Comics Explained: The Batman Who Laughs

Despite only debuting in 2017 the Batman Who Laughs has made a big impact on DC comics. A mixture of his design, the premise behind him, and his significant presence in the Dark Knights: Metal storyline has made him a quickly popular character. Despite his recent appearance, he has already made a cameo in other media being an alternate skin for a character in Mortal Kombat 11. Created by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo for their new Dark Knights: Metal story, where they wanted to create Batman's worst nightmare, and Scott hoped that he would be popular enough to remain a constant in the DC Universe. At the moment, his desire has come true. Before we discuss the Batman Who Laughs we have to first set out how this character came to be.

The Dark Multiverse

Barbatos

Many comic books have the idea of the Multiverse - including DC. Prior to the Flashpoint event, when the Multiverse was in existence, there was feasibly an infinite number of realities were an infinite number of variations of characters can exist. After the Flashpoint event the Multiverse was reduced to just 52 realities - among them a world where all crime is gone and the children of heroes live a reality TV show like life, a civil war among superhumans from Injustice, and even a universe where all the characters are anthropomorphic animals. Scott Snyder for Dark Knights: Metal created the Dark Multiverse. Over the course of the event more information was revealed about the Dark Multiverse. The Batman Who Laughs summed it up quite well:

Stop me if you've heard this one... worlds will live, worlds will die... but imagine if your every fear, each bad decision, gave birth to a malformed world of nightmare. A world that shouldn't exist. And desperate as it fights to survive in the light of the true multiverse far above... these worlds are doomed to rot apart, and die, because they are wrong at their core. Welcome to the Dark Multiverse. Home to stories that should never be... It's all one big cosmic joke, except no one on this side is laughing. ...well, almost no one...

As you can tell, the Dark Multiverse was a version of the Multiverse where nightmares and bad decisions lead to the creation of universes who were unstable in their structure. In the past, a being named the World Forger was tasked with having these unstable realities destroyed, and the energy from these destroyed worlds to be used to create new realities. The World Forger used the 'Great Dragon' Barbatos to destroy these worlds, but Barbatos later betrayed the World Forger and destroyed it. Barbatos allowed these universes to germinate with the intention of using them to invade and destroy the Multiverse. When the main reality Batman got transported through time by Darkseid during the Final Crisis event this brought him to the attention of Barbatos, who recognised the similarity between itself and Batman. Barbatos would use Batman to open the gateway between the Dark Multiverse and Multiverse, which is where the Batman Who Laughs comes in.

Origins

The Joker Robins

Although the Batman Who Laughs was introduced thanks to the Dark Knights: Metal event, it was actually in The Batman Who Laughs #1 which explored his origin. In Earth -22, Bruce Wayne and the DC Universe matched the mainstream reality except with one difference - it was based on Batman's fear of becoming like the Joker. In Earth -22 the Joker found out Batman's secret identity, and decided to perform the ultimate attack on Batman as a finale, due to the chemicals which turned him into the Joker now killing him. First wiping out all of Batman's villains, and killing Commissioner Gordon via an acid trap in his notebook, planned to merge the fates of himself and Bruce Wayne. He killed the parents of a few children in front of them, and then introduced them to his Joker Venom - copying the origin of Batman and the origin of Joker. To make his plan complete he had Batman witness the children's turn into 'Joker Robins'. A broken Batman broke free and choked the Joker to death, but the clown had a secret weapon - when he died his concoction would be released infecting whoever killed him. 

Killing the Bat Family

A few days later members of the Bat Family were training with robots programmed by Batman, but they were fighting surprisingly harder this day. When they confronted Batman about this, he revealed that he had been infected by the Joker's toxins, and was slowly becoming the Joker. While Nightwing assumes that the robots were set to harder difficulties so they could beat Batman when the time came; it turned out that the turn had already came. With the robots failing to kill the Bat Family, a now changed Bruce Wayne proceeded to shoot Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Robin, and Red Hood. Turning his son, the current Robin Damien Wayne, into another Joker Robin he soon wiped out the Justice League. Confirming his descent into the Batman Who Laughs, he used a type of kryptonite on Superman and Superboy causing them to kill Lois Lane before dying themselves. Laughing, he drew a smiley face on a window of the Justice League Watchtower in the blood of his former friends. Using the weaponry of the Justice League he soon proceeded to destroy life on the planet, and this is what made Barbatos to approach him to become his right-hand. Barbatos tasked the Batman Who Laughs to recruit the 'Dark Knights' - a collection of the most twisted versions of Batman who take over the Multiverse. 

Dark Knights: Metal

The Batman Who Laughs's major appearance was during the Dark Knights: Metal event, but I don't want to give away too many spoilers for the comic. As it was recently published it is still available in stores, and it's a good story, so I would recommend reading it yourself. Instead, I'll just quickly go over some notable events which the Batman Who Laughs oversaw. Naturally, being the right-hand of Barbatos, he lead the initial attack on the Multiverse, arriving in the main reality and setting the Joker Robins on the Court of Owls. The Court of Owls is a sinister group, and it is difficult to quickly summarise them, but for the purpose of Dark Knights: Metal, they worship Barbatos and worked to use Batman to bring them into the Multiverse. Now, with their purpose fulfilled, the Batman Who Laughs had them killed, and then sent the Dark Knights to attack the home cities of the Justice League. To secure his base in Gotham, he handed out cards which could alter reality to the Riddler, Poison Ivy, Firefly, Mad Hatter, Bane, and Mister Freeze - if someone wished to take down his base, they would have to fight through the warped version of Gotham created by the villains. Through the rest of the story, the Batman Who Laughs tries to wipe out reality and his enemies, but was challenged by a team of alternate reality Batmen led by the main Batman. However, what took the Batman Who Laughs was that the Joker helped in the fight. The Joker simply explained, the Batman Who Laughs still had the planning of Batman so they had to do something which Batman would never expect: fighting alongside the Joker.

After the Dark Knights

The Batman Who Laughs managed to survive the defeat of Barbatos, and was later found to be under the custody of Lex Luthor. The other members of the Legion of Doom, especially the Joker, were uncomfortable having the Batman Who Laughs at their base, and he himself goaded Luthor about knowing the secrets of the Multiverse. It turned out that the Batman could escape whenever he wanted; he was biding his time to see how events were going on the outside. Later, in exchange for information, Luthor released him. He then began his new goal: taking down Batman. To achieve his goal he recruited another Batman from the Dark Multiverse - the Grim Knight. A mixture of Batman and the Punisher, this version of Batman killed Joe Chill, who murdered Batman's parents, when he dropped his gun. This put him on a course to becoming a murderous Batman who turned Gotham into a police state. The Joker, meanwhile, realised that his Batman didn't have the same disregard for human life as the Batman Who Laughs and Grim Knight, so he infected Batman with a diluted version of the Joker Venom. He would become another Batman Who Laughs, but with more control. In the end, a confrontation in the Wayne graveyard main reality Batman defeated the Batman Who Laughs, and Alfred gave him a serum stopping him from becoming a new Batman Who Laughs. Despite his incarceration in the Hall of Justice, he began his new plot to tear apart the Justice League and this reality: infect Superman with the Joker Venom. He came close using an infected Shazam and Blue Beetle to get Superman in position, and he would have succeeded if not for Supergirl grabbing a batarang designed to affect Kryptonians before it could hit him. 

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Comics Explained: Harley Quinn

Harley Quinn is by far one of DC's most popular characters despite only debuting in the 1990s. Within that short amount of time she's managed to evolve from a one-off henchmen of the Joker, that didn't actually originate in the comics, to one of the major antiheroes of DC. As she is the star of Birds of Prey movie, as played by the fantastic Margot Robbie, it is the perfect time to discuss her character. We can't go over each of her appearances, in just thirty years she's appeared in DC a lot, so we'll be doing an overview of her instead.

Creation

Harley Quinn did not actually debut in the comics, instead she debuted on TV. It is not uncommon for characters to emerge outside of comics to become big inside the comics. Mr Freeze, Agent Coulson, X-23, Batgirl, Krypton, and kryptonite all made their debuts outside the comics. Harley Quinn debuted in the critically acclaimed Batman: The Animated Series in the episode 'Joker's Favor' as originally a walk-on role, and she was created by the show-creators Paul Dini and Bruce Timm. After watching Arleen Sorkin in the soap opera Days of Our Lives, and because Dini was friends with Sorkin, they modelled Harley off of Sorkin - she would even voice Harley in the series. The animated series had a spin-off comic in 1994 called The Batman Adventures: Mad Love which more or less has remained her origin story, but it took until 1999 for her to fully debut in the mainstream DC universe. As part of the No Man's Land event - when an earthquake isolates Gotham and the villains carve up the city between them - a tie-in graphic novel was released called Batman: Harley Quinn. This graphic novel mostly kept her origins from the animated series. 

Origins

Her origin story has had some tweaks thanks to the rebooting of the timelines after the Flashpoint event. Born in Brooklyn she had a long interest in criminal psychology, and she was a genius in regards to psychology. In the new timeline, explained in Suicide Squad Vol. 4, her interest was sparked by her teenage boyfriend committing a murder - to signify her interest in criminal psychology she stole a taxidermied beaver from her boyfriend's father. In the original timeline, a jealous professor spiked her boyfriend's drink with diluted Joker Venom sending him insane - not knowing this Harley thought this was due to the same mental problem which the Joker suffered from. As her boyfriend eventually was cured, she was determined to cure the Joker. In both timelines she began studying the Joker, but she did not expect to find how charming he could be. His split personalities allowed him to put on a charming, friendlier facade just for her - she enjoyed the nickname he gave her. As her name was Harleen Quinzel, he called her 'Harly Quinn' from harlequin. However, through all this, the Joker was slowly chipping away at her sanity and through this she fell in love with him. Eventually, she had been broken and secretly started freeing the Joker from his cell. Depending on the timeline she was either committed and later freed by the Joker (the original), or was kidnapped by the Joker and thrown in a chemical vat to replicate how the Joker came into being (the new timeline). Thus, Harley Quinn was born.

The Joker and Harley

Calling the Joker 'Mister J' or 'Puddin'' Harley became one of the most closest people to the Joker. Just like in the Animated Series it was not a true relationship as Harley envisioned it. Joker's callous nature meant that he regularly toyed with her emotions, and regularly saw her as expendable. In Batman #663, for example, the duo set out to kill all of the Joker's former henchmen, but it turned out that this was a set up for the 'punchline' - killing Harley herself. It was one of the examples of Harley fighting back against the Joker where she shot him in the shoulder in rage for his betrayal. In 2001, she got her own title called Harley Quinn where, tired of the Joker's abuse, she leaves to go on her own. Part of the story, which ran for 38 issues, saw her forming her own gang called the Quintets, although they too would also betray her. Meanwhile, she adopted two spotted hyenas called Bud and Lou, named after Abbott and Costello, and moved in with Poison Ivy. This would spark a long relationship between the two, which also happened in the Animated Series, and recently has blossomed into a romantic relationship. At the end of her series she handed herself into Arkham Asylum realising that she needs help. 

Throughout the 2000s she would have various appearances, some big and some small. For example, in Detective Comics #831 she could have had the chance of parole from Arkham, but she was kidnapped by the new Ventriloquist, Peyton Riley. The Ventriloquist was a gangster who appeared to act under the orders of his puppet Scarface, but he died and Peyton took over the role. Harley didn't want to work for her, especially as she disliked Peyton taking on the Ventriloquist's identity as the original cheered her up in Arkham, and teamed up with Batman to take her down. Eventually, she teamed up with Poison Ivy and Catwoman to form the Gotham Sirens, in the series Gotham City Sirens, where the trio agreed to live and fight together. Among their adventures included fighting the criminal mastermind, and childhood friend of Bruce Wayne, Hush; fighting a Joker impersonator; and Harley opting to spend Christmas with the Sirens after a 'horrible' time with her family. The team almost break up thanks to the events over issues 20 to 25. Wanting revenge for years of torment Harley breaks into Arkham to kill the Joker, but ends up joining with him to take over the asylum. While Catwoman teams up with Batman to defeat them, Poison Ivy attempts to kill the re-incarcerated Harley. Then she has a change of heart, wanting revenge on Catwoman for abandoning them for Batman. In the end Catwoman chose to let them escape instead of getting them arrested.

New 52 and Rebirth

The post-Flashpoint universe is referred to as the 'New 52', and was generally seen as a new start for DC. In this Harley's origins were slightly altered, but, due to Batman's popularity, most of the pre-Flashpoint timeline was kept intact. Harley was brought into the Suicide Squad - this was basically a supervillain team used by the government to go on suicide missions. It was part of her new run with Suicide Squad that her best known design comes from. However, the Joker still had an influence of her. When it was rumoured that the Joker was dead, and that his face had been cut off, she broke into the Gotham City Police Department to get the mask - in a particularly dark scene she straps the face onto a tied up Deadshot to have one last 'conversation'. It turned out the Joker was alive, and in Death of the Family he managed to coax her into pretending to be his original moniker of the Red Hood - it was then that she realised that she could never go back to him. In 2013 she get her own comic title again, called Harley Quinn, by Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner where she developed into an anti-hero, and started formally dating Poison Ivy. This was a well-received series - except for when DC ran the really stupid design competition where they asked fans to draw Harley in suicide scenarios. Naturally many artists and writers, especially Palmiotti and Conner, were infuriated by this. Regardless, the actual stories were well-received, something helped by their eccentric stories. In one, it turns out Harley has a crush on Bruce Wayne and wins a competition to go on a date with him - it quickly turns into a story where she teams up with Batman to fight supervillains. 

In 2016 DC released Rebirth to fix many of the problems caused by the recent rebooting of the universe. In the new Suicide Squad series she has gone to be more of a darker character and refuses to take the title of 'hero', but still has a carefree attitude. She even managed to lead a team of the Suicide Squad which also comprises of Enchantress, Killer Croc, Captain Boomerang, Katana, and Deadshot - it is not coincidence that this was also the roster of the Suicide Squad movie. Despite rejecting the title of a hero, she is still seen as a hero. In 2018 the Heroes in Crisis story revealed that the Justice League has the 'Sanctuary', basically a place where heroes and former villains can undergo therapy. Harley was invited, and one day all the patients were found murdered - only Harley Quinn and Booster Gold, with no memory of the event, were found alive. In a murder mystery, which ended up spanning time itself, Harley helped clear of name of the murders.

Thank you for reading and I hope you found it interesting. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.

Comics Explained: Victor Zsasz

Batman over the years has had many twisted and sadistic villains over the years, and one good example of them is Victor Zsasz. Since his debut in 1992 Zsasz has never been close to one of Batman's main villains, but he has been in the background fairly often. Especially since his extremely brief appearance in the movie Batman Begins, he has steadily been appearing more and more. He regularly appeared in the hit video game series Batman:Arkham, has featured in the TV show Gotham, and is set to appear in the upcoming Birds of Prey movie. 

Origins

In the grand scheme of Batman's publication history Zsasz is a very recent addition - he first debuted in Batman: Shadow of the Bat #1 in 1992. Created by Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle he was initially disturbing serial killer, as the main focus of the story was the ongoing renovations on Arkham Asylum and the new warden Jeremiah Arkham vowing to 'cure' a chained Batman. Zsasz was noticeable as his body was covered in scars forming tally marks - it was later revealed that each tally represented a person murdered by him. This was part of a story called The Last Arkham - it turned out that Zsasz had been manipulating Jeremiah Arkham, and had managed to bribe a contractor while the asylum was being restored to build a passage out of his cell. During the day, Zsasz would slowly chip away at Arkham's sanity, and at night he would leave to commit further murders. Batman and Commissioner Gordon made a plan getting Batman committed where he could search for clues on the inside. Although Zsasz was stopped, whenever a breakout happened his killing spree started again.

Batman Chronicles #3 later told how Victor Zsasz became who he was. Like Bruce Wayne he was born into a life of luxury. His owned his own international corporation, and received further funding from his incredibly wealthy parents. However, aged 25, they were killed driving him into a deep depression. Unlike Bruce Wayne, who became the Batman, Zsasz turned to gambling to take his mind off of his depression, but this became an addiction. He spent days upon days at the Iceberg Lounge - a club and casino owned by the Penguin. Seeing an easy mark the Penguin kept challenging to games which made Victor lose more and more of his money. Eventually, Zsasz lost everything, and stumbling away from the club decided that he was destined for suicide. While attempting to jump from Gotham Bridge, a desperate mugger came at him with a knife. Instead, Zsasz grabbed the weapon and used it to end the mugger's life. In that moment - seeing the life leave the eyes of the mugger - everything changed. He saw nothing and meaningless in the eyes of the mugger, and viewed his murder of the man as bringing him a 'gift'. He realised that he was the only actual human, everyone else were 'zombies' and he had to liberate them. As a sign that he had liberated someone, and to prove that he was the only real human, he carved a tally into his skin. Now, he commits murders and places the victims in real-life positions so they could be 'real' in death. After every kill he carved another tally onto himself. In later stories it was revealed that Zsasz would have a breakdown if he couldn't leave his mark or kill someone - often saying that he 'has to have the mark'/

Knightfall and No Man's Land

In Knightfall, to break Batman both mentally and physically Bane released all the inmates from Arkham Asylum - everyone from the Joker to the Mad Hatter were released. One of those to escape was Zsasz. He broke into an all-girls boarding school taking them all hostage. As they were the daughters of Gotham's elite he wanted to make a statement by 'liberating' such high-class zombies. Even when the girls tried to overpower him he remained strong - Zsasz is very strong once dislocating Batman's shoulder in Detective Comics #368. The two police officers who were sent in to get him were also killed by the serial killer. By this time Batman was becoming increasingly exhausted hunting down escaped villains, so the agile and strong Zsasz proved to be a match. The killer's taunts started driving Batman to the edge causing him to snap and savagely beat the killer after he suggested that they were the same. Kevin Smith in 2008 would explain this in Batman: Cacophony as Batman hates Zsasz the most for his outlook on people and life. It took detective Renee Montoya dragging Batman off of the killer to stop the beating.

In No Man's Land Gotham experienced an earthquake isolating it from the rest of the country, so the villains took over. Poison Ivy, Joker, Bane, and Mr. Freeze were just some of the villains to take over parts of Gotham. Zsasz similarly claimed an area to kill as he pleased. Being one serial killer facing off against super-powered individuals and gangs meant he was soon injured and sent to Dr. Leslie Thompkins's field hospital. Her good nature and care started shattering Zsasz's worldview. In Thompkins there was evidence that people were not simply empty vessels - they were hopeful and good. As he couldn't cope with this shift in perception he decided to ignore and run away from the field hospital.

With Other Villains

Part of Riddler's gang with Scarecrow, Deathstroke, Two-Face, Firefly, Killer Croc and Clayface

Zsasz has occasionally ran with other villains, but his nihilistic and homicidal view on humanity means that he is often kept at arm's length. After Batman was killed by Darkseid a new story called Battle for the Cowl began. During this a new Black Mask, later revealed to be Jeremiah Arkham, managed to hire Zsasz as one of the members of his new gang. With a large amount of money he let Zsasz purchase a warehouse which could host battles-to-the-death between Gotham's runaway or kidnapped child population. Children would be forced to fight one another with the provision that the last one standing could fight Zsasz and earn their freedom. This enraged Damian Wayne, Bruce's son and the new Robin, who became traumatised seeing the bodies of the dead children. Damian was not raised by Bruce so was very willing to kill, and he almost killed Zsasz by slashing him with a sword before kicking him into the river. He would survive and continue working with Black Mask, and would sometimes move away to continue killing by himself. In 2017 DC published the War of Jokes and Riddles story - told in flashback it tells a Gotham wide gang war between Joker and the Riddler. More and more villains ended up picking a side; Zsasz would end up joining Riddler's gang.

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Comics Explained: Arkham Asylum, A Serious House on Serious Earth

Welcome back to 2019's Month of Horror, and today we're looking at Batman's most dark and psychological story. Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, by the masterful Grant Morrison and prestigious artist Dave McKean, sees Batman delving into Arkham Asylum where his Rouge's Gallery has taken over the institute. Inside, we see a story of madness, insanity, and questioning of who is really sane. I highly recommend reading it, so today I want to do a broad overview of the plot instead of an in depth look. Arkham Asylum is just dripping with symbolism and foreshadowing in each panel, and I do not want to spoil it too much for new readers.

What is Arkham Asylum?

Arkham Asylum first appeared in Batman #258 in 1974. The asylum was a place for Batman's mentally ill opponents like Scarecrow or the Joker; the sane villains went to Blackgate Prison. Due to unfortunate stereotypes and stigmatisation of the mentally ill in mainstream media, most of Batman's villains are schizophrenic or narcissistic leading them to be inmates of Arkham Asylum. Some inmates are not actually mentally ill; some who have certain special circumstances and cannot go to Blackgate go to Arkham. Mr. Freeze is not normally mentally ill, but because he has to live in freezing conditions he has to be confined in Arkham to accommodate him. Lovecraft fans will notice a reference here - the asylum is named after the Massachusetts town which appears in many of Lovecraft's stories, such as The Dunwich Horror. Like with Lovecraft's stories, it is strongly implied that the asylum itself sends people insane. Several members of staff have been driven insane - such as Scarecrow, Hugo Strange, and Harley Quinn - and even its founder went insane. This is the subplot to Arkham Asylum. 

Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth

'But I don't want to go among mad people', Alice remarked. 'Oh, you can't help that', said the Cat: 'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad.' 'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice. 'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.'

April 1 Batman is summoned to the asylum by Commissioner Gordon who reveals that the inmates, led by the Joker, have taken over. On the radio Joker demands that Batman come in as he blinds a 19-year old woman who worked in the cafeteria to fund her art career. Batman quickly catches up to the Joker, where he finds out that the Clown pretended to blind the woman in an April Fools' Day prank. In an exchange all bar two of the hostages are released - the administrator Dr. Charles Cavendish and the leading psycho-therapist Dr. Ruth Adams. They wanted to stay to make sure that, in the words of Cavendish, 'I have a duty to the state. I will not leave this asylum in the hands of...madmen'. Batman is horrified to also see his old nemesis Two-Face who had just peed on the floor. He gets into an argument with Dr. Adams over his treatment - Adams sees her work as helping Harvey Dent, while Batman sees that she's broken him. In an attempt to make him become less dependent on his coin she gave him a six-sided dice to give him more choices, then a pack of tarot cards with the hopes that she can move him onto an I-ching. However, instead of decreasing his need to rely on luck he became increasingly reliant on these choices, so much so, that he cannot even decide to go to the toilet without a card. We also learn from Adams that the Joker is suffering from 'super-sanity'; one day he can be a psychopathic killer, another a mischievous clown as 'He creates himself each day. He sees himself as the lord of misrule, and the world as a theatre of the absurd'. The Joker also toys with Batman a bit - he gets Adams to perform a Rorschach test on him.

Throughout the narrative we see the journal of the founder of Arkham Asylum - Amadeus Arkham. He founded the asylum after seeing his mother throughout his childhood suffer from intense mental disorders. One night, as a child, he walked in the give her breakfast to see her eating beetles - later he found out that beetles were a symbol of rebirth and theorised it was his mother's attempt to escape from a spirit trying to possess her. This symbol was of a bat creature which drove her to suicide. Back in the present, the Joker gives an order to Batman - explore the asylum for an hour and he would then release his enemies on him, if he refused the remaining hostages will die. The rest of the story is dripping with Batman's own insecurity and the horrors of the asylum, and Batman's villains reimagined. Clayface is an emaciated figure in a stark parallel to media perceptions of AIDs, Mad Hatter is now a child molester obsessed with blond girls like Alice, the once strong Doctor Destiny is confined to a wheelchair, and Maxie Zeus (who believes he is Zeus reincarnated) is a coprophage addicted to electro-shock therapy. All through this Batman slowly loses his mind and we see Amadeus Arkham's descent into madness. The asylum's first patient was Martin 'Mad Dog' Hawkins, a famous serial murderer and rapist who is 'guided' by the Virgin Mary, who raped and murdered Arkham's family. Despite Hawkins taunting Arkham he appeared to be unfazed by a murderer gloating about murdering his family earning the respect of the other doctors. A year after Hawkins was committed Arkham announced he would use electro-shock therapy to cure Hawkins; in reality, he used it to electrocute Hawkins to death.

As Arkham's journal compares his work to that of the archangel Michael - the angel who toppled Satan, 'the Dragon', during the War in Heaven - Batman faces Killer Croc. He knocks Batman out of a window, but he grabs a spear which a statue of the angel is holding, and he uses it to get back inside impaling Croc. Batman finally reaches the asylum's tower where past and present come together. We find out that Arkham was in fact deeply traumatised by Hawkins murdering his family that was only revealed when he killed the murderer. He was adamant that the Bat was tormenting him just as it had tormented his mother, he had even murdered his mother and made it look like suicide to break the curse. He tried to use some form of sorcery to break the curse, and he was incarcerated in his own asylum where he tried to finish the seal to bind the Bat - using his own fingernails to carve it into the cell walls. Years later, Cavendish found Arkham's journals and started descending into madness. He became convinced that Batman was the 'Bat', and was increasing the insanity of the asylum by dropping off his enemies there. This is all revealed when we see Cavendish in Amadeus Arkham's mother's wedding dress with a knife to Adams's throat. He believed it was his destiny to continue Arkham's work so planned the night. On April Fools, the day Arkham's family was murdered, he released the inmates to attract the Bat, and he put on the dress as a way to bind the Bat to him in order to vanquish it. Batman, however, tries to help and reach the man, but as Cavendish goes to attack Batman Adams slices his throat.

An axe-wielding Batman hacks open the doors to the asylum declaring the inmates to be free. His enemies jeer for his death. The Joker states 'Have you come to claim your kingly robes? Or do you just want us to put you out of your misery, like the poor sick creature you are?' Batman says that he wants Two-Face to decide - if it lands on the normal side he goes free, the scarred side he will die. Harvey flips the coin and declares Batman to go free. As the inmates start to filter out the Joker gives one last remark to Batman: Enjoy yourself out there. In the Asylum. Just don't forget - if it ever gets too tough...There's always a place for you here. We pan to see Two-Face looking at his coin - it actually landed on the scarred side. He knocks over his tarot cards saying: Who cares for you? You're nothing but a pack of cards. 

Some Thematic Analysis

I don't want to go into too much detail as the comic is best read with your own analysis. A major theme is, who actually are the insane ones? Despite clear evidence that figures like Two-Face, Clayface, and Doctor Destiny are suffering under the care of Adams and Cavendish, but they are oblivious insisting that they are helping them. Batman, who's tactic with his supervillain mentally ill opponents is to beat them bloody, is even horrified by what he sees. Although, it is clear that Batman himself knows that he too belongs in Arkham. At the start Batman says 'I'm afraid that when I walk through those asylum gates, when I walk into Arkham and the doors close behind me...It'll be just like coming home.' By the end, it is clear that Batman feels he is one with his enemies. Speech is interesting in this comic. Letterer Gaspar Saladino used various different fonts for different characters to emphasise different personalities - Batman has white text against a black speech bubble, Maxie Zeus has Greek font, Clayface's is a sickly green, and the Joker doesn't have a speech bubble - instead it's just erratic red letters changing size constantly. The Joker is interesting in this comic as well. Morrison wanted to explore the relationship between the Joker and Batman, and we have seen in other comics how much of a symbiotic relationship the two have. In Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns the Joker remains in a depressed, silent state until he sees that Batman has returned. Throughout the comic we get hints that Joker is sexually interested in Batman - even slapping his butt in one panel. Morrison wanted to make this very overt in his original draft, having the Joker wear black lingerie in a parody of Madonna. However, DC vetoed this as they feared this would impact how people viewed Jack Nicholson in 1989's Batman. Reading the comic you also get a claustrophobic fear - panels drip into one another, many panels are tight, and especially with the Joker it is at times hard to read. The characters are drawn in a distorted way, only the clearly 'sane' characters are not distorted - by the end of the comic Batman goes from a solid figure to a large, shadow. It may not be scary, but Arkham Asylum gives you an unsettled feeling reading it.

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Eighty Years of Batman

In May 1939 the comic book Detective Comics in issue 27 released a new story featuring a new superhero. A superhero craze had begun in the 1930s, and all comic strips and radio shows were eager to introduce their own heroes. However, Detective Comics #27 would introduce perhaps the most important pop culture icons, never mind comic character, of all time: Batman. Superman is perhaps the only other comic book character to possibly rival Batman's importance in shaping pop culture. Over the last eighty years Batman has gone through many stories, took many forms, and has been adapted many times over. Today we'll look at Batman's creation, and some of the best stories to read to understand the Dark Knight.

Creation

After seeing the success of Superman, a new genre of comics emerged: the superhero comic. Already, DC's predecessor company had given Superman his own comic, but they wanted more. Editor Vin Sullivan had hired two new figures, Bob Kane and Bill Finger, to create a new hero for Detective Comics. As what was regular at the time, Kane and Finger were given great creative control over creating a new hero. Finger recalled that, 'Kane had an idea for a character called 'Batman,' and he'd like me to see the drawings'. Kane had got the idea of 'Batman' from watching the 1930 movie The Bat Whispers. A remake of the 1920 silent movie, The Bat, (the director of The Bat would remake his own movie in The Bat Whispers), featured a bat-themed thief who hid in the shadows. Kane's original design was very reminiscent of Superman, and a bat-wing cape based off of a design by Leonardo da Vinci. Finger would alter the design, being very inspired by fictional characters like Zorro, including giving Batman a cowl. In fact, Finger did most of the work in the creation of Batman - even down to choosing the name 'Bruce Wayne' - but for over fifty years he was largely forgotten. Kane was an aggressive self-promoter, and despite only writing the first issue, for a long time he was credited as Batman's sole 'creator'. It took until 2015 for Finger to be actually credited in a comic for creating Batman! In his debut most of what we recognise as Batman today was fairly limited - most of his backstory was created for the later Detective Comics #33 in November. Now that we've briefly gone over the creation of Batman we can look at some key stories.

Detective Comics #27 and #33

The best way to start with Batman is his first appearances. Little of what we recognise as Batman exists in these early days, but it is interesting to see how he has evolved over the years. His debut opens with a Commissioner Gordon discussing the newly emerged 'Bat-Man' to his socialite friend Bruce Wayne. The bored Wayne joins Gordon to a crime scene - chemical manufacturer Lambert had been killed and his son taken into custody. Bored, Wayne leaves, Lambert's associates start turning up dead, and Gordon is trying to track both the mysterious Bat-Man and the killers. It turns out, one of Lambert's business partners, Alfred Stryker, was planning to buy out the other partners, but grew tired of waiting and decided to kill them all off. Bat-Man confronted Stryker and knocked him into a vat of acid stating that, 'A fitting end for his kind'. The comic ends with Wayne laughing off Gordon's story, and for him to enter another room where, 'his door slowly opens and reveals its occupant... if the commissioner could see his young friend now... He'd be amazed to learn that he is the Bat-Man!'. Most of Batman's recognisable features were absent: no Alfred, the Batmobile is just a regular car, there's no Bat Cave, and even no Gotham! Batman, spelt 'Bat-Man', operated in New York instead. His 'no kill' rule, as you can probably already tell, wouldn't come around till the late-1940s - in his debut he even threw a man off of a building killing him!

Batman become the central character in Detective Comics, and in #33 he got his now famous origin story. The beginning of the comic quickly goes over the Dark Knight's origin. Returning home from the cinema via an alley the young Bruce and his parents, Thomas and Martha, were confronted by a mugger. When trying to steal Martha Wayne's pearls the mugger shot Thomas, and then shot Martha to silence her screams. Days later, the young Bruce makes a vow by candlelight, 'I swear by the spirits of my parents to avenge their deaths by spending the rest of my life warring on all criminals!'. He spent the rest of his life training, but he realised that 'Criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot, so my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts'. Just then, a bat flew through his window giving him his moniker. 

The Joker and the Cat

Batman was so popular that within the year he had gained a sidekick in #38, 'The Sensational character-find of 1940...Robin - the Boy Wonder!', and his own comic. In this comic, Batman #1, two of Batman's major characters debuted: the Joker and Catwoman. Half the stories featured a new villain, based off of Conrad Veidt's character in the German silent movie The Man who Laughs, who was a maniacal clown named the Joker. The Joker would announce his crimes, mostly murder and robbery, and leave his deceased victims with a devilish smile on their face through an unknown poison. At the end of the first story Batman managed to apprehend the Joker, but two days later, in the second story, the Joker escapes to continue his crime spree. It only ends when, during a trap, Batman and the Joker clash where the Joker stabbed himself in the chest, narrowly surviving. Originally, it was intended for the Joker to die - a last minute change of heart by Bill Finger meant that comics' most classic villain could become a cultural icon. Meanwhile, another story, called 'The Cat', dealing with a mysterious woman attempting to steal a $500,000 emerald from a wealthy socialite. Batman managed to capture the Cat, but smitten, he lets her go. Thus started one of the most endearing will-they/won't-they romances in comic history.

The Killing Joke - the Most Controversial Batman Comic

From the mind of Alan Moore, the author of Watchmen and V for Vendetta, and drawn by Brian Bolland, 1988's The Killing Joke remains one of the most controversial Batman comics. Alan Moore has even stated that he regrets writing it. The story is split into two. The first, deals with the origins of the Joker. A loving father-to-be and husband an unnamed failure of a stand-up was on the brink of destitution. Desperate to give his emerging family a better life he agreed to take part in an extreme robbery - dressed as a villain 'the Red Hood' he was to distract any police who arrived on the scene. They would assume that he was the mastermind, not the other gang members. However, the day of the robbery his wife had a deadly fall, and the gang made him push on with the robbery regardless. Naturally the robbery went wrong. The police shot the gang members, and the scared Red Hood fell into a vat of chemicals upon seeing Batman. The chemicals bleached his skin and left him with a devilish smile. With all that happened that day it drove him insane, and now the Joker wanted to show that 'one bad day' could drive anyone insane. Arriving at the home of Jim Gordon he knocked out the commissioner and shot Barbara Gordon, who at the time was Batgirl, in the spine paralysing her. Batman tracks the Joker to a carnival where he has had Gordon beaten, tortured, stripped, and forced to look at photos of his abused and shot daughter. However, Gordon was not broken as Joker intended, and the comic ends with Batman finally laughing at one of Joker's jokes. Grant Morrison has suggested that Batman may have even killed the Joker at the end - the last panel makes reference to the joke where one man is implied to die. Although praised for the story and art it has earned controversy for the treatment of Barbara Gordon. She suffers disproportionately compared to the other characters, her abuse became a plot tool, and she remained paralysed for decades. The only redeeming part from this is that Barbara Gordon became a major disabled superhero in the form of Oracle.

Batman: White Knight

This story by Sean Murphy finished just last year, and I would highly recommend getting your hands on it. Set in one of DC's many alternate realities, and heavily inspired by the Tim Burton Batman movies, it features a broken and harsher Batman alienating himself from his allies. Publicly force feeding the Joker pills that the clown said could cure him it transpired that the pills actually worked. A sane Joker, called Jack Napier, planned to run for office and bring Batman to justice for aggressive violence, and we find out there are two Harley Quinns. The original left the Joker thanks to the events of Death in the Family but returned when her love seemed sane. However, Joker's rehabilitation may not be all that it seems, Alfred is close to death, and the second Harley becomes a new Joker. A must read.

A Death in the Family

This story was released the same year as The Killing Joke, but unlike Moore's story it was very much intended to be canon. The second Robin, Jason Todd, had become fairly disliked by fans who saw him as overly moody and whiny - quite ironic considering the later introduction of Damien Wayne as Robin. For 50 cents, DC allowed fans to ring in and answer a simply question: should Jason die? Quite possibly some fans rang many times to rig the competition, but regardless DC got an answer - fans honestly decided to kill a child. In A Death in the Family Jason finally reunited with his mother, only for the Joker to capture them, and he savagely beat Jason with a crowbar. Before Batman could rescue them Joker detonated a bomb killing Robin. The second half went down hill extremely quickly - including an overtly racist plot point towards Arabs and Iranians (a topic I'm hoping to write about one day). One of the most iconic scenes in comics came from the story - Batman holding the broken body of Jason Todd. Later adaptations changed the story to omit the racist ending, and Jason Todd would later be resurrected as the violent vigilante Red Hood.

The Dark Knights Returns

This story is perhaps the most famous comics of all time, and inspired Tim Burton's adaptations, and has been partially adapted into an episode of The Batman, The Dark Knight Rises, and Batman v. Superman, as well as having its own animated adaptation. Expertly written by Frank Miller, and beautifully drawn by Klaus Janson and Lynn Varley, it depicts a bleak and very violent version of Batman. A retired Batman, depressed from the death of Jason Todd (actually written years before A Death in the Family) and being alienated from Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne comes out of retirement as Gotham's crime rate explodes. Satirising everything from media sensationalism to Ronald Reagan's Cold War policies a bitter Wayne has to contend with a cannibalistic gang called the Mutants, murderous vigilantes acting in his own name, a murderous returned Joker, and Superman acting on Reagan's orders. It also introduced my favourite version of Robin, and one of the few female Robins, who was inspired by Batman: Carrie Kelley. Every panel of this story has become iconic and has inspired future gritty reboots of other heroes, however, none can compete with this one.

Knightfall

This was also partially adapted into The Dark Knight Rises, Knightfall is a good story, albeit written for the wrong reasons. In the 1990s many comic companies, including DC, almost went bankrupt, and DC hoped to boost sales through big stories. In January 1993 Superman was killed, and in May we got Knightfall. In this story, a new villain named Bane plans to both mentally and physically break Batman. Breaking all of the inmates from Arkham Asylum he lets Batman fight them all, slowly exhausting himself as he went, until Bane finally fought him. Bane then broke Batman's back over his knee paralysing him. Unfortunately, DC ruined a good story. The new Batman was the textbook definition of 'edginess' and was hated. DC resurrected Superman and had Bruce Wayne heal from his paralysis to get more people reading - sadly killing permanency in comics with it.

Batman: Year One

My second favourite Batman comic Year One served as the comic which inspired Batman Begins. Written by Frank Miller, and illustrated by David Mazzuchelli, it depicts a revamped origin for Batman. Jim Gordon tries to fight blatant and rampant corruption in the GCPD, Selina Kyle begins a life of crime, and Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham to begin his career as Batman. There are none of Batman's traditional Rouge's Gallery - no Penguin, Scarecrow, or Riddler. Two-Face is just the normal Harvey Dent, and only at the end of the comic is the Joker mentioned. The villains are instead the GCPD and Gotham's mob. A noir-esque story, realistic, and a great introduction.

The Long Halloween

I've saved the best for last...it's also perhaps the longest story on this list. Written by Jeph Loeb it is set early on in Batman's career. His villains from Year One are angered by the increase in masked or themed criminals like the Penguin, Joker, and Poison Ivy who are edging them out of existence. At a Halloween party a major mobster is killed and a jack-o-lantern is left at the scene. Batman, Gordon, and Harvey Dent have to find the killer - the 'Holiday Killer' as they kill a major member of the mob on holidays - while also dealing with the mob itself, and the rise of the supervillains. At the same time, Harvey's mental health is failing thanks to exhaustion, and his marriage is falling apart. It ends with a new supervillain on the scene... 

Thank you for reading. These are just some of the stories I would recommend reading if you want to become acquainted with the Dark Knight. I haven't mentioned many other fantastic stories including the creepy Court of Owls, the alternate reality steampunk Gotham by Gaslight, and one of my all-time favourite comics, Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum. Batman for eighty years has given comic book fans story after story to love, and has brought himself fully into popular culture. How many other comic heroes can claim to have such a cultural presence than Batman? Only perhaps Superman and Spider-Man. Everyone not acquainted with comics know many of the key details and aspects of his comics. To another eighty years!

Thank you for reading and I hope you found it interesting. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby. 

Comics Explained: DC Multiverse

A map of the Multiverse

One of the key aspects of the DC Universe (DCU) is the Multiverse. An idea of a Multiverse is not unique to DC and some scientists have even hypothesized that we may even be living in a Multiverse. A Multiverse is basically a parallel universe where things are different; for example, there could be a reality where an alternate version of you got your dream job. Some scientists, like Ethan Siegal, have argued against the idea of alternate universes. DC comics has had a long and complicated history with alternate realities so the purpose of this post is to make it simpler. Due to how complicated DC's Multiverse has been this will be more of an overview so if you've noticed that I've missed something it's likely intentional - although feel free to mention it in the comments. DC's Multiverse originated as a way to justify a retcon...

Real World Origins of the Multiverse

DC originated in the 1930s and 1940s and its cast of characters, with a few exceptions, were largely magic based. Of course there were exceptions, such as Superman, but heroes were largely magic based. These included Wonder Woman, Doctor Fate, the original Green Lantern (Alan Scott), and Hawkman. They proved to be so popular that in 1940's All Star Comics #3 a precursor of the Justice League, called the Justice Society of America, was made out of some of the more popular characters - however Batman and Superman weren't apart of it and 1940s sexism made Wonder Woman the JSA's secretary. After the Second World War interest in superheroes decreased. This did not just affect DC, Marvel's precursor Timely also faced this issue. Throughout the late-1940s and early-1950s comic book companies instead sold stories about horror (which crashed thanks to the Comics Code of Authority), romance, teen drama, Westerns, and war. Until the mid-1960s Archie Comics actually sold more than Marvel! With the exception of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and a few others superheroes were out. By the mid-1950s the Space Race had begun making a new generation interested in sci-fi so DC thought to bring back superheroes. Largely magic was dropped in favor of science, or science merged with magic. In 1956 Showcase #4 remade the Flash with Barry Allen as the titular hero; as a bit of meta ingenuity Barry Allen loved reading the Flash comics from the 1940s so chose that as his moniker. In 1959 Green Lantern received a sci-fi makeover in Showcase Presents Green Lantern #23. Soon enough the JSA was remade into the Justice League in The Brave and the Bold #28.

Fans weren't entirely on board with these changes. Of course it was very popular - after all it restarted the love for superheroes which only dipped thanks to the 1990s Comic Book Crash which you can read about here - but some long time fans weren't happy. Many older readers were wondering what happened to the older stories? Why are Alan Scott and Jay Garrick comic book characters but Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman 'real' in this continuity? What happened to the JSA? Something that can be compared to modern comics some Flash fans hated Barry Allen initially. After a while they did grow to like him but many were upset that the Flash they grew up with had just become a fictitious character in a comic. So in 1961 they decided to answer this question and create the Multiverse. Flash fans buying Flash #123 saw Barry Allen and Jay Garrick on the cover.

The Flash #123

In this story Barry Allen vibrates at a different frequency and accidentally travels into a different dimension where Jay Garrick lives. Garrick has aged in real time and inspired by Barry comes out of retirement. Thus the Multiverse was born. Throughout DC history we find out that each universe vibrates at a different frequency and when we dream we sometimes see different universes; the Gardner Fox and Harry Lampert of the DCU therefore saw Garrick's universe as they slept. The Flash #123 received a ton of positive fan mail. Longtime fans who liked both Garrick and Allen were thrilled to see them together; Garrick fans who disliked Allen loved that they paid respect to the character; and new fans who knew nothing of Garrick were eager to find out more about the interesting 1940s characters (comic guides wouldn't come around until the late-1960s). Barry Allen would occasionally go to Garrick's reality but in 1963 with Justice League of America #21 and #22 the Justice League met the Justice Society. The most recent universe, from the 1950s, was named Earth-1 while the older universe was named Earth-2. Until 1985 there would be at least one JLA/JSA crossover a year.

Expansion of the Multiverse and Crisis on Infinite Earths

With the Multiverse now created DC had fun with it. Earth-3 was introduced in Justice League of America #29 which is an 'opposite' world: Columbus discovered Europe, England rebelled against the USA etc. Instead of a Justice League we have the Crime Syndicate of America featuring Ultraman (Superman), Super Woman (Wonder Woman), Owlman (Batman), Johnny Quick (Flash), and Power Ring (Green Lantern). DC had also purchased Captain Marvel (now Shazam) - who at one time was even more popular than Superman - and Plastic Man from other companies so DC designated their old universes Earth-S and Earth-X respectively. When Marvel powerhouse Jack Kirby moved over to DC he expanded the Multiverse with New Gods beginning in 1971. The New Gods of New Genesis and Apokolips exist outside the Multiverse and figures like Darkseid interact with the Multiverse, mainly Earth-1, via portals called Boom Tubes. We also see the Source Wall which is a structure separating the Multiverse from the 'Source' - the literal origin of all knowledge and everything that exists. Since the 1970s the Multiverse continued and continued to expand. Power Girl is one just example. Power Girl is the Earth-2 version of Supergirl - older than her Earth-1 counterpart she got trapped on Earth-1 so created her own identity as there was already a Supergirl there. 

Destruction of the Multiverse

By 1985 DC decided that a change was needed. After decades of stories they were worried that new fans would be turned off by the mountains of stories, and the Multiverse did not help. Even normal fans were confused about which stories were in which universe never mind new ones. Plot holes started to appear and with general confusion DC decided a clean slate was needed leading to 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths. Writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Perez were tasked with this story and to this day this story marked the key dating point when discussing DC's history. An ancient being called the Anti-Monitor attacks the Multiverse causing all the heroes to unite and fight it. One key thing to note: Barry Allen died in this story. The character who introduced the Multiverse died with it. Despite the heroes defeating the Anti-Monitor the Multiverse is destroyed forming one new reality: New Earth.

Post-Crisis

Gotham by Gaslight, the first Elseworlds comic

DC treated Crisis as a new start. A few characters, like Wonder Woman, received entirely new origins and some aspects of characters were rewritten to make more sense. For example, Bruce Wayne hired Alfred after becoming Batman and he discovers that Wayne is Batman when Alfred finds him injured. Post-Crisis rewrote this so that Alfred had always been with the Waynes and had always knew that Bruce was Batman. The Justice Society was active during World War Two but disbanded due to McCarthyism. DC planned that there were to be no Multiverse at all - alternate realities were allowed but it had to be clear that there would be no interaction with New Earth. Many of these were published under their darker imprint called Vertigo which featured Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing and Hellblazer. In 1989 DC launched Elseworlds to cover alternate reality stories so fans would not get confused where the first to be published was Gotham by Gaslight featuring Batman living in the Victorian era tracking Jack the Ripper who had come to Gotham. Meanwhile, characters intimately tied with the Multiverse had to have rewrites. Some were simple: instead of existing outside the Multiverse the New Gods exist in a galaxy which cannot be reached via normal means. Attempts to reboot Power Girl were not well received. She was changed to be descended from an Atlantean sorcerer and fans hated it. Some parts of the pre-Crisis continuity remained. Barry Allen's death was one and he remained dead for decades with Wally West acting as the Flash since then. John Constantine could also remember the pre-Crisis timeline.

Since 1985 DC had published several alternate reality stories and some are the best from comics. The Dark Knight Returns featured an elderly Bruce Wayne becoming the Batman once again; Superman: Red Son featured Superman landing in a collective farm in Ukraine in the 1930s and years later he becomes a key figure in the USSR; and Kingdom Come tells the story of a retired Superman returning to show the new violent heroes how to be a hero. The stories from Vertigo were considered semi-canon: if something contrasted with the main reality then that story didn't officially happen. There was no Multiverse, discounting the sequel crossovers to Kingdom Come called Hypertime, until 2005 with Infinite Crisis by Geoff Johns. We find out that following Crisis certain heroes, such as Earth-2 Superman and Lois Lane, following the destruction of the Multiverse were trapped in a pocket universe. However, many of them were unhappy. Compared to pre-Crisis heroes the post-Crisis heroes failed, they were flawed, and they argued so the surviving pre-Crisis heroes viewed them as false heroes. One was Superboy-Prime, a version of Superman where all DC heroes are comic characters, manages to punch his way out of the universe! This caused ripple effects causing heroes to come back alive or change their backstories. We even find out that Power Girl was actually from Earth-2 but she became trapped in New Earth instead of Earth-2. Barry Allen also came back in Infinite Crisis. Following Infinite Crisis the Multiverse came back. Now Hypertime, Vertigo and another imprint called WildStorm could actively crossover.

Flashpoint and After

Flashpoint

In 2011's Flashpoint Barry Allen wakes up in a world completely different to his own and we find out that he accidentally caused this: he had ran so fast that he traveled through time to stop his mother's death but the Butterfly Effect reshaped the world. One good example of this is Bruce Wayne being shot instead of his parents and his mother becomes the Joker while his dad becomes an ultraviolent Batman. When the Flash reversed this it destroyed the Multiverse once again and New Earth, the Vertigo universe, and the WildStorm universe merge together forming Earth Prime. The Multiverse was recreated to form 52 new realities - one even got its own comic series, Earth-2. The New 52 had a mix reception mainly as DC said this was an entirely a new start, they wanted readers to act as if DC had never published a story before. Except DC kept referring back to older stories and now no one knew what was canon or not. After that tangent we get to Multiversity by Grant Morrison and I would highly recommend people read it. Morrison mapped out the Multiverse (at the top) and explored some of them. My personal favorite is shown in The Just. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are dead but before they died they made sure injustice, crime and alien invasions died with them. Now their children, and some retired heroes, act as celebrities doing battle reenactments. The later Convergence event, which Multiversity helped set up. The heroes of Earth-2, and a few others, go on a journey to stop Brainiac who has been collecting people from destroyed realities with the intention of putting them together to study what happens.

Finally I'm going to mention DC Rebirth, Dark Knights: Metal, and Doomsday Clock. As they are still currently happening and I haven't fully caught up with each one this shall be a broad overview. In DC Rebirth, a half-reboot to rectify somethings disliked in the New 52, we find the Comedian's button from Watchmen in the Batcave and we find out that Dr Manhattan has been intervening in the DCU leading up to Doomsday Clock. Here Ozymandias, the new Rorschach and a criminal duo travel to the DCU hoping to find Manhattan. Meanwhile, with Dark Knights: Metal we find out that there is a 'Dark 52'. These were universes destined to be destroyed and are invading the 52. This invasion is being led by the Dark Knights - basically evil versions of Batman. 

The Dark Knights

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