or they're basically running around as people who laugh whatever the case is but you my friend you are still alive basically what I did here is I took you and I stuck you down in in like one of the sub caves and I fed you scraps and I kept you exposed to darkness you were basically in like sensory deprivation and I whispered you and I talked to you and it took a year but I broke you and you are my most dedicated servant it's screwed up in reality like that's a fate worse than death right to spend a year being stuck in a place that you can't escape from that you can't really see out of being tormented by nothing more than like the fact that the entire bat family died and you couldn't save your surrogate son because he's the one doing all this and then in turn eventually just kind of snapping and breaking like it's it's got to be a fate worse than death and so you basically have Batman who shows up and he basically starts fighting against the Batman who lasts alongside Alfred and this is when we get the plan of Batman and this is one of those things when it really kind of comes down to okay Batman's always got a way out right it's one of these things it wouldn't really be much of a Batman story if he didn't win right I mean Batman's always got a way out oh yeah because it's a Batman story I mean it wouldn't really be much of a Batman comic if he died in the first issue because he couldn't find a way out but essentially what goes down here is there's like these these uranium tips hollowed hollowed harpoons and basically like Batman fires a madame anta at the batman who laughs incapacitates him and is like the reason why I did this like why they're all here you know they're basically you know it's electrical devices you know they're essentially great big huge rivet huge tasers but the reason why I did this is I set traps in every single location that was significant to me because I knew that's where you would go and this is one of the cool things because what Snyder's kind of been showing here is that in the entire fight between the Batman who lasts Bruce Wayne's been on defense but Batman who lost makes a move and then Bruce Wayne counters and about man who lost makes a move and then Bruce Wayne encounters it's never really been Bruce Wayne on the offensive where he's it finally got the upper hand and is taking it to the Batman who lasts that's never been the case now it's really been Snyder of building up the nature of the Batman who laughs is saying this is why he's so dangerous is because he's always got the upper hand on Bruce and Bruce is always against the ropes but it is kind of a cool thing to finally see Bruce get the upper hand on him because he interned electrocutes the piss out of him and then starts to be beating the crap out of him with the gravestone of his mom right with like Martha Martha Wayne's gravestone what did you say that name because it was done by a terrible writer named Zack Snyder thanks Snyder was a terrible screenwriter why would anybody allow him to make a movie but but nonetheless so with this whole thing like this this this place it's it's cool because what we end up learning is it like the the person that James Gordon jr. was stabbing was not Commissioner Gordon it was actually too grim Knight like he literally stabbed him to death and it's kind of a cool theme because what this shows is a couple things about the grim life one it shows he's not nearly as capable as Batman - it shows he doesn't have the foresight of Batman and three he doesn't have the fighting prowess of Batman right like he's a half-measure it's interesting here because like the grim knight he's taken out of the picture like that some people may be against that because he was written out so quickly but in reality he was nothing more than a henchman he was the Batman who laughs equivalent to a Robin right he was just kind of there and and just sort of doing whatever he needed to do in order to take them take him out and that was basically yet but then you basically follow up with like the surprise victory because what is up happening here as well Batman sort of snaps and gives in to his darker half and it's just like I love this idea of just letting go and just tearing things up by just wrecking the Batman who lasts suddenly like he's saved by the Joker who fires the shot in the Batman who lasts and seems to kill it like seems to take him out now in response to this the entire drone systems also taken down and it's all basically wiped clean and everything sort of reset now with with that being the case Gotham City's basically saved and it kind of begs the question what happened to the Batman who lasts like is he dead it's kind of a cool little thing here because what you end up doing is basically following up with Batman who lasts talking to Alfred Pennyworth about two weeks after this is all going down and what you end up learning is that there were some basically like a blood sample that was taken from the kid version of Bruce Wayne that was used to synthesize a serum that could cure Bruce Wayne of his you know Batman who laughs exposure and the reason why is because with the Batman who lost serum it was created in the dark multiverse right so the only cure available for it would come from the dark multiverse and as kind of what Batman says and it's kind of Scott Snyder basically saying that essentially saying hey look they were being created in the main DC Universe I could use a blood sample from an alternate reality version of myself from just some other universe out there and everything would be okay right but it's like trying to trying to fit a square peg into a round hole the only way to cure a dark multiverse illness or disease is to find a cure in the dark multiverse because it's almost like a kind of genetic or I guess atomic structure of how it works all I kind of stuff it just kind of aligns oh well that makes any sense you're right hopefully it does it's kind of finicky the way that it the way that it's done here but essentially the Batman who last has been taken and held captive and exists under the Hall of Justice as a prisoner now the reason why this matters and the reason why it's significant is it's not Scott Snyder just kind of giving us a throw away explanation it's Scott Snyder telling us he can return at any point in time but if he had killed the Batman who last then he would be gone right because DC doesn't really play it fast and loose with death like Marvel does right like once a character is dead they usually stay dead for a pretty significant amount of time it's not like more comics where a character dies and then like six issues later they'll bring them back from you know by some hand-wavy explanation you know Cosmic Cube or Infinity Gauntlet or whatever it is they wanted to be or they were never actually dad it was a trick the whole time you know they never really do that they've done it sporadically like with Batman you know Batman was supposed to have died you know during Final Crisis when he was hit by the Omega sanction of Darkseid and then instead like he was just time displace because Batman's too popular to kill like it was it was just different things like that and so it worked for what it was because what you end up having is Commissioner Gordon and his son basically making amends kind of getting together and saying hey look you know let's let's see if we can work forward from here ah but it's Bruce Wayne basically sitting down with with Alfred and saying hey look like oh I've been thinking about everything the Batman who laughs said right like everything the Batman who laughs has told me is this like he's traveled around the multiverse and he's seen all these different versions of myself and his fort like from what he tells me I'm the most ineffective one right like I'm the loneliest one I'm the angriest one on the most bitter one and I'm the one that's done the least to make Gotham a better place and his and it's cool because woody what he does he looks around he says that's right right and that's kind of the funny thing is because when you go through the Batman who laughs and you see these alternate reality verses of Bruce there's one where Bruce Wayne used all his money to basically make Gotham City a much better place kind of like this speaking for the world almost a metropolis others all these different versions of Bruce Wayne that have gone on to do great things the version of Bruce and in the DC Universe he sucks like he's like he's it's it's the argument that I made before right like he's done nothing to make Gotham City better than what it was if anything it's worse because now they're supervillains were flying around and so you've got like you got this this system where you've got this super rich guy who uses essentially like a paltry portion of his money to create some building somewhere and say this will be a beacon for Gotham City and it never is you know and then in turn uh he just runs around at night and just beats up criminals hoping they can change and it's just kind of like you know sometimes it doesn't work that way you know sometimes hope just isn't enough doing things changes things doing nothing keeps things exactly the way they are and that's kind of what Batman's done and that's what he's saying in the story like he's looking at that he's like I'm ineffective like I'm not ineffective superhero it's kind of a cool thing here like it's it's like it's a cool explanation and it's a cool discussion that goes on now what this means going forward is that it's kind of ushering Batman into a new direction because if Batman sits around and says everything I've done to this point has been ineffective in making Gotham City a better place right like the Joker's still there running around doing things the penguins still doing things to face Bane so on and so forth and in fact Bane actually conquered the city if all this is going on and I'm one step forward and two steps back then like something to change and so the idea here at least what I hope comes out of it is that we see kind of a new era of Batman where either it's using his wealth to actually do something that matters as opposed to funding some building somewhere hopefully something big kind of comes out of that and hopefully it'll be kind of cool but then what you also have kind of the tail end of this and this is where sort of continues on in a Batman Superman number one is you basically have Commissioner Gordon who's just sort of out there and he's met by a rookie and the guys like hey man are you okay and commissioner Ian of finding out Commissioner Gordon when he was pushed face down into the water by the grim knight was exposed to the toxin he's going crazy he's essentially becoming the Batman who lost it's kind of a cool little moment there because it's the idea that the legacy always lives on and the legacy always continues well that being said guys we're gonna bring this video to an end if you are new here two comments explain make sure you guys have the sub button to become part of the rod for if you guys enjoyed this video make sure you drop a like and I will catch you all later peace [Music]

Channel: Comics Explained

Views: 1,184,222

Rating: 4.8736663 out of 5

Keywords: comics explained, comicsexplained, marvel explained, fluidic beats, comics, comic books, marvel, dc, infinity gauntlet, world breaker hulk, crisis on infinite earths, comic explained, infinity war, the batman who laughs, doomsday clock, DC Comics, DC Rebirth, DC Universe, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Justice LEague, The Grim Knight, Full Story, The Flash, The Button, Flashpoint, The Joker, Dark Nights MEtal, Dark Multiverse

Id: 63glDub0auo

Length: 83min 14sec (4994 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 27 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/meltedsheetmetal]

This YouTube video is almost an hour and a half long. That's longer than some movies. That's impressive.

[u/CashMoneyPancakes]

Damn. The whole concept of a Dark Superhero Universe is amazingly cool.

Need to get some new comics!