The Joker Becomes A Hero: Full Story

what's going on guys this is Rob if you guys enjoy my content make sure you hit the subscribe button and make sure you hit that little bell so you never miss out on my sexy voice okay so this is one of the best Batman stories that I have ever read like Batman White Knight is insanely good and I've been saying that since like the since this first issue came out like the first issue came out I checked it I was already hyped for it because I was like dude this looks cool and I was reading the solicitations and all that kind of stuff and I was like okay I need to check this out so I was already excited then the comic gets released Shaun Murphy is the one who's writing it I'm just like dude this is incredibly good it's it's insanely good all right so so what this does is this picks up about one year before the present day now what did it bear in mind is that Batman the White Knight is not in continuity maybe this has no ties to DC rebirth other than the fact that is published at the same time that DC's doing DC rebirth it may be that because this is such a high-profile and such a popular story that you'll see it later on down the line but for right now you can just imagine this this story is totally isolated and takes place in a whole different universe and what's going on in DC Comics right now but this picks up about a year before the current day and it's just a stereotypical Batman Joker conflict that is kind of chasing after each other Manson nature a Batman and Joker right I mean they're kind of like the yin and yang because of the fact that this goes in your stereotypical fashion of a Batman Joker escapade it's basically like just running throughout the entire city of Joker like Batman's chasing Joker over rooftops things like that Joker's riding a scooter I mean that's really about it it's kind of silly and it's kind of nonsensical but something I want you to notice is that Batman seems to be going to extremes and he seems reckless here I mean right off the bat this does not seem like something we would normally see Batman do so the indication is that Batman is in a state of desperation but he's got Batgirl along side along with him he's got Nightwing riding on a motorcycle that man's doing things like again riding over rooftops crashing into cement trucks with the Batmobile all for the purpose of like trying to find the Joker he's basically like disregarding virtually all safety protocols now once Batman catches up to the Joker again it's just kind of a at least it seems like a pretty straightforward fight but for the most part the Joker just kind of leads Batman into this sort of ruse where he just kind of you know is like Hetch me if he can find me so on and so forth well the fight is pretty intense and it's pretty hardcore because what you end up having here is in this battle the Joker actually makes this really interesting case to Batman and what he basically says is that they are created to be the same thing what they stand for is designed to be the exact same thing you know Batman stands for love the Joker stands for hate they're kind of like in this interesting you know yin and yang intertwined scenario the cuz one can't live without the other but when Batman's facing off against him when he's literally like wrecking the Joker what Joker says is he led him to this location with all these cops following with Barbara Gordon and with Dick Grayson watching all this unfold and he brought a bottle of pills and these pills that the Joker says if I take these then I'll finally be able to show you everything that I see and what the Joker sees is a city that's basically sick and the Joker believes he can fix it and so where Batman and his recklessness grabs the pills he forces them down the throat of the Joker and this is crazy because the entire thing had been recorded by a member of the press which in turn was publicly leaked and this is where things really begin to go awry because what you end up having is the city of Gotham which is kind of split in half on one side you have people who say yeah I mean the Joker took the lives of others but the Joker still has rights ie if the Joker goes through the judicial system and the Joker is found to be not guilty then it's okay to sacrifice future people because the Joker deserves to live the people that he killed don't really matter here whereas you have other people who say no the Joker killed people he deserves to die no questions asked and so you very much have like this huge rift within the city of Gotham and it stems in every conceivable way I mean Batman beat the Joker to a pulp so you literally have Batman on camera beating the Joker within an inch of his life and enforcing a handful of pills which no one knows what they will do down the throat of the Joker you have the police department fighting amongst one another the same rift exists here that's the question I would pose to you guys this is Joker still have the right to stand trial or did he did he basically abandon that right did he give up that right when he willingly killed so many people that's the question I'm kind of asking you guys where do you draw the line how many lives are you willing to sacrifice before you finally say enough is enough The Joker can't kill anybody else anymore that's the kind of scenario that's being put here to the city of Gotham and that's the kind of question that I'm putting to you guys but what is up happening is where Commissioner Gordon initially takes a side of Batman says look sure Batman's done shady things sure Batman has has broken the rules or bent the rules in order to basically get the criminals but at the end of the day he drops them off on our doorstep he gives us the evidence and so what that does is it throws them in the hands of the justice system so they still go through the entire proceedings it's just the manner by which they were caught may have been a little bit illegitimate but at the end of the day Commissioner Gordon's concern is not necessarily for the Joker it's for what happens next and so what we do is we get the brief little panel where the Joker just wakes up in a cell surrounded by Batman paraphernalia something else also want you guys to notice too one of the posters here is actually from Batman the Animated Series which is really cool so kudos to DC for throwing that in it but what we end up doing is picking up with Bruce the one he's met with the arrival of Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon and again they recognize the fact that Batman is acting pretty extreme here now again under normal circumstances we would look at this and we would say this is not how Batman works he's clearly written out of character here but this is when we start to get the other side of the equation this is where we realized that we've basically been jumping to conclusions the entire time without ever really knowing what's going on and so picking up with Bruce Wayne when he leaves Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson down into the basement of this building we end up finding out that Alfred is basically dying and he's been this way for about a month and so Bruce's recklessness the fact that he's going to such extremes aints taking such a heavy hand when it comes to villains is for a couple different reasons one because he's forced to work with one with mr. freeze to basically put Alfred on ice until a cure can be found so that he can be brought back from whatever's killing him and then at the same time he's literally stressed and desperate so he's been pushed to his wit's end and he's just kind of at this point where enough is enough and that's what led to him being so extreme and so at this point we jump back to the Joker and this is when things get really cool one thing I want you to notice here is as Shaun Murphy doesn't really give us like a traditional origin of the Joker we know his name is Jack Napier from like the original 1989 Batman movie but this is cool because what he does is he sits down and says it basically he was raised on a farm like he was not really raised in Gotham City proper but he was told Gotham City is like this city of lights and so it's very much a tale of discovery like the Joker is a stand-in for like Oliver Twist for example leaving the workhouse leaving the The Undertaker's taking off saying I'm gonna go to the totem the City of London the great big city in the sky you know coming across a kid named Jack Dawson Jack Dawson says his name's the Dodger he takes Oliver to meet you know mr. Fagin and then ultimately Oliver's trained to be a pickpocket realizing that London's not everything he thought it was until he meets mr. Brownlow that's the whole thing about this the Joker believes like almost everybody believes the land of lights the land of Lala you know for LA this idea that if he goes to Gotham City he'll have this better life he tried to get into comedy but the biggest problem with Gotham was that it was a city that was so lost it was a city where the people had given up to such an extreme that no one could ever really find any happiness there it was quite literally a city of sorrows and so what the Joker do that in turn he tried to get a rise out of people and turned to terror turn to crime and became the Joker that's really kind of how Jack Napier turned all this but the whole idea is that when he basically turned to a life of crime he discovered Batman Batman was able to instill in the city of Gotham some small measure of hope that the city of Gotham could be better than a place that was just run and dominated by criminals and the result is that the Joker saw a Batman was doing able to get a rise out of people in such a fashion and begin to somewhat identify with him in the sense that they both ultimately had the same goal they were trying to make the city a quote-unquote better place the indication here is the Joker's message was lost in the conflict and Batman's wasn't but regardless of how all this goes down what we end up doing is picking up with downtown Gotham City only for us to find out these pills he read that he had taken had basically made him sane they made him a reasonable human being he's not crazy anymore he hasn't lost his mind anymore instead what goes on here is that when the evidence is brought to those in power they're basically told he's perfectly reasonable like his mental health is at 100% and where questions are asked as to whether or not this is possible if he's faking it the answer that's given is you can't fake a cat skin this is legit the Joker is normal and so when the other question is asked what's he doing right now the answer is he's working on his legal case he's going to file charges against the Gotham City Police Department Batman and Gotham City he's literally taking everyone to court and so what we end up doing is picking up with the Joker when he's met with the arrival of Gotha the Gotham City Police Department who actually try to try to implement some pretty underhanded tactics petrow to like force him in a position to where he has to accept responsibility for his actions but notice this this is what's so genius about this The Joker sits down and the Joker says I'm not guilty of anything I'm not guilty of anything at all every ounce of destruction that took place in this scenario was because of Batman it was Batman who's driving an unlicensed weaponized tank it's Batman who was driving it over rooftops it was Batman who injured three people when he hit a cement truck it's Batman who knocked over a guard it's Batman who almost beat me with he'll beat me within an inch of my life and it was Batman who forced pills down my throat I was riding a scooter and I hadn't actually killed anybody what you as Gotham City Police Department have done is you've sanctioned a vigilante who's taken the law into his own hands and then in turn said we don't see a problem here but it's only now that somebody raises a red flag when somebody blows the whistle and says actually there is a problem and I have the legal case to prove it that suddenly you want to step up and you want to try to apply some underhanded tactics now when Commissioner Gordon steps in and he basically says no no no Batman is not the Gotham City Police Department he does not speak for us The Joker's responses actually he does because you have a bad signal and that bats analysis on top of the Gotham the Gotham City Police Department building and you use it whenever you want to get a hold of them you sanction this man Gotham City has failed the Gotham City government has failed at stopping crime you as the Commissioner of the police department and your Police Department have failed at stopping crime Batman has failed at stopping crime you guys are basically pointless here and so if you won't save the city of Gotham if you won't get off your asses and do what you're supposed to then I will I will save the city of Gotham game set match so the writer Shawn Murphy is probably gonna go down as one of the greatest Batman writers of all time and it's stuff like this that makes you want to see like things beyond this yes why I love those guys who don't know DC's playing it really really smart when it comes to DC rebirth Marvel kind of has the stance of like is it a story somebody can write then like give it an ongoing series that's kind of Marvel stance it's one of the reasons why they're publishing like 60 comic books but DC has this I had this idea of just doing like miniseries and that's it DC is running like like five or six Batman miniseries of the moment like sins of the father and all these really really cool stories when it came to like Nightwing the new order it was just like a different take on the Nightwing character or things had basically gone awry and that's what I love about this is because what it does is it gives you this amazing story at least you know the white knight does it gives you this amazing story and then it kind of answers the question so what if we expanded this out to like the bigger DC Universe so like Shazam and the Justice League and like all these different characters and all these different things what would it look like and like that's the cool thing about this cuz like it makes you want to see more but in the last video we talked about how Batman had basically like gone crazy tracked the Joker down forced a handful of pills down his throat and ultimately the Joker became sane as a result of those pills and the result was the Joker while he wasn't heard by the police basically came up with this like this argument that like the cops have systematically helped the Batman become a vigilante that they're part of a bigger problem now what that problem was was something that the comic ended on it was basically the Joker is Jack Napier back to his normal self essentially saying I will bring light to this problem I will show the city of Gotham what really are and so that was the question that I saw in the comments from a lot of different people if the Joker has had this life of just killing arbitrarily and robbing folks and doing all kinds of crazy things even if he was on trial he would just get a life sentence and that's it but this is the beauty of the judicial system is that at the end of the day it's not left to a judge it's not left to like a cop it's left to a jury all the Joker has to do this convince a jury and the opinions in the wants and desires of the cops and the and the lawyers and know Batman and the judge they're all irrelevant and really like Jack Napier does this in the smartest way possible if you want to win anything you have to win the people for the most part the people are the ones who decide what happens in a court of law it's no different Jack Napier basically sits down and says this is my city I came here as an immigrant for the most part like I came here from from a small rural farm willing to make a better life for myself and when I got here I realized that life was hard and life was rough and like anybody who made bad decisions I turned to a life of crime and and I screwed up once I was busted and I was sentenced to 10 years what I began to realize was that crime is a product of the police in Gotham because what the cops were doing is they were basically using existing criminals and turning them into like super villains and then using them as a means to keep crime going and it's the greatest idea of a conspiracy because if there's any one thing that people loved it's believing that like there's some great you know some hidden hand out there controlling everything behind the scenes even if there's none but in terms of desperation people will believe what they want to believe and they'll simply ignore facts if there are any at all and so the result is that he basically sits down and he says look at the city of Gotham for what it is like look around you and look at what it is what you see are the wealthy prospering you see the poor struggling and you see Batman fighting the poor it's kind of Jack maybe you're twisting up the facts to a degree but it's also like providing a pretty interesting image the Batman is not a vigilante trying to keep Gotham safe that Batman's not there to like protect the people Batman's there to protect the wealthy from the people and it's so cool because it's like what better way to turn the entire city of Gotham on Batman than to basically say like he's not here to protect you he's here to protect the wealthy and the powerful from you it's the Joker in a lot of ways inciting revolution in the city of Gotham it's so cool half of this is like how he feeds on words for example there's a part of Gotham City called backport which is really where like a lot of minorities live specifically african-americans but the popular phrase to use is black port and that's why this is cool because it's turning all these things on the city of Gotham itself it's criticizing the press who are complicit in in the vigilantism of Batman and in the actions of the Gotham City Police Department it's the Gotham City Police Department who's complicit and basically the creation of crime in Gotham and the profiteering of crime is all these things that go on it's so cool because he says look like anytime anybody ever asked the question but where's all this extra funding going to like what are you doing with all this extra money where the police department was using it to create villains when people started asking too many questions well oh no the Joker's escaped we have to get the Joker guys it's such a cool way to portray the city of Gotham is just crooked and corrupt and so what we do is we pick up with Jack Napier when he gets back to his house and he's met with Harley Quinn right off the bat it's him trying to relate to Harley Quinn and we would kind of expect this but at the same time we wouldn't hurly Quinn has always been in love with like the Joker as a person like how the Joker manifests himself and how he treats her is just a byproduct of the relationship but it was always like her obsession with him she would follow him to the edge of the earth and she would do whatever it is that he wants her to do because she believes that she could like somehow fix him or turn him around or get him to love her it's the quintessential like good girl in love with a bad boy all the while never realizing that she's just one of many women that bad guys been with but where he starts to talk about things like proposal and marriage and these pills and so on and so forth she immediately freaks out and starts attacking him but while this is happening were suddenly met with the arrival of another Harley Quinn and I was like what in the hell is going on here as soon as I saw that I was like Sean Murphy Sean Murphy man you you genius but then as soon as I look at it I'm like okay this looks like the original Harley Quinn and that's when we find out that it is that this is actually the original Harley Quinn and this is this younger version of Harley Quinn that exists out there at the moment is not the actual Harley Quinn and this is kind of funny because what we find out is the original basically left the Joker and a new one took her place the Joker just never really realized it he never knew what was going on now this of course leads into like the obvious question how could the Joker not know that like Harley Quinn took off and replaced her you know replace yourself with somebody else and it's kind of cool because Harley goes through and tells her story and this is what I liked here's what I loved about this so much is this like Shawn Murphy all these different aspects and all these different themes of Batman's history with regards of different characters and sort of rolled it all together into a version that we're familiar with but has changed just enough to just kind of make it like a wholly unique and separate line of events and much like the main the main DC Universe when it comes to like Harley and when it comes to this version of her character as she fell in love with Jack Napier as he was the Joker but for her it really wasn't just like man let's just let's just be crazy it wasn't like she just snapped one day for her it was an escape it was the idea that like like her life was boring and it was mundane rinse and repeat her life is is by definition as she sees it completely and totally mundane but the Joker represented a change from that the Joker was random he had no idea what was gonna happen next and it gave Harley Quinn the the belief that she was free from the shackles of society I mean sure they were vigilantes they were on the lam but the fact remains that she could do anything she wanted to there was no limits to what she could do the world was her oyster and she wasn't constrained by like societal standards and lost but as time began to progress and when Batman first showed up she began to notice that the Joker's affection that his obsession switched from Harley Quinn to Batman and that he basically was in love with the idea of Batman every thought that he ever had it was all about Batman and Harley Quinn began to fade further and further into the background and because of that like it gave her no desire to want to be with him anymore but all this came to a head when the Joker kidnapped Jason Todd now again this is almost kind of like Shaun Murphy's twist on the death in the family storyline when like the Joker basically killed Jason Todd like it's kind of a kind of a twist on that idea but were Harley Quinn's there she basically kind of runs up and says look you're going too far but notice this this is not insane Harley Quinn this isn't the kind of Harley Quinn that were used to where she just snapped one day the Joker drove her insane she's very sane she's completely and totally rational she's like a regular normal human being but the Joker basically went too far this time it's you can't just run around and kill people not only that is predicated on the idea that like the Joker was jealous of Jason Todd because Jason Todd was the right-hand man of Batman how come I can't be the right-hand man abandoned how come I can't be that close to Batman well then I'll just kill Jason Todd because I'm so angry that he's in that position not where the the implication was that Joker had killed Jason although were not explicitly told that was the case man tries to kill the Joker and Harley quit actually stops him and says you can't kill him and so Joker basically went back to Arkham Asylum and that was really about it but this is cool because what she basically says is like sure I mean you know these these pills kind of help you to maintain this sort of loot you know this lucidity but like like Jack Napier recognizes the Joker's still in there that's still very much a part of who Jack Napier is but the stance of Harley Quinn is you can be fixed but you can be set back to normal and so again that's why I love this so much is because it's the Harley Quinn concept as we know her without the insanity that we're familiar with that's what ultimately jack basically sits down with her and says yeah I guess we can sort this out I guess we can get this going but the funny thing about this is that this almost you know switching over to Bruce Wayne when he meets up at a dinner party it hits it this idea that Batman didn't really know the impact of what it was that he was doing he was blissfully unaware of like the full totality of his actions and the reason why I say this is because there's basically a guy here named Pierce who's kind of a dick and basically has been you know been drinking alcohol the whole time so on and so forth but where you end up having a Jack Napier and Harley Quinn jump on TV and saying like we're taking this settlement money and we're opening the first library in backport and the result is that Pierce basically starts talking to Bruce Wayne about like the nature of things what he says is that inside of backport really inside of gotham you have were to call that impact zones and what this means is that when Batman shows up in an area and starts fighting crime and of course damage is done it absolutely tanked the value of the property well what wealthy people are doing is they're going in and then buying up all that property flipping it and then selling it at a premium and so they're basically making money off the work of Batman and this light this pisses off Bruce to the extreme but it's kind of funny because it's like how could he not know this how could a man who's one of those like the richest person in Gotham really have no idea that people are doing this either it means that Batman's incompetent as a superhero or Batman's die genuinely just didn't know but either way like it is it is really cool because basically it means that like the Joker was not lying Batman was an enforcer for the rich and the powerful and Gotham and so from here you pick up with Jack Napier in Harley Quinn basically meeting with a whole bunch of different villains now the cool thing about this meeting between the Joker in these villains is there's a lot of really really good at Easter eggs in here this is this is this is how you know that like Sean Murphy is like a Batman fan because like there's these little Easter eggs for example there's one point where Killer Croc says it so it was a big rock now this comes from Batman the Animated Series or anybody who remembers Batman the Animated Series back in the day and it was an episode called almost Gotham which is exactly why the what Jack Napier says is like every time we talk it turns into a game of almost scout that episode was was amazing it was cool because it's basically God if I remember correctly it's the Joker Killer Croc poison ivy and two-faced I think maybe even the penguin sitting around in a poker game telling the story of how each one of them almost got Batman and Killer Croc is like yeah man like i lured Batman into a sewer and they were like yeah like and then and then what happened he's like I threw a rock at him and like they all started looking at him kind of funny and he's like I mean it was a big rock you know but it is cool because what you have is the Joker basically say a really jack maybe you're basically saying look we should consolidate our efforts in order to basically take the city of Gotham back we have to work together if we're gonna bring down Batman now because of the fact that each one of these villains is for the most part used to operating on their own they basically give the most expected answer which is not a chance we do our own thing like we we we don't do that like we do our own thing we commit our own act that's basically what this is and so what we end up finding out is that what the Joker had done is actually taken I guess what Jack Napier did I keep wanting to say the Joker what Jack had done is he had basically taken Clayface and he had used one of the Mad Hatter's on controlling cards along with the controlling head man meaning he had complete and total domination over clayface's mind and then what he did is he started turning Clayface into a kind of like salt or sand more or less and then began dispersing that among like the various strengths that he had inside this meeting and so what's been going on is all the villains who were here they've been drinking this offering from the Joker all the while not realizing they're actually ingesting the ability for Joker to control them and that's exactly what happens by this extension Joker has single-handedly taken over the entirety of the criminal underworld inside of Gotham City okay so normally we would have done Batman the white knight on Wednesday but we covered Dark Knight's medal and so we're covering this today but this will come back like next week we'll cover on Wednesday like I prefer to keep this every week on a Wednesday that way you guys can expect to you know see the videos come out but this is continuing to be just such an amazing story and it's such a cool story because the Joker is so smart like I love the way this is done by Sean Murphy the whole story so far is that Jack Napier is basically gone saying that Joker's turn into a sane human being and has decided that it's basically his responsibility to conquer the city of Gotham to basically take it over using the will of the people and that he's essentially ensnared the various villains you know poison ivy and in Bane and two-face and all these different people using the power of the Mad Hatter basically slipping all these people mind-control nanomachines ah the Mad Hatter uses and in turn doing it through two-face feeding them drinks and then controlling their minds using the actual headband of two-face but it's cool because what this does is this opens up basically with like all the villains of Gotham just launching an attack on the city of Gotham itself and of course it requires the entire bat family to respond at this point it really only consists of like Batman Batgirl and Nightwing Dick Grayson and that's really about it so it's pretty short as it is now they also have the police who were fighting on their side but what is up happening here is you have all these different villains who are basically rampaging across the larger city of Gotham with Batman heading to backport which is where you know a handful of them are somewhat at and where initially Commissioner Gordon's idea is we all have to head to back court we all have to help out that man at the end of the day Bullock and and even other people like Renee Montoya are just kind of like no no no no Batman can handle himself we need to focus on the larger problem in in the main Gotham City itself now of course what this does is it kind of puts in a strop relief the idea that Batman's willing to go to any lengths to take down the Joker and it almost makes Batman look like he's not looking at the big picture because what is him happening is he basically says like the Joker's behind this we have to find the Joker you know we can go to back port we can take these guys out they're not going to destroy the library the Joker just built there's no way that's gonna happen but it does and again it's brilliant here because the Joker when he went saying he basically made the case that Batman does everything he can to take down villains with no real thought to the collateral damage Valon doesn't care about who gets displaced from their homes when buildings are destroyed balle doesn't really care about how much it cost to rebuild things when he destroys stuff all he cares about is getting the bad guy and this fits directly into that notion because bein in Killer Croc start tearing down the library but to everybody who's watching all this unfold Batman chased down a couple of villains quartered them and they freaked out and destroyed a building it's Batman's fault that's how people will see it that's how they will perceive it now Batman runs in there and basically tries to these guys but gets caught in you know all the destruction and everything only for like two-faced and Killer Croc to basically have gotten away so Batman is perceived as being single-handedly responsible for the destruction of all these different things now at this point we switch over the two Joker himself to Jack Napier and we end up finding out this was exactly what we thought it was it was just a distraction his idea was to basically wait until the smoke cleared and then go to the Law Offices of Hill and Hill the former Law Offices of the current mayor Hill in Gotham City and what he does is start sifting through all these old files he starts sifting through all this old information all these little secrets and things like that that are not supposed to be readily known now what we end up finding out is a reason for this is because he basically goes in front of national television and he says what you guys don't know is that like people are profiteering off of you every single time Batman ghostified a villain money has to be spent in order to fix the buildings that he's destroyed in order to repair the roads that are damaged or whatever the case may be and the question that that that Jack Napier presents here the Joker presents here is where does this money come from who's spending the money to do this and this is what he basically makes the announcement of what's called the Batman devastation fund that unbeknownst to all the people in Gotham that what's been happening is exactly what we discovered in the last video that you have this kind of tax payer relief fund more or less that taxes have been increased or whatever the case may be there's kind of a disaster relief fund that exists out there but because there's no real natural disasters in Gotham this is a ruse it's a way for the wealthy to essentially funnel taxpayer money into the Batman devastation fund and then as we discovered in the last video what they do is they basically repair these buildings and then that drug that you'll when when that man destroys an area it drives down the cost of everything so the wealthy can basically repair these buildings improve on them dirt cheap and then sell them at top dollar they're using taxpayer money to basically charge taxpayers more money for the houses they have to buy or buy back in order to return to where it was that they were when Batman destroyed everything and so again it's pretty heinous what Jack Napier is doing is he's sitting down and he's revealing kind of the truth he's basically showing the man behind the curtain in the city of Gotham and saying your city is rampant with corruption like you wouldn't believe now this is big because let's say for example that like this sparked a revolution in the city of Gotham and let's say that like the government and the wealthy they basically like bring in the National Guard well the National Bart has brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and sons and daughters who were just the people of Gotham and I would bet all the money in my pockets - all the money in your pockets that if it came down to those police officers and those National Guardsmen and National Guard's women who have been set on the path of trying to quell this revolution but if they have to make the choice between pointing a gun on the wealthy and the powerful who caused all this or putting a gun on their own friends and family don't point a gun on the wealthy and powerful and in that moment it would come into sharp relief the idea that the wealthy and the government have no power and that's the cool thing because once that goes away once that that line of defense vanishes then suddenly it's open season it's really really interesting it's a way for Jack Napier to win the people because that's all you ever really need now at this point if we pick up with Bruce Wayne of course return him back to the Batcave kind of fixing himself up and so on and so forth but then Alfred wakes up when Batman basically collapses and because of this what is up happening is Alfred actually removes himself from wherever it is he's been healing from inputs Batman in his place this is cool because what this does is it actually kills Alfred Alfred basically sacrifices his life in order to heal Batman now in truth Shawn Murphy doesn't make this and like a great big huge like one shot right it's not like a brunt of the story because it doesn't need to be a great big huge thing because we know it's a huge thing Alfred dying for the sake of say of saving Bruce Wayne is insane and is huge Alfred is the moral compass of Bruce Wayne if Alfred's not there Batman will just run a ride there'll be no one to reel him in when he starts to cross over that line that he's always tried to keep from crossing over and so what happens is you have Dick Grayson you have Barbara Gordon you sit down and say it's up to us we're the ones that basically have to hold Batman back and keep him from crossing over and losing his mind in its entirety something else that I want you guys to notice too and this is this is a pretty cool moment it's actually one of my favorite moments of the story Shaun Murphy shifted things up in a pretty and a pretty amazing and interesting way here while Barbara Gordon and Dick Grayson are at the cemetery basically you know paying paying their respects to Alfred there's a tombstone there for a Jason Todd now our initial response would be Jason Todd was killed by the Joker you know you was basically beat up with a crowbar and then blown to pieces and Batman didn't get there in time and so on and so forth no no no that's not what happens what Shaun Murphy actually tells us is that Jason Todd was Robin before Dick Grayson and that's huge it's cool like it's really really cool to me that's why I like these stories that are kind of out there is because to me telling the same chronology all the time gets really really boring and really mundane and shifting things up just enough to make them different is actually really really interesting to me because Dick Grayson doesn't really know anything about Jason Todd all they know is that Jason Todd's death kind of set in motion the reality of the fact that you can't save everybody that Batman couldn't save every single person that mattered but from here what we also do is pick up with another little bit of a change and we basically have the Joker who shows up in backport and actually meets with Duke Thomas now Duke Thomas is grown he's a grown man in this instance and again this is really fascinating to me because Duke Thomas in the main DC line of comics is young I mean he's basically the signal I mean it's Batman and the signal we don't really know exactly what he's gonna be but we know he's not going to be a Robin we're just kind of waiting for his character to be fleshed out but in this story he's grown he's fought in the military you know he's basically like Special Forces for a while he's kind of like the guy who doesn't really trust Jack Napier but he's somewhat of the tour guide here because what Duke says is that I don't necessarily trust you but backport loves you because backport views Jack Napier as the only guy who's on their side they view him as the only guy who's willing to help them out and again this sets in stone the idea that the Joker's hitting all the right marks that he's getting all the right support from all the right people now what this also does is this hits of the idea that Jack Napier could make a run for like mayor and basically become the mayor of Gotham and he would have the vote support in order to pull it off and that's again where you start to back people into a corner and so what we end up doing here is we actually pick up with a woman who basically breaks into the facility of the Joker sort of but not really but she basically comes across the Mad Hatter and of course you know the Mad Hatter is spouting different things like you know Alison Wonderland quotes and so on and so forth which is what he does but this woman who's actually not the Joker's daughter thank God as soon as I saw this I thought it was like the return of Joker's daughter from like the new 52 and I was like oh man I really hope not them there were a lot of people who hated the idea of Joker's daughter The Joker's daughter was designed to be kind of a stand-in for like Harley Quinn in the new 52 he was an attempt to basically replace her and even kind of replace the Joker to a degree and give us like a new version of the Joker or something along those lines I have no real idea what the purpose was and that was evidenced in the fact that she just kind of floated and there was no real story to be told about her she was kind of interesting in the beginning but then after that you know people were just kind of like no give us the old Joker which I'm glad we did because we got Scott Snyder's Joker who was insane but this girl breaks into the facility only to find out that basically like Clayface is being controlled with a car - the Mad Hatter that's been slipped inside his brain which it's kind of cool to see the interior of Clayface once he like turns to dust and fades away and it's just a brain with eyes attached to it which I guess still works at me I don't know how it's getting oxygen no clue anyway so this chick is it's cool because she basically like like the Mad Hatter spills the beans and says everything that's going on here is being done by Jack Napier Jack Napier runs everything no idea what it isn't what do what he's gonna do with it but Jack Napier is basically running the entirety of the criminal empire but this is huge because what this means is that Jack Napier Secret is no longer a secret if the word is out now that Jack Napier is actually the one behind the scenes pulling the strings when it comes to all the different villains in Gotham City okay so we are continuing our story on Batman the white knight and I'm glad you guys are really enjoying this I'm glad you guys are really really diggin the white knight because it is such an amazing story it's crazy the next comic book convention that Shaun Murphy goes to I want to sit down and just be like all right dude how did you come up with this idea I want to just like have a conversation with a guy and just be like man I will buy you lunch and just tell me how you came up with this idea because this is this is awesome like I really really want to do that yeah this story is so cool okay so here's the thing Batman the white knight cuz I was talking to comic story about this and and it was one of those things where I didn't really occur to me until I was reading it but it is very much a political story but the cool thing about this is that it's a political story done in a really really good way because what it does is it creates kind of a you a unifying factor with readers as opposed to like a political story that focuses on race relations more so than anything else basically we have Jack Napier who's kind of running the show like Jack Napier who's basically elevated himself to prominence in in Gotham City after having quote-unquote cast off the Joker identity but the cool thing about this is that within the realm of Gotham City within this whole area you have back port and back port is largely where or african-americans reside at and so with Jack Napier showing up here initially it does kind of put on the play of it being like a sort of race-based story like a racial political story and this is that Jack Napier has appealed to the four black parts of society that live inside of Gotham City but where Duke Thomas kind of like the the speaker for this part of Gotham City for back port it is cool because he basically says look like the cops never come out here we're kind of just left to our own devices to try to make sure that things don't get too terrible the cops are never really out here the wealthy never come out here Batman only ever comes out here to remind us of our place to make sure that we don't get too far out of our little pocket of the city but no one ever really cares about what happens to back court and then Jack Napier came here with no security he came here with no cops no escort no nothin it was Jack Napier and Harley Quinn who just came walking into back port that right there is brazen enough because it's kind of like look we could be killed at any point just because of the fact that we're politicians and were perceived as part of the wealthy elite that are out there were enemies of backport more or less but walking in there is a sign of Solace because it's like look we realize we're putting our life on the line walking in a back port but that's the risk we're taking because we want to make this part of Gotham a better place and that's what Jack Napier has been doing he came there to build a library he's been helping to improve the youth center like he's been gaining the trust of Duke Thomas over the course of the time that he's been there and we know been working within back port and because he's gained the trust of Duke Thomas and everyone in back port trust Duke it means now they trust Jack Napier Jack Napier in turn basically uses this moment to announce his candidacy as a councilman in Gotham City and this is where Shawn Murphy initially kind of Dell's into the idea of like racial issues and then immediately jumps to the bigger picture and says okay now it's a social class issue because throughout the story the entire time we learned about things like the Batman Fund the sense that you have Batman who goes into a part of town things get destroyed the value of that property plummets the wealthy buy it the government uses the the Batman neo destruction fund or whatever it is to rebuild that area and then the wealthy sell it for top dollar they basically profit off of Batman's actions and the the criminal element of Gotham City when you have Jack Napier who steps in and who in turn says like this issue stretches all across the city of Gotham suddenly it's not a racial thing anymore because poverty is race-neutral and if you're Jack Napier and you can walk in to the city of Gotham if you can turn over a new leaf and then say I want to fix the city of Gotham and I want to do it by getting rid of all the corruption by making Gotham a better place by starting with the poor and making your lives better you've just won an entire social class it's Jack Napier winning Gotham City not by force as the Joker but through politics is Jack Napier so from here you basically have him like leading a march and that's when all this really kind of be kind of begins to take off and it really hits home with the idea that like Jack Napier is really gonna do this you know he starts as having people marching in different directions the cops are going to respond and then Batman intervenes and keeps things from getting out of control but Batman is already viewed in a sour perspective by the city of backport so for everyone watching this for everyone out there for everybody in in backport who's watching this event unfold everybody who's watching from TV what they see is this back port is a city that has been historically oppressed within the realm of Gotham poor black Americans live there Batman is routinely sent there to keep them in check the wealthy and the powerful profiteer off the struggle of people I'm in back for it and then when as soon as you have a person who crops up and says let's make this part of the city a better place Batman comes swooping in you know that's how people see it they basically see it as like this system working against the people of backport and they don't care what politician runs form and recognizing what's going on here Jack Napier tells everyone to stand down so there's another everybody stand down everybody chill relax calm down I'll go willingly suddenly he's the good guy he's the guy who saved back port and that's exactly what happens it picks up with Gotham insider and they basically say like we thought there was gonna be another riot and back port but Jack Napier swoops in and saves the day when the press wins social media when the people in the city and who cares what the wealthy and the powerful want to do because they're powerless in the face of millions of people who don't want them there and could just drag them into the streets and shoot them if they wanted to so again it's cool it's such a twist on the character of the Joker now from here we pick up with Jack Napier meeting with Commissioner Gordon I remember Commissioner Gordon has been the one cop who's been on the fence he's been the man on the wall in the Gotham police department not in the sense that he's like the only guy out there keeping things afloat but in the sense that like he's the one who's not really sure what direction to go in because remember Commissioner Gordon has always basically been a good guy he's done some questionable things but he's usually always been a good guy he was the guy who said look we don't necessarily like the idea of a vigilante in Gotham but we do realize that we need Batman because he's willing to do things that we as cops can't do but Commissioner Gordon has always been on the fence about Batman and he's always been on the fence about his role as a police commissioner and the corruption in Gotham City and Jack Napier plays on that but him showing up and talking about the Batman devastation fun and things like that he says look I want to use this Gordon's initial responses yeah but like you literally use that as a talking point against us to reveal to that point the fact that the wealthy and the powerful were profiteering off back port whenever you know crime took place and the value of parts of the city plummeted like you've used this as a weapon against us and now you want to use it for yourself but Jack neighbors response is but it's not selfishness I'm not using it as like a slush fund to just kind of pay you guys off the point of the Batman deficit a devastation fund is to remodel it and rework it into something called a Gotham terror oppression unit basically what this is designed to do is to take the vigilante element of batman batgirl and Nightwing k-- bring them together and unify them alongside the best cops on the surface if we see like gotham terrorism oppression unit my initial thought is Jack Napier creating a secret police but the way that he introduces this is it's not like that it's basically taking the vigilante element of Gotham and instead of having it operate without any accountability in no oversight like Batman Batgirl and Nightwing do to pair them up with cops to make sure there is oversight and there's checks and balances the good cops will keep the vigil of vigilantes in check and the unit as a whole will be able to reach into parts of Gotham City's that cops can't normally access and bring various criminals to justice it's an exceedingly great idea the argument that Jack Napier makes here is look you say you need Batman and that's fine but what you actually need are Batman's resources if the resources of Batman were available to you as the Gotham police department can you honestly say you would not be better equipped to face off against the the super criminals that exist inside this city and so from here what we do is we pick up with the whole idea of Lady Joker or or Joker or I'm sorry neo Joker and that's what you want to call it remember in the last video what we ended up finding out is that where Joker was using the mind control device of the Mad Hatter to control the various criminals in Gotham City in order to basically set up a ruse so that he could infiltrate the offices of Mayor Hill and then learn about the Batman devastation fund and so on and so forth that a lady Joker had essentially co-opted that technology stolen it overridden it and took control away from Jack Napier and so it means she's now in control of the criminal element of Gotham City in its entirety and they're just running through and they're ripping everything up in its entirety now the whole idea behind this is it again much like the Joker himself it's a ruse it's designed for the purpose of allowing her and in Mad Hatter to get inside of the Gotham City Police Department and then find some some personal files and information this being kept hidden by either Jack Napier or the Gotham City PD itself discover what those files are actually you know access them and then go through and do whatever it is they're gonna do with them but the other cool thing to you is that in the aftermath of this huge event you have Batman and you have Commissioner Gordon who sort of get into an argument here and this is where Shaun Murphy basically tells us Jack Napier's won over Commissioner Gordon piece by piece Gotham's just being broken apart where Commissioner Gordon is just like Jack Napier is right if we had your technology at our disposal Gotham City could be a better place it could be adequately protected and Jack Napier has that plan I don't even know what your name is I'll even know who you are all I know is that you're a guy who runs around Gotham City in the middle of the night dressed as a bat beating up people and I've trusted you up to this point because you've done what needed to be done you've brought in the bad guys and so on and so forth but what we have now is a man who's shown up here with a concrete solid verifiable and trustable plan on how to make Gotham City better and there's no reason not to trust it essentially Commissioner Gordon kind of makes this argument that I like Batman you are becoming unnecessary now we now have this guy Jack Napier who's willing to work with us as opposed to alongside us and then in turn make Gotham City a better place we don't have to blindly trust him and so at this point we basically pick up with Jack Napier in in Harley Quinn who were getting together you know kind of kind of coming off of you know touchin naughty bits and ultimately they're met with the arrival of neo Joker and this is of course when we basically find out neo Joker was the Harley Quinn at the beginning of the story before the real Harley Quinn showed up so she's basically fake Harley but for the sake of this video we'll just call her lady Joker going forward just so there's no real confusion but the coolest element of this of this whole story really comes to play and we actually learn about her origin we basically figure this out when when we end up having her meet or I guess returned back to the Mad Hatter and the reason why she ended up leaving Jack Napier and and the original Harley Quinn is because she basically says the only way for me to actually win you back the only way for me to get the Joker to come back is for me to take over Gotham City because the Joker's ego is too intense to allow somebody else to win and so because of this she goes through and tells this huge origin story and she essentially says that like she was a person who cut herself she was struggling with all kinds of anxiety issues and depressive issues and so on and she was in the process of actually just kind of ending her own life and then what do you know The Joker busts into the bank and the Joker starts robbing the joint but as soon as the Joker put a gun to her head she wanted to live and so in response to this the Joker's started calling her Harley and so she played long this is kind of interesting here under normal circumstances we would expect a story almost identical to like the original Harley Quinn instead she's just kind of well depending on how you look at it in the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time but because Joker starts calling her Harley she plays along under the hopes that Joker will let her live that Joker won't kill her but then because of the fact that she looked so much like the original Harley the Joker took her back to his hideout gave her a Harley Quinn outfit never touched her except for - except for the bandage your wounds and that's it but she basically became the new Harley Quinn in the eye - the Joker she was the new Harley now this is so cool because what this does and what this indicates here is the Joker's not nearly as cold-hearted as we would expect to expect to believe he is but virtually every depiction of the Joker going forward from like crisis on Infinite Earths to the modern day has always given us this version of the Joker where he's effectively a person who needs things he's like a child crying out he needs the Batman because the Batman makes him complete but what this indicates is he needs Harley Quinn The Joker's incomplete without Harley Quinn if Harley Quinn was really that irrelevant to the Joker if he really cared that little about her then there would be no reason for him to replace her but the factor that Joker goes through all these steps to make this chick the new Harley Quinn indicates that even if it's only on a subconscious level he's created a new Harley and that's why this works because this girl Marion Druce she fell in love with him The Joker completed her gave her a reason to live because she's in such a place where she needs to belong and because the Joker's in such a place where he needs a Harley Quinn that who fall in love it's wild but picking back up with with Jack Napier and him what we end up having is Jack Napier and Commissioner Gordon along with maybe a couple of the cops who basically put on the bat-signal Batman doesn't actually show up instead which who shows up is Nightwing and Barbara Gordon Batgirl and this is when Commissioner Gordon and Jack maybe you're sick we just want to speak to You Tube we don't want to talk to Batman and so what happens is Jack Napier goes through and spills the beans about the Gotham terrorists you know terrorist outfit and says like this is what we're shooting for three billion dollars a year is what the Batman devastation fund was pulling in we're reworking it and in turn what we're gonna do is we're gonna start outfitting cars to start creating our own Batmobiles and you guys are each gonna get one we want you on board we want you as a part of this now remember the whole reason why Jack Napier does this is because Barbara Gordon will listen to her father she'll go along with him Dick Grayson will go along with her and Batman will likely go along with the two of them especially if he feels like he's left out the cool thing about this is remember Batman is very much a wild card in these instances you can't guarantee Batman will go along with them and so ultimately what we end up doing is up picking off with the data files that lady Joker and Mad Hatter were sifting through and what we start to do is find out a handful of things one of which is that a lot of the files that are going on in the Gotham police department have to do with Victor freeze that Victor freeze was a Nazi that his father served in the SS that what's going on here is that despite all those things the wealthiest and really the most powerful family in Gotham City at the time the Wayne's Thomas and Martha were meeting with Victor freeze and what this indicates is that Batman's own parents had some pretty seedy dealings with some pretty unsavory individuals that existed inside of Gotham City okay so we are picking up with part 5 of the white knight and god this story just gets better and better it is so intriguing it's it's so interesting because it starts out is like a stereotypical Batman story then it turns them to light the Joker going sane and then it's risen like this story's gonna reveal like there's so many secrets in Gotham and like so many things about Batman that we don't know but what this initially does is it picks up with well really with Jack Napier basically learning how to become a better fighter now again one thing my guys to bear in mind is when it comes to him being sane this is my routine popping of the pills it's not permanent right like I mean if he stops taking the pills he'll go back to being the Joker he's got the Joker at arm's reach but at any point in time if somebody took the pills and like hid them he'd go back to being the Joker again so it's cool because the whole idea of him being sane just kind of runs on the edge of a knife but him learning how to fight from Harley Quinn it's cool because what this is designed to do is to show that he's basically captured everything and in fact that's what's being said here in the conversation between the two of them Jack Napier's got at all he's got back port basically he's got the the support of all the people in Gotham or at least most of them he's got the support of the Gotham City Police Department he's got the support of Nightwing he's got the support of Batgirl the only person who supported he does not have is Batman and at the end of the day that doesn't really seem to be a big part of the picture anymore because when he looks at where he is right now being a councilman the idea that like he's easy some way just like training to fight Batman in hand-to-hand combat that's really like the one thing he's shooting for is he's taken everything that matters to Batman so all this left is to basically take Batman's dignity to beat him in a hand-to-hand fight and call it a day and so at this point we switch over to Bruce Wayne to Batman who's been sickly going through and investigating everything that's been going on so far with regards to like neo Joker and all that kind of good stuff and the cool thing about this is that initially as he goes down like he immediately starts to pick up the pieces and that's one thing on what you guys have noticed about sean Murphy's writing here Batman's detective skills how intelligent he is that's a bat that's an afterthought it's a background thing Sean Murphy doesn't spend a whole lot of time dwelling on that because I mean it's cool he doesn't treat us as the reader as being stupid he's just kind of like you guys know what's going on with Batman you guys know he's smart you guys know he'll figure stuff out so let's worry about other things going on it's very reminiscent of like Scott Snyder Batman but when he's sitting down you know of course he's met by Barbara Gordon and Nightwing and of course he deduces within a matter of minutes the fact that all the villains who have been operating in Gotham City have all been mind-controlled basically that Clayface has something to do with it because it's the one villain that they haven't seen yet but the big takeaway from this from this encounter is that Nightwing and Barbara Gordon try to convince Batman to join the GTO and this is awesome because Batman's response is no but notice his reasoning here Batman doesn't simply say no because you know like I don't trust the GTF he says no because I don't trust Jack Napier Batman is incapable of letting go of the idea that Jack Napier is the Joker and is a bad guy Batman believes that like people can't change that the Joker can't change and mess was so ironic about this it's Batman's entire mission is predicated on rehabilitation it's predicated on the idea that a villain can basically be redeemed and become a good guy that's why does it kill anybody but the instant the Joker is redeemed well then suddenly there's got to be something going on it's basically one of these things where like Batman has a role to serve II as a purpose to serve and II can't let it go Batman can't function if there are no criminals in Gotham and if Batman can't function Bruce Wayne has no purpose and if Bruce Wayne has no purpose then a purpose has to be created and that's exactly what's going on here to everyone who's looking at Batman he's creating enemies because he needs someone to fight someone out there has to be wrong and that's why this is so cool Dick Grayson is being reasonable Barbara Gordon is being reasonable Jack Napier's plan is is really kind of like the perfect compromise but Batman and his stubbornness and his unwillingness to admit defeat simply sits down and says but there has to be a caveat and that's where things get kind of hairy because for us as the reader we look at that and we say well he's probably right because I mean his Batman surely there has to be catch but like at the at the same time you look at this and you say but what if there's not and it really kind of like throws on a sharp relief the nature of whether or not Batman is actually a hero and so at this point we switch over to an encounter with Batman and the real Harley Quinn and the exchange is interesting here because when it comes to Harley Quinn as a character by and large Batman has usually gone easy on her but the reason for why Batman did this is because in his mind Joker needed some kind of counterbalance that if Joker did not have something to anchor him as close to reality as he could get then like he would really fall off the defend Batman says to Harley Quinn he said we says we both know that as bad as the Joker was we knew how bad he wanted to be if you look at Harley Quinn in this perspective this humanizes her it changes her in her entirety the person that was keeping the Joker anchored to reality she's his anchor and without her he just falls down into the path of absolute insanity really beyond anything that he was before and that also kind of brings into question is that the reason why the Joker found a second Harley Quinn but regardless of the situation ultimately you know when when Batman hits her up and says look like you've got to find a way to set things to rights her response is no like I'm not siding with you Jack Napier is a good guy he's not the Joker anymore if you can't get past that and then the problem isn't Jack Napier the problem is you everyone is taking sides against Batman it's really him against the world metaphorically and in some ways physically Gotham City against Batman and so from here we pick up with neo Joker and Mad Hatter now these two trying to break into into at Wayne Manor this goes pretty par for the course in this sense it like one you're talking about like military-grade computer systems but usually not like the the highest levels of security and order like access Wayne Manor to say nothing of the computer and the Batcave and where Mad Hatter goes through and tries to hack in different things like that what is up happening his neo Joker actually uses her ability to control criminals and Brees in poison ivy and literally has her user vices start snapping through and tearing down different doors they're searching for information that would connect the Wayne family to the freeze family and the freeze family was part of the German SS back in World War two they're basically trying to find a way to connect the dots between Wayne and some pretty seedy things that happened during the Second World War and so as a result of this poison ivy the various plants she uses some of them are able to basically sense like stale air indicating there's a room with a door that hasn't been open in forever and so they actually find the room managed to tap in there but then Bruce Wayne realizes what's going on when like you know the alarms go off and this is hilarious this is what this one the funniest parts of the story because when they get in there and they start sniffing around may find blueprints for like underground tunnels different things like that suddenly Bruce Wayne comes flying out of nowhere I hear you hooligans he's just like this rich guy terrified for his life and truth he could have just sort of lost it and like gone after the two of them and just started ripping things up I remember when you're Batman you you kind of recognize it sometimes the best fight is the one that lasts the long term it's the one where you gather all the information that you need and having like neo Joker in Mad Hatter bust into his house and then start searching through a room where he could show up his Batman is well let's follow them let's see what's going on let's see what they're doing and let's even check out this room because one of the things we find out is that of course you have Nightwing who responds as part of the gto and Batman suddenly says like they were in a room that I didn't even know existed he had no idea that it was there and so at this point it's really more questions racing through his mind than answers but the cool thing is that we're night wasted Lee says hey man looked like mr. Wayne chill man the GTO has got this what we end up having is him of course you know basically donning his Batman outfit now this is beautiful the way that Shaun Murphy does this is absolutely stunning because what we have here is the GTO chasing after neo Joker basically going after neo Joker and going after Mad Hatter and they should be able to take them out and in fact they're catching up with them they're able to hold their own some of the criminals of neo Joker are being called in to kind of you know back off and force off some of the gto but then you end up having like the forces of backport that show up and so they start taking out criminals too so for the most part neo Joker and Mad Hatter are effectively finished trying to mean it's only a matter of time they're gonna chase them to a bridge or something like that but it's only a matter of time before they get caught and then here comes Batman and what he actually ends up doing is ruining everything he screws it all up and that's what's so great about this is because we look at Batman as the guy who shows up and saves the day Batman's the superhero Batman saves the day that's what Batman does instead like you have a city that's basically able to stand on its own two feet now that doesn't need Batman anymore but he makes his presence known Batman has to exist he has to be there even if it means screwing things up making things worse and so of course where he grabs a couple of the documents here he gets ahold of neo Joker but she makes her escape alongside Mad Hatter and he grabs a couple of pages they basically show Thomas Wayne next to one of the freezes from world war ii the bridge ultimately Colossus and then you immediately have Gordon who says enough is enough everybody's just fed up with Batman they're tired of it how many resources have been wasted because of Batman here's a foolproof plan called the GTO to basically have vigilantes and and the Gotham City Police Department work together and then here comes Batman Anna left field you know ruining everything tearing everything up mate you know kind of reiterating the point of Jack Napier Batman is not a superhero or a benefit for Gotham City Batman's a liability he's a hassle Batman is a pain in the backside and Jim Gordon finally sees the light and says Batman is no longer a vigilante in the city of Gotham Batman is a super criminal APB I want an APB out all-points bulletin Batman is to be arrested on sight and so from here we switch over to Bruce Wayne showing up at the home of Victor freeze showing up with these documents smashing that that image down on the paper you know down on down the local paper and says start talking and mr. Freeze's response is the Wayne family has many secrets they have a lot of Secrets but the most amazing part of this drop-off here is that Victor freeze reveals to Batman that he knows that he's Bruce Wayne how long he's known we don't know but we know that he like he knows that he's Bruce Wayne that's what's so crazy about this okay so we are jumping back into Batman the white knight and here's the deal I kind of okay so with the camera I like having the camera and doing FaceTime when I'm like explaining ideas but with stories I don't really see a reason to change that I don't really see a reason to change the format that we currently have at the moment I think it's kind of cool because it allows the emphasis to be on what we're talking about so much as me just like explaining things so with better than the white knight this is this is cool because what the story does this is one reason why Shaun Murphy's riding is so interesting as it seems to follow like the traditional standard of storytelling to a point in the sense that we basically have like a set of circumstances we're familiar with right like the first third of the story basically opened up a really yeah I guess the first third so far opened up with like here's how Gotham City works that's basically Batman as you're used to him the Joker is a bad guy Batman's tasting him around so on so forth pretty straightforward and then suddenly it's the shift and it's well Joker then become sane and he becomes a good guy so the whole idea here had basically been how does Joker as a good guy as Jack Napier present the scenario that Batman is actually more of a hindrance for Gotham City than a benefit and that's when he started rolling in things like the Batman devastation fund the idea that when Batman went into a neighborhood and thing when arrived but the property values of the neighborhood would absolutely plummet the wealthy would go in and buy up all the property they would wait for the for the gotham city government to use the devastation fund or the emergency fund to basically fix everything and then when the property values went back up the wealthy would sell them because of that like with all these other things going on the overall gist of this is that Jack Napier has put out the narrative that while Batman doesn't know him he's basically an enforcer for the wealthy against the poor and it's so cool because Bruce said had no idea what was going on and the picture that have been painted by Jack Napier was like it doesn't matter if he doesn't know that's the way it is what what what you think is going on is irrelevant in the face of what's actually going on and so the whole the whole basis behind us was for Jack Napier to basically say the only way for Gotham City to actually become the city that it wants to be to become this beacon of what Batman is shooting for this beacon of hope and light much like metropolis is for Gotham City to do it on its own is regardless city to cast off Batman because for everyone out there who looks at Gotham City as a potential place to live what they'll always say is well what happens when that man stops being Batman what happens when he dies or he retires whatever the case may be what happens when Batman ceases to exist then what happens to Gotham and I'm not moving my family to a town that's gonna go to pieces as soon as Batman's killed or something along those lines no one sees it as like a viable opportunity for like the long-term and so that's the basis of Jack Napier is to say like we can revamp the city and make it our own the issue with this is that Batman is still on the fringe and Batman is still operating under the idea that while Jack Napier is popping pills and he's basically same now keeping the Joker persona completely curved it in the background the time will come when he will become the Joker again and Batman's eyes it's only a matter of time where Batman had kind of jumped in and basically stopped the Gotham City Police Department and you know Nightwing and Batgirl from capturing neo Joker and the Mad Hatter while it wasn't his intention to like allow those villains to go his actions resulted in them going away and so what this has done is as put Batman in a position to where Nightwing and Barbara Gordon are somewhat siding against him now Barbara Gordon is still kind of walking the middle ground here Nightwing is on Batman's side in so far that when the arguments made like Batman needs to be rounded up and mid will unmask him so everybody knows who he really is don't know that we caught him legitimately Nightwing Stan's is no no you know we bring Batman in but at the end of the day he keeps his mask and it's kind of cool because it's still really night Ouisa attachment to like the legacy of batman keeping that aspect of himself private and so initially with barbara gordon again she's on the fence here right like like barbara gordon stance is like look we Oh Bruce Wayne now in truth in this story where we're basically given the notion that like The Killing Joke happened Robert Gordon was shot she was paralyzed she was Oracle and now she's where she is now we are given those little tidbits here and there but for Barbara Gordon it seems to go much deeper than the fact that like she was shot by the Joker once and you know eventually came back to health and you know she was Batgirl all that kind of cool stuff it's it's loyalty is what this is loyalty to the ideology of what Batman stands for and what Gotham City needs if the ideology of what Batman stands for that makes all this so significant and so with that in mind like ultimately she just kind of walks out and says look if you guys are gonna do this I cannot be a party to this whole situation and so ultimately what you end up having is you have Jack Napier and you have everybody else kind of rounding up and then suddenly coming up with ideas or trying to figure out ideas on how to take out Batman because the guy is quite literally a one-man army the various tools he has at his disposal the various forms of travel their military great a person with a sniper rifle on a building is not gonna be able to kill Batman by shooting him through the glass in the in the front window of the Batmobile it wasn't designed for that purpose the one thing that it can't deflect is an EMP because it has electronic components it needs those things the reason why nobody ever thought about using an EMP before is because of collateral damage it would not only take out the Batmobile they would take out like whatever vehicles were chasing after him and they would take out power within like you know a six block radius and with Batman having his resources at his disposal even if they took down the Batmobile Batman would be able to make his escape and then they'd be no better off than they were before and the city of Gotham would hate them because they'd taken down power to a portion of the city and so they come up with this really really genius idea Nightwing basically steals this old analog style Batmobile that didn't really run on the same level of electronics that the current version does if every were correctly this is a throwback to Batman the Animated Series which I kind of like about this it's pretty cool and it's pretty interesting to see but what they end up doing is they basically like chase them into a warehouse and then suddenly it it's like blank on all these lights which of course blinds Batman and then they detonate this EMP and the idea is that because the warehouse is lined with lead the EMP will only affect Batman's Batmobile it won't affect anything else around the city and with the older version of the Batmobile that Gordon's driving running you know basically an analogue vehicle without all the other digital components that currently exists in the newest version his vehicle will run along just as well as anybody else's and that's what happens when is up going on here his Batman is of course you know blinded and taken by surprise with the whole thing Jim Gordon fishtails Batman swerves under him and sends him flying into a pole and where Batman initially makes his escape from from Jim Gordon he's met by the arrival of Jack Napier and this is awesome this is part of one of the coolest moments in the whole story because this is like the fight scene from like they live right like Rowdy Roddy Piper versus that one black dude who does the narrations for the Navy it's just a bare-knuckle fight between Jack Napier and Batman and under normal circumstances we would expect Jack Napier to basically have his backside handed to him quite readily by the Dark Knight but remember Jack Napier has been training here now this is where I kind of think that that Shawn Murphy fudges the numbers a bit Batman is the culmination of like decades of martial arts training Jack Napier doesn't have anywhere near that level of training now an argument could be made that like Jack Napier was able to capitalize on Batman being injured that's really the only reason why Batman was in a weakened state so on and so forth but we have to believe that with all the battles of Batman's fought over the course of his existence as a superhero of all the life-threatening injuries he sustained all the times that he pushed himself to the limit and kept on going that he would be able to overcome this but that's the beauty of this story being a miniseries that's not in continuity basically it's Shawn Murphy telling us everything else you know throw it away like throw it out and the fight between the two of them is hardcore this fight is is the culmination of just like years and decades of Batman chasing after the Joker so these guys are fighting with their heart and soul every ounce of anger every ounce of vitriol every ounce of hate being poured into this this physical battle the issue with this is that Batman's injuries get the better of him and Jack Napier comes out on top and so what we end up doing is having Jack Napier basically take the body of Bruce Wayne directly back to Commissioner Gordon everybody and they end up throwing him into Arkham Asylum and essentially intending to leave him in the issue with this is that before any of this can basically happen we end up having like this giant gun that was used by neo Joker this giant freeze gun that's fired on the city of Gotham and what she does is right into the side of several buildings send the Joker now this is where things get really really interesting this is actually where I think Shawn Murphy goes a totally different direction but it all sort of ties everything in together Victor fries for the most part in the story was just a guy who's there and in the early issue the question that had to be asked was why is he here what this does is it basically says like that his father was departed the Axis powers that Thomas Wayne was part of the Allied powers and the two of them basically crossed paths when Thomas Wayne learned of the cryogenics research that was being performed by the father of Victor freeze and where the US military industrial complex wanted to use the father of Victor freezes research for weapons use Thomas Wayne wanted to use it for a source of healing and Victor freeze agreed with this idea using those things to make the world a better place and so because of this Victor freeze is just kind of a guy who operated in the background and seems to have like a long-standing relationship with the Wayne's insofar that he goes all the way back to Thomas and where he spilled all this information to Bruce he's spilling all the information of Robert Gordon right now the other half of this is that the way that Victor fries found out the identity of Bruce Wayne was that when Bruce Wayne was initially injured at the beginning of the story and then showed up back and then Alfred basically you know Bruce Wayne woke up and Alfred was in a chair dead and Bruce Wayne was hooked up to the freeze technology which he kept him alive what we know finding out as Victor freeze was there that Alfred is simply calling us up like you have to come here you have to help out you have to get Bruce Wayne back on his feet offered sacrifices life for that purpose but the promise that Victor made at the behest of a dying man was you cannot tell anybody the identity of Bruce Wayne I'm not making this request because I can I somehow have the ability to enforce it I'm making this request because you're an honorable man and I know that you will honor it Victor fries goes through who talked about his father you know Baron von freeze he despised what is what his father stood for he despised what his father was about and that's why all this is being done now the biggest downside of this and the reason why this is so cool is because Barbara Gordon showed up here looking for answers finding a way to like deactivate this freeze gun Victor freezes responses my father built it I don't know anything about it I can't deactivate this thing for you I can't undo this you're gonna have to find a different way and so ultimately she just ends up leaving no better off than she was when she first got here and so what we do is we pick back up with Jack Napier and again this is where the whole argument kind of comes to fruition of the sense that like Jack Napier's lost control of everything Jack Napier took the quick and easy path he just kind of walked into the situation that in his hubris and in his arrogance of believing he could conquer the city of Gotham what he didn't take into account is all the wild cards characters like like neo Joker and collateral damage and it's like that's the one thing Batman always realized that's sure you can move this chess piece here but if you do somebody else is gonna move there peace there it's not a game that's played where there's no consequence and this is kind of Shaun Murphy throwing into our face is this idea that Batman walks a knife's edge at every single time Bruce Wayne Dawn's the cape and cowl and every single time he goes out into the city of Gotham his Batman he has to weigh the pros and cons of every decision he makes and while Bruce Wayne's intelligence allows him to do that Jack Napier is a guy who's popping pills to keep the Joker persona at bay he is not Bruce Wayne and so this is cool because essentially the argument by Hawaii by Harley Quinn is you've totally lost control the situation like you spend so much time trying to develop the Gotham anti-terrorist group you've spent so much time trying to sit down and try to be Bruce Wayne you never took the time to realize that you cannot be Bruce Wayne because you are not Bruce Wayne and you cannot function in the same capacity as Batman what is it happening is you basically have Jack Napier who essentially gives in he goes and he meets with everybody with with with the Gotham City police with the vigilantes with with everyone here and the questions asked what do we do she's demanding the Joker what option do we have and Jack Nabors responses there's only one option that we have and he essentially allows his Joker persona to cut loose and we end up seeing the return of the Joker okay so we are jumping back into Batman the white knight we're on issue number seven we're almost done we have like this one and then one like the conclusion and and God do this story so god this story is is it's crazy how good this whole thing is all right so basically what we have here like like we pick up with this whole thing with like the Joker quote-unquote returning and that's kind of the cool thing here is in all honesty I love the idea of Jack Napier I love the idea of like the Joker going sane but at the end of the day it is the Joker I like the Joker as the crazy guy everybody likes the Joker as the crazy guy and that's really what Shaun Murphy gives us to a degree and it's cool the way he puts a sort of twist on the way he puts this kind of caveat on it is what we end up finding out is that with the Joker personality kicking back in what's happening is the meds are losing their effect basically his body's becoming immune to it and the result is that the Joker personality is constantly pushing itself out and it's cool because it gives us this kind of internal battle between like Jack Napier and the Joker himself which is something that I'd love to see with regards to like how this story's unfolding but for here we switch over to Batman and again this is kind of cool because Batman is of course locked up in Arkham Asylum and the one thing that I've been seeing in the commets this is why I love the way Shaun Murphy writes this the one thing I've been seeing in the comments really more than anything else is no way Batman would be locked up in Arkham Asylum he knows a million ways to get out this is one of the things that I want you guys to notice about Batman and hopefully it's one of the things that you guys have picked up on as we've gone through this story Batman as he's depicted here in this particular story is kind of primitive I mean it's not like he's like stupid or anything like that but like when you compare the way like this Batman dresses or like the quality of the Batcave or the vehicle he drives to like the DC rebirth Batman they almost seem like night and day this guy's wearing what amounts to like weightlifting gloves and he's got like a Batman uniform on but it doesn't quite have the same kind of pizzazz right like the same kind of shiny polished you know I'm Batman and I'm so technologically advanced and I'm like a man from the future you don't see those kind of things in this this is a far more grounded far more tangible and far more real Batman and it works it works so well because this is the kind of Batman you would expect to see what makes Batman unique and the reason why he kind of stands the test of time regardless of like what his uniform is is the intelligence and the martial arts skill of Batman his ability to like deduce things that people wouldn't normally be able to pick up combined with his ability to just beat the crap out of people that's what makes Batman timeless you know sort of Shaun Murphy putting his own twist on how Batman looks while simultaneously giving us the character that we all know and love and so from here it picks up with Jack Napier going to meet neo Joker because remember she's basically kind of like taken over the city of Gotham right I mean usually like this massive freeze cannon that was developed by the father of Victor freeze what she's done is basically just like frozen over the city of Gotham but with regards to neo Joker she's like the new Harley Quinn that was the whole basis of the story the original Harley Quinn left without Jack Napier Joker ever realizing it the new Harley Quinn took his place and then when the old one came back the new Harley took off and became neo Joker she became the new version of the Joker but her idea has always been I want Joker back it's cool because in a lot of ways neo Joker kind of represents the fan base ice is the reader we sit down we start reading Batman the white knight because we see the solicitations all over the place in DC rebirth and we're like wow that looks cool and then we start cracking it open we started just tearing through the pages and we're like oh my god this is one of the greatest Batman stories ever written but then like we start to see Joker go sing and at the end of the day it's like that's cool but like I want to see the Joker I want the Joker back and so neo Joker is kind of a stand-in for us that like we want to see the Joker return in some form or fashion Jack Napier's idea is fine if you want the Joker back then we'll bring in the Joker back and he lets that part of his personality kind of break for a moment when he suddenly says like the Joker will return on my terms and so that's kind of a cool thing notice this Jack Napier begins to kind of use the Joker as a weapon it's his own gun his his switchblade his pocket knife it's a weapon for him to use to achieve a certain goal now the other thing to bear in mind here is he doesn't have total control in this instance he sort of just you know opens the door unless the Joker come out and then shuts the door again it's like dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde it's like Bruce Banner in the Incredible Hulk just because the Joker's there and Jack Napier let him out does it mean that Jack Napier has control over the Joker and that's why this is awesome is because we kind of get the best of both worlds for this short short span of time the other thing to bear in mind here is the original Harley Quinn Harley's torn up about this like Jack maybe you're going saying Jack maybe you're becoming a regular guy was the greatest thing that could happen to him because in the mind of Harley Quinn he can finally do what Batman has never been able to do every day Batman is one step forward one step back he's a dog chasing his tail he's going nowhere but with Jack Napier it was legitimately changing Gotham City effecting change in a way that could tangibly be seen and tangibly be felt that's what made him so successful is he won the hearts and minds of people but that's the interesting thing here is because when you look at this situation you say yeah sure he cleaned up Gotham because none of the villains are there but none of the villains are there because they're all under the control of neo Joker and that's the question that Shawn Murphy asked did he really save Gotham City or does it just look that way because the circumstances are unfolding themselves in a way that keeps the villains at bay while everything seems to be going back to normal not only that Batman had basically figured out that because Harley Quinn was the one who was working so hard to try to keep Jack Napier Jack Napier sane at the end of the day Batman has figured out that like Harley Quinn will push Jack Napier in the direction of seeking out the help of Batman because there's no other option that he has it's the only choice he has here the Joker needs Batman and in a lot of ways a neo Joker was right when she said the Joker is going to come back and make his return because his ego won't let neo Joker conquer Gotham but Gotham is is a half-measure it's incomplete if Batman's not there and so with Jack Napier showing up and suddenly saying like if I let the Joker out if I let him run amok sure he'll take out neo Joker and he'll conquer Gotham as well because you're not out there you're not out there stopping here me not out there chasing him and so Jack Napier grabs Batman brings him along and says you've got to save me here but this is kind of a cool moment because the two of them sort of get into this argument like Jack maybe you're in Batman sort of argue with one another over who it is is actually doing any good Jack De Beers argument is made Gotham a better place in ways that you've never been able to do and your entire career as Batman and while I can't necessarily stop all those villains what I've done is I've managed to get the people to care about the city that they live in they don't live in fear anymore they live in in confidence that they can walk down the street and keep their city safe from everybody else they're not relying on you and you've never been able to effect that change you've never been able to inspire people but Batman's argument is yeah but you broke the law to do it and the jack neighbor comes back with this perfect argument and says yeah but so did you you're a vigilante you operated outside of the law you weren't held accountable to anybody I got to the support of the public I work with the police I don't work alongside them as someone who's just there it's an awesome argument because that's 100% true I think in years to come people will look at this and see it as like a critique of Batman that's what it is it's a critique of the Batman character he operates outside of the law he does what he wants when he wants how he wants and it just happens to be that he works in the interests of Gotham City Batman says like my allegiance is to Gotham but at no point has he sought the help of the people and no point has he has he inspired the people to do something better he's always simply just taken the weight of the city on his shoulders and said it's my job now to protect everyone whereas Jack Napier took the people to the fight said look I am here like you I'm not someone above the city itself I am a citizen I do all the things that I'm supposed to I want to be a part of this role of this army of Gotham I don't want to lead this army of Gotham and that's why it's so awesome and that's why it works so up now ultimately because of the fact that like the overarching goal is to take out neo Joker the two of them end up hearing up the jack navier's argument is look when that man says I want a full confession from you for everything that you've done since you've been Jack Napier all the criminal activity that you've been involved in because he has been involved in some pretty seedy stuff he has broken the law he says I want a full confession Jack Napier says fine I'll give you your confession but Harley Quinn has to go free you cannot have Harley Quinn intertwine in this she does not get arrested for anything and this is cool because this is like the one unifying factor that Joker and Jack Napier ship Harley Quinn Harley Quinn well while we may say that like Batman is the center of Joker's world to a degree that's true but the fact that like Harley the original holiday Quinn took off and like Joker sought out a new one means Joker always needs a Harley Quinn she's an intrinsic part of his life with Jack Napier it's the same way he always has her by his side she's as close as confidant and so of course with the two of them teaming up what we end up having is Batman asking the question saying if we work together there's one thing that I want to know I want to know what happened to Jason Todd because remember Shaun Murphy kind of flipped the script on us with this one well we ended up finding out here is Jason Todd was Robin before Dick Grayson and main DC continuity Dick Grayson was Robin long before Jason Todd Jason Todd was the second Robin Hendrick was a third and then Damian Wayne was the fourth and so all we really knew was that the whole situation involving Jason Todd went down almost identical to like death in the family and that was awesome because that story is so landmark in the Batman mythos but it was basically the idea that like Joker had killed Jason Todd what we end up having is this revelation coming from from Jack Napier that like Jason Todd's not dead we end up finding out that like the one thing that Joker wanted was to know the identity of Batman not so he could take him out by knowing the identity of Batman Joker would know something that Batman didn't and so Joker would have something on him he'd have a measure of control over Batman if all else fails it'd be the one thing Joker knows that Batman doesn't isn't aware of the Joker knows and so when Jason Todd just kind of snapped you know when when when he basically offered his last words and said I wish I never met Bruce Wayne Joker cuts him loose because he's finally revealed the identity but that's where jack neighbor kind of makes his revelation Jason Todd's alive he's not dead he's free floating out there in the world somewhere who knows maybe he'll come back as Red Hood we have no earthly clue but he wants you to believe he's dead because he felt like you betrayed him that you took him under under your wing to become Robin we don't really know that backstory we can largely surmise that it happened the same way it did in the post-crisis landscape basically Jason Todd was a guy who boosted you know almost who stole the wheels off the Batmobile basically but like we can assume that happened but we don't know for sure all we know is that Jason Todd became Robin somewhere along the line and the result was that were the two of them largely fought as a dynamic duo that when when Jason Todd was brought into the world of Batman he was brought into a world of danger and death and so when Jay 20n Todd was taken by the Joker was having the absolute Harvie out of him and on the edge of dying the one thing he resented above all others was being brought in by Bruce Wayne was being adopted by Bruce Wayne he wishes he'd never met the man and so that seems to instill this massive hatred for Batman on behalf of Jason Todd and it's cool because it works because what this does is it sets things up for like the introduction of the Red Hood its Shawn Murphy you know if this story really became as huge as is as it seems to be if it really is one of these things were like it turns into a story that Shawn Murphy can build off of then we can Red Hood introduced the foundation is already there but again with the two of them kind of siding and kind of working together Batman has to put out a little bit of pass behind him he has to kind of walk away from that whole situation and focus almost strictly on the here and now and so going to visit Victor freeze and asking the question of how it is that Victor freeze is going to help with this whole situation Victor says the same thing that he told Barbara Gordon there's nothing I can do here I don't know how this machine works construction on this massive weapon started after I'd already left my father when I took off and I came to the United States I don't know the ins and outs of it but what he does do is he offers us information on how to like access the island of where the machines at without you know neo Joker knowing what he basically says is like when the machine was being constructed because Batman asked how could it how could this thing have been built with no one knowing about it and Victor fre says they were using tunnels you know literally Thomas Wayne had tunnels constructed under Gotham City that basically all reached to this one specific location they brought in all kinds of things to see this thing constructed underground so nobody would be aware of it and that's what's awesome is because it's one of these things like you mr. Gordon kind of says it himself you never learn everything about Gotham City there's always something new to learn but again this is Shawn Murphy kind of turning the table flipping the script and a lot of things and saying Thomas Wayne I'm worth way more like the kindly people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time it would just shot in cold blood by Joe Chill they have a dark history and so ultimately they end up basically outlining themselves you know what kind of coming together The Joker banding alongside Batman who's working alongside the bat family who's working alongside the Gotham police department this entire group basically led by Batman and the Joker they end up like making their way towards the island where neo Joker is currently residing and the idea is Batman Sibley says like okay this is your shot jack like this is your shot to get out there get into the head of neo Joker and basically serve as a distraction we have no idea what'll happen to him but like your job is to get in there to be a distraction and get into her head while we get in there and basically take everything down to bring this entire empire crumbling down around her after which we have no clue what happens we have to wait for the next issue okay so I am running on like three hours of sleep right now so you guys are gonna have to bear with me I am totally exhausted but this is the conclusion of Batman the white knight and whole week how do Shawn Murphy's pulling out all the stops and I love this here's the cool thing about DC rebirth and these these Batman esque or these miniseries that are going on these are miniseries that like they could build off of you can make universes out of each one of these miniseries and that's what's so cool about this is it gives us this really cool story and then it makes us want more right I mean up to this point it was basically that like Jack Napier somehow got his hands on a set of pills that he could take and the Joker personality would recede and it would allow the Jack Napier personality to arise and it was the first time that we'd seen that so you basically had like this sane rational human being that initially seemed to be turning the city of Gotham on Batman which was true to a degree but then it was more along the lines of let's fix the city of Gotham because Batman's not doing it now ultimately things one arrived the original Harley Quinn who basically left she was replaced by the new Harley Quinn and then when Jack Napier went sane he went back to the original Harley Quinn and the new Harley Quinn started calling herself neo Joker and then activated this giant freeze cannon that basically froze Gotham City and that's where we're at at the moment and when you get into this whole thing is basically Joker and Batman have to team up to take on neo Joker because that was the ultimatum the ultimatum was if you want me to fix things send me the Joker give me Joker back and this it's kind of holding the city of Gotham and ransom and it puts Batman in a very precarious situation because on one hand who knows what neo Joker will do to the actual Joker maybe she's so obsessed with him she'll kill him you know the whole play misty for me kind of situation or it could be that like she'll do the two of them will run off and they'll start committing more crimes in Gotham and things will be worse than they were before you know Neo Joker rose to prominence before all this Hobbit it creates like a very very tough situation and so ultimately this is kind of like the Gotham basically the Gotham anti-terror group the police working alongside the rest of the bat family essentially working to track down neo Joker now I remember in the the last couple story arcs the last couple issues what Shaun Murphy established is that neo Joker had seized control of the entire Gotham villain community and so they're under her control and they're doing exactly we would expect they're really more like standing in the way than anything else they're again kind of serving their purpose really play more security than anything else but what it does is it basically allows man and Joker to essentially penetrate penetrate through the defenses the forces of poison ivy and men like show up or neo Joker is and that's what ended up having like actual Joker show up to neo Joker and that's the cool thing that's what I love so much about this it's almost kind of like this in comic book idea that there's two versions of the Joker there's the Joker we think we know and then there's the actual Joker and that's really were where neo Joker is at the moment right I mean you have this chick and she's like oh I love the Joker I love the idea of what he does he's so fun and you know and how we love hanging out with him because he made me feel like I was alive you know and then there is the Joker as he really is and it's almost like this idea that like he's been pulling punches all this time because when he shows up he immediately attacks neo Joker her idea was it like the Joker would return and the two of them would be in love and they would run off hand in ham the Joker would love her and all those things that's not true at all the Joker wants to take her out now of course following this you end up basically having the technology of the Mad Hatter which is destroyed by the Joker himself and that means I like the control over all the villains by neo Joker is essentially released but what this does is it leads Clayface into essentially attacking the Joker now this is kind of a cool thing we only get this for a couple panels right like we only get this for a maybe you know three panels four panels or what have you it's not the biggest thing in the world but it is cool it really is indicative of like the danger that Clayface poses they don't stay and say oh man we got to defeat Clayface no but they run because in this situation Clayface would destroy them now the other half of this is that with Harley you know that the original Harley and Jack Napier jumping into the jumping into the Batmobile Jack maybe has been able to seize control the Joker persona has been pushed back and is kind of like this this dedication to Harley Quinn what it really does here is he basically sits down and says you were the only one in Gotham City that ever really believed that I existed nobody believed that there was a good side to the Joker and so it's a way for Jack Napier to basically say look like I fallen in love with you all over again and it's this amazing experience because from there like you end up having like neo Joker who shows up you know kind of racing alongside them because Clayface damaged the Batmobile and neo Joker says there's room for one more on this thing and Jack Napier is coming with me and the funny thing is that Jackson initial response is no Harley Quinn needs to live and so what is up happening is Jackie basically says look only one of us is gonna make this out of this we're crashing we were we're coming up on a wall only one of us is gonna make it out he hits the button he ejects Harley Quinn and Jack Napier smashes into the wall and the Batmobile explodes and I saw this and I was just like holy cow no way it was I was just like wow because like you you never really see that like you read the whole thing about about you know Batman the white knight and it's like well of course Jackie Napier's gonna make it to the end and of course Jack Napier is gonna so act no way he's gonna die here and then you look at this whole thing and it's like Jesus I mean the explosion basically starts wreaking havoc within the that cave itself you end up having leaks all these different things that go on now of course because Victor freeze had come along with the bat family in an effort to basically reverse engineer this giant freeze cannon that his father made of course it does work I couldn't really see the story ending with Gotham City you know Gotham City just being frozen over forever but then what we also end up figuring out finding out here it's a Jack Napier basically survived that that man brings it like he jumps into the water brings him back to the surface and Jack Napier makes it enough from there it switches over to the fight between Harley Quinn and neo Joker and this is not a fight that's based out of any real perspective of like the direction Gotham City should go in it's a core between two women who believe they've lost a man they love and his and it's interesting because it's a fight over love but the cool thing about this is remember Neo Joker is the new kid on the block she didn't have all that experience she hasn't been around all this time but when you're talking about classic Harley Quinn she's not someone to snuff that she can be really really dangerous and so her lashing out initially she goes to kill like neo Joker but then suddenly you know you basically have Duke Thomas who jumps on her and you're in her earpiece and says Jack Napier's alive you're fine like do not kill that chick because if that happened then classic Harley Quinn would cross the line she can't come back from something else at all I want you guys to also notice too is that the various villains are being carted away in a Gotham City police vehicle this is the same kind of vehicle you saw from Batman the Animated Series question for you guys if it has nothing to do with this story which show do you think was better Batman the Animated Series were extra in the animated series I'm biased I'm saying x-men but I'm curious to see which one you guys come up with but nonetheless you know with this whole thing the agreement was that if Jack Napier I guess you know was if he was essentially kind of allowed to go free or at least you know working alongside Batman then he would have a full confession he would confess to everything that he did when he was Jack Napier when he was working behind the scenes when he was manipulating things that was the whole point he had to make a confession which he does but this is kind of a beautiful moment because they're essentially like uh shirt off you know like Jack Napier's assured off to his prison cell which is really more of like a nicer version the one that I think previously belong to Harley Quinn when she used to study him as the Jo and what happens is he basically tells like like Batman and Commissioner Gordon you have to marry us like if like I've want to marry Harley Quinn but I want to marry her as Jack Napier I don't want to have to marry her as the Joker and the issue is that the Joker keeps trying to push himself back out he keeps trying to make his appearance no and so you end up having a priest that kind of shows up and he just runs through all the wedding a true wedding announcement you know like hey Jack Napier do you take all he couldn't marry you and he's like I do it's like Harley Quinn do you promise to do all the stuff that I just said to Jack Napier and she's like I do and then before Jack niebuhr can say like I do The Joker personality pops up and he's like I do this is it's not a great big huge moment this feeds into the part of the story where Shaun Murphy built up the idea that Joker was legitimately in love with Harley Quinn and that with the Joker persona and the jack neighbour persona fighting over the same body The Joker went out because his love for Harley Quinn was just that much more extreme but it is kind of interesting and it is kind of funny here and so what we end up doing is picking up in the aftermath of this whole white knight event and the sense that you basically have Jack navier's confession essentially saying hey look when I became sane I realized that Gotham City would never trust me so I basically set up circumstances I used criminals I set them loose so everybody would look there and then I infiltrated the mayor's office and then in turn stole information about the Batman devastation fun I burned down my library so you guys think that the villains had come after me too I orchestrated all these things to basically take away your perspective from mine at the same time you have you have like Duke Thomas he's being interviewed by the press and the cool thing here is that Duke Thomas stands by his perspective write it like he stands by his beliefs the press kind of you know pushes him and asked him and says hey look do you regret the fact that you teamed up with Jack Napier and his answer is Jack maybe or screw up like yeah he did some stupid things he wasn't a hundred percent honest but if you were a hundred percent honest like like I'd be curious to see what we could find out about you so at the end of the day his whole stance is the only thing that really matters to me is that when it came down to it no one would come to backport nobody would come to this neighborhood and try to find a way to make it better Jack Napier showed up here and he showed up here without any protection knowing he might die and his message was I want to make that port a better place and I want to extend this improvement a back port to Gotham City overall and so the result here is that Duke Thomas basically says I would do it all over again despite the mistakes that he made it spite the mistakes of Jack Napier made at the end the Gotham City Police Department acknowledges the fact that they basically ignored backward they never send cops there then if there was a crime in back port it was back ports problem but now that everything has sort of been put under a microscope that everybody's looking into all these different things the Gotham City Police Department is correcting it and so it's really a way to kind of find this peaceful resolution to a part of the city that really was in a lot of ways a complete and total war zone and so what we end up getting is this amazing revelation we have Harley Quinn who's sort of just on a bridge and I guess enjoying the night or what-have-you and Batman shows up and what Batman says is that the pills that made Jack maybe your same didn't come from nowhere Harley Quinn was the one behind it the hold hunt she's the one that made the pills that made him st. and the whole reason why was because she knew the Jack Napier was there that there was an actual good side to the Joker all that needed to happen was that it needed to be brought out and so she orchestrated it at all she fed the pills and she she gave the pills to the Joker knowing that he would take them eventually because the Jack Napier persona as weak as it was at the time would find a way to make it happen she knew the Joker which heiser that Batman would chase after the Joker she knew the Batman was dangerous did he had a reckless disregard for life in Gotham City or at least that's how people would see it and so what she ended up doing was following the two of them so that when that conflict at the beginning of the story happened and Batman and Joker got into a fight and Batman beat the crap out of the Joker then she recorded the whole thing and she released it to the Internet she set all this in motion and it was like wow it was one of the coolest reveals and and what we end up learning isn't like Jack Napier figured that out a long time ago and each hold Batman what was going on but Batman always stayed hands off because Jack Napier asked him to but when the question is asked why did you do this like why did you orchestrate this entire situation Harley Quinn's answer isn't about love Gotham City was going to hell in a handbasket you guys didn't care about what happened but all you cared about was finding the Joker and all the Joker cared about was was you chasing him it's the only thing that ever mattered to you guys all the villains who were there the penguin and two-face and the Riddler and poison ivy all these villains that you happen to face off against they were just filler until then next Alexis kurma SH with the Joker it's what you lived for but because of the fact that you gave so little disregard to what was going on here no one really looked at the bigger picture no one ever had a reason to and so because that Harley Quinn's like you guys were killing the city on a multitude of levels somebody had to step in and somebody had to basically take the two of you and force you to find a middle ground and look at the bigger picture and so again when the question is asked would you do it again Harley's answers abso lutely of course I would do it again there was never a time when I wouldn't do it again it's made Gotham City a better place it's made Gotham City inherently better and so what is up happening here is you basically have Bruce Wayne Batman approaching Jim Gordon and this is so cool because what he does is he extends an olive branch the idea of there being a barrier between like Batman to bat family and like the Gotham police department that's being removed Batman basically gives them the keys to the Batmobiles lets us have Adam I should have shared my technology with you a long time ago I should have told you guys what I was capable of I should have given you guys the resources to protect Gotham City and that makes sense to me it makes sense that it's one thing for Batman to be a one-man army it's another for him to give people the ability to protect themselves and so because of that when he passes this whole thing down at the end of the day there's still the barrier of well why should we trust you and it's cool because what Batman says is like I always wear a mask but I don't know why I don't know if I wear the mask because I secure myself I don't know if I wear the mask because it's designed to scare people and and this is what's so cool about this is you could make an argument for this on the surface looking at Batman his crusade is rooted in the fact that his parents died he doesn't want anybody in Gotham to experience the same thing but that motivation only runs so deep it's Shawn Murphy's ability to kind of add in this added explanation of why Bruce Wayne's been going on for so long when he says I just enjoy hurting criminals the darker part of me actually wants to kill people I want to kill the Joker I want to kill two-face like I want to I want to get rid of these guys but the part of me that recognizes that I would cross the line that I can't come back from doesn't want me to and so it was kind of like this the idea that everyone even Batman himself has a Jack Napier and a Joker and so what is it happening as he says I've come to this realization that the only way you guys are ever going to trust me is to know that I am a man and so what he does is he says I'm going to reveal my identity to you right now which is Bruce Wayne and then I'm gonna go out publicly and I'm gonna reveal my identity as Bruce Wayne to the rest of Gotham City but with that being said guys we're gonna bring this video to an end if you are new here to come this explain it make sure you guys at the sub button to become part of the Rob port if you guys enjoyed this video make sure you drop a like and yeah one heck of a ride I love that and the white knives is amazing story but uh yeah guys I will catch you all later peace [Music]

Channel: Comics Explained

Views: 190,266

Keywords: comicsexplained, marvelexplained, fluidicbeats, Comics, Comic Books, DC, DC Comics, Batman, The Joker, Bruse Wayne, Justice League, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Nightwing, Batgirl, Damian Wayne, Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon, Jim Gordon, Gotham, Gotham City, Sean Murphy, Batman White Knight, Full Story, Mr Freeze, Lady Joker, Neo Joker, Harley Quinn, Suicide Squad

Id: HvKnZx6Tdyo

Length: 90min 18sec (5418 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 14 2018