Origin Of The Batman Who Laughs (SCRIPT)
Today we are going to be talking about the origin of one of the most iconic DC Comics characters, one who is a fusion of heroism and villainy, we are talking about The Batman who Laughs.
So our story is set on Earth -22, where at the time the Joker is wreaking havoc all across Gotham and has Batman captive. The reason Joker is doing all of this is that he has discovered he was dying from the chemicals that made him the Joker.
The Joker wanted to take everyone with him so he killed every single one of Batman’s villains including Catwoman, Killer Croc, The Penguin, and The Ventriloquist. He doesn’t stop there and even kills Batman’s partner Commissioner Jim Gordon.
The Joker then proceeds to kill the family of a little girl in front of Batman and then exposes her with the Joker toxins, he doesn’t even stop there he does the same thing again and again and forces Batman to watch as he kills scores of parents in front of their children in Crime Alley to make batman relive his childhood trauma.
What Joker is trying to do here is that he is repeating Batman’s past in front of his eyes to make him suffer and to mentally break him.
During all of this Batman manages to overpower Joker and so angry and traumatized over what the Joker has done he grabs the Joker and breaks his neck, this leads to the Joker toxin coming out of Joker’s mouth and infecting Batman but Batman doesn’t realize it at the moment.
From this aftermath, we pick up with Batman talking to Superman about all the kids that were exposed to the Joker toxin and how they will never be normal again, but Superman being Superman tries to be hopeful.
Superman then tells Batman that a “Psychologist tried to speak with one of the kids and the kid tried to bite her throat out“ and in return, Batman giggles to it, Superman looks at him with a confused face and Batman immediately says “ I am sorry that was not funny”.
After that, we pick up three days later when Batman has called Nightwing ( Dick Grayson ), Red Hood ( Jason Todd), Batgirl ( Barbara Gordon), and Robin (Tim Drake) to train at the Batcave, which has not happened in several years as they are all very experienced now.
Dick comments “Hey Batman, appreciate you brushing our basics, but it’s been years since you brought any of us in to train in the cave. Something’s wrong. Talk to us, Bruce. We’re Family”.
And it’s been years since Batman has called everyone directly to meet up, as it has always been a text or a video message.
Then everyone stops and talks with Bruce and he replies “When the Joker died he completely exposed me to the Joker toxin”.
When Bruce tells them this everyone’s reply is that nothing is going to happen or we will fix this or don’t worry everything will be alright. Jason says “We’re here to help” Batman replies with “No, not to help Jason. I brought you here because the four of you would notice something was wrong with me before anyone else would. And I’m sorry, but I can’t allow that” and straight up kills them all.
Yes, that’s right he kills them all Dick, Jason, Barbara, and Tim, the four closest people to him. And he doesn’t even stop there.
Batman then convinces his blood son Damian to be on his side and transforms his son with Joker toxin to make him just like himself. Then he goes to find the children who were infected with the Joker toxin in the attack done by Joker and turns them into his new army of Rabid Robins.
He even kills The Justice League, he kills the Flash, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, The Atom, Plastic Man, Hawkman, and Red Tornado. Shortly after that, he uses Black Kryptonite on Supergirl which makes her lose her mind and she kills her own family and after that batman kills her as well. But now Superman is the only one left.
Then he decides to inflict pain on Superman’s family, Lois Lane his wife, and Jonathan Kent his son, as now he is a fusion of Batman and Joker.
He then takes out a Black Kryptonite which makes a Kryptonian’s evil side rise which leads to an evil version of Superman who kills his son Jonathan and his wife Lois.
The Batman who laughs just does not want to kill Superman he wants him to suffer miserably, so after making him kill his beloved family by his own hands, Superman is not really in his senses after that everyone believes that Batman killed him.
After killing the strongest Superhero team alive on Earth, Batman kills any kind of obstacles that come his way whether it be world governments or any other superheroes, he kills them all.
The people of Earth-22 fought against Batman but he destroyed everything until only he and his evil Robins were left, the last person to stand in his way was his butler Alfred.
He almost managed to beat by rigging all of his equipment, his cave, and his vehicle until Batman tricked him into believing there was still hope for him.
He then managed to trap Alfred in a lower level of sub-caves and kept him a prisoner for a long time feeding him nothing but scrapes and talking in a very low voice with him to make him go insane. He then easily broke him and made him his loyal servant again.
After that all of humanity is under him, there is no one left to stand in his way and The Batman now truly becomes The Batman Who Laughs, the perfect combination of good and evil and the fusion of Batman and the Joker.
Due to being the way Batman is Batman is approached by Barbatos. Barbatos is the Bat God in the DC Universe, and his main purpose is to consume the universes that fall back decayed, Barbatos is also considered to be the bat whom Bruce saw through his window the night he became Batman.
Barbatos is a being of destruction and is capable of consuming universes. The combined powers of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Doctor Fate were not able to stop him.
Barbatos shows Batman several other universes where the tragedy that fell in the dark universe never even occurred. All the other superheroes are still alive and Batman is Batman and not mixed with Joker.
Barbatos tells Batman that if you would go to these universes chaos and destruction are waiting for you and give The Batman Who Laughs what he wants.
The Batman Who Laughs then goes to other universes like his where there are evil and twisted versions of Batman just like him to recruit them so that they can go and wreak havoc.
He then finds Red Death (This version of Batman took the powers of the Flash to stop crime faster but then became corrupted by the power). The Devastator ( This version of Batman truly believed in Superman and his ideals but when Superman went rogue and killed innocent people, Batman had only one trick up his sleeve and that was the doomsday virus. He then easily killed Superman and became a being of sheer strength and raw, brutal violence).
The Batman Who Laughs also finds many more evil versions of Batman such as Dawnbreaker (The Batman who became a green lantern and due to having such strong will power the guardians put limitations on him because he was defying the laws of the ring, which led to the guardians sending lanterns to stop him and he decimated the entire corps).
He also finds The Murder Machine ( Which is a cyborg whose Batman got made to take over Alfred’s duties after he was killed, in the end, he took over Batman and replaced Batman’s body with a pure mechanical vessel that comes with cybernetic upgrades).
Then he finds The Drowned ( IS Batwoman named Bryce Wayne after the love of his life is killed by rogue metahumans, to exact revenge he kills every single meta-human on the planet and is then greeted by Aquawoman for peace talks but that fails and The Drowned kills Aquawoman with her trident).
The Batman Who Laughs gathers all of them up for Barbatos and under The Batman Who Laughs’s leadership they band together to become The Dark Knights to unleash hell on the multiverse.
The whole idea of The Batman Who Laughs is that the Joker doesn’t have any real powers he uses fear to control the people around him and is kind of similar to Batman in that regard, Joker doesn’t plan what he wants to do, he just does things with whatever tools he has at the moment.
On the other hand, Batman is a martial artist, a detective who controls everything, and is the kind of person who plans every single little detail before doing it, he has everything he needs every tool on the planet to be able to do anything he wants to do,
So if you combine the two of them you get an evil maniac clown with the greatest mind and intellect on the planet. The mind and intellect of Batman become an uncontrollable being whose only main aim and goal is to use his intellect to bring as much chaos as he can
This amazing and terrifying quote by The Batman Who Laughs beautifully summarizes everything I just said:
“When I was Bruce Wayne, I thought that with enough preparation, I would always win. But I was wrong. I was trapped in an unwinnable war, refusing to see the obvious answers right in front of me. The answers are so clear to me now with victory right around the corner. To win, you need to adapt, you need to be able to laugh away all the restraints. Everything holding you back. You see… a Batman who laughs… is a Batman who always wins”.
So that’s all folks, I guess that is it, the complete and in full detail origins of The Batman Who Laughs. I hope you like it and I’ll see you in the next one.
