By now, I imagine that a fair amount of you reading this article have acquainted yourselves with Dark Nights: Metal and the various tie-in books that orbited it, or at least know the basics. In that series, there were several evil versions of Batman hailing from the Dark Multiverse who made their way to the DC Universe proper. But if there was one that embodied every fear Bruce Wayne could have, it was most assuredly the Batman Who Laughs.
In short, that particular guy came from a perversion of a world where, upon the demise of the Joker, the Caped Crusader was infected with a toxin that caused him to become his greatest nemesis in a sense. To draw a parallel of sorts, imagine if Arkham Knight‘s ending had gone in a much less triumphant direction.
As you no doubt surmised, this bizarre villain really caught on with the fanbase, and will soon be headlining his own title. In those pages, we’ll meet someone whom writer Scott Snyder claims is Bruce’s second worse fear – and you can view him in the gallery below.
Right now, there isn’t too much to go on, but artist Jock has been hard at work drawing up a version of the Dark Knight that isn’t afraid to go with lethal force. Though this will no doubt appeal to the Jason Todd fans out there, one could say this is what you’d get if you were to cross Batman with the Punisher.
Quite frankly, I can’t wait to see how Snyder fleshes out the background of this fella. Formulaic as some of those one-shots were last year, it was rather cool to see iterations of the Masked Manhunter that went off the rails, so to speak. My best guess is that this doppelganger fully embraces the idea of firearms rather than shuns them, but time will tell.
Stay tuned for more on The Batman Who Laughs as further details are made available.
