Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman: The Man Who Laughs!
This extra-large economy-size one-shot Batman comic book is meant to be a direct sequel to the Batman: Year One story. It’s a retelling of Batman’s first encounter with the Joker. It’s supposed to be really good! So I’m gonna read it! And now you’re going to read about me reading it! And it’s gonna be a lot of words since this story is about 70 pages long! So I’ll shut up and get to it.
Batman: The Man Who Laughs [April, 2005]
Written by: Ed Brubaker
It’s the middle of the night, and Police Captain Jim Gordon is at the scene of a very grisly crime! A real crime of the century! He’s watching a body get pulled on a stretcher into an ambulance, but the corpse must be all kinds of fucked up. Two guys on the force with 20 years of experience each look pale and shaken. A paramedic almost throws up. We catch a glimpse of the body’s almost mummified-looking visage. Mouth open impossibly wide, showing clenched teeth. Eyeballs like marbles rolling around in gaping sockets. I’d hit it.
There are plenty more similar corpses where that came from. Eight or nine. Gordon walks into the abandoned factory where he sees similarly emaciated dead bodies with masks of extreme anguish. This is Gotham, though! It’s the worst city in the world! Jim Gordon shouldn’t be surprised anymore by what he sees in this shithole. Hell, there’s a guy cavorting around town in a bat costume for the love of Pete! I mean, that’s weird, right? That shit ain’t happening in Cleveland.
Plus, it seems like ever since that bat fellow started his vigilante justice crusade, a lot of other masked weirdos started popping up. Red Hood, whoever that is, he was one of them. Batman made short work of him, though. Batman has a black hood! Always bet on black.
Superheros are popping up like weeds. Attention-seeking, narcissistic, self-absorbed weeds.
It’s happening everywhere, though! Gordon namedrops a couple more superheroes, flexing his knowledge on the DC Comics universe! Well, better get used to it. It’s a crazy world. Crazy like a fox!
OK, Jim Gordon finishes his internal monologue. Now it’s time for Batman himself to swoop down and start chit-chatting with Mr. Red Mustache. “I think it’s bad,” Batman says, offering much needed insight to this multiple homicide. “Some of these people have been dead for nearly a month. I think whoever did this was practicing on them…”
And always the one with excellent bedside manner, Batman tells Gordon that this is definitely just the beginning.
Next, some rather dignified text box calligraphy script tells me that we switch to Bruce Wayne’s point of view. He’s a distinguished guest at a fancy-ass Gotham Gentleman’s Club black-tie affair and the dude could not be more bored. Henry Claridge is the man’s name, and he’s trying to schmooze some money out of Brucey to finance a partnership with a chemical processing company. Bruce Wayne looks about 55 years old, all craggy-faced and shit. He’s not listening to this Claridge douchebag anyway, he’s too focused on what he saw the previous night. All that carnage. Woof, sir.
While Henry Claridge continues flapping his gums, Bruce shifts his eyes toward a news broadcast on a nearby TV about Arkham Asylum. I’ve heard of that place before, they made some dang video games about it! It has a sordid history: the architect went crazy and hacked up his staff with an axe, so he was sentenced to spend his life in the very same asylum he designed and helped build, ooOOOooOoOOOO spooky.
Surely this man is joking!
The news correspondent lady starts coughing in the middle of her spiel. Next thing you know, her face transforms into, like, a lady-Joker, completely with the wild grin, green hair, and clowny makeup. She’s dead. Maybe?
Now who’s this tall drink of water?! Handsome smile, slicked-back hair, cool ass gun! It’s the Man Who Laughs, that’s who it is! And Bruce Wayne’s getting his very first glimpse of this suave hot toddy as he addresses the city: “…thought I’d take the time out of my OH SO BUSY schedule to say hi and make a few NOT SO VEILED threats…so hello-goodbye, you’re all gonna die.”
I like the cut of this guy’s jib! Bruce is the only one at the party who doesn’t look absolutely batshit alarmed at this broadcast. Part of that is possibly because this Jokey Fellow calls out Henry Claridge by name. “Henry Claridge – I’m looking at you, old boy…and your future looks dim, indeed…” This Joke Man keeps his gun trained right at the camera like Alec Baldwin.
Joke Boy continues: “Oh, what the hell, I’ll say it anyway – you die at midnight, Henry. And then we can all have a good laugh at your expense.” Henry Claridge is like “borp”.
Jackie “Joke Man” Martling over here fires his gun and a Bugs Bunny “BANG” flag pops out of it. LOL. That old gag. The feed cuts out. The partygoers are somewhat stunned. No one knows what to say about what the hell they just saw. “W-Well–huh…what do you–what do you make of that, Wayne?” stammers Claridge. But Wayne gone, bro. Wayne gone.
A snappy-dressed Bruce is already scurrying down empty elevator shafts, talking to himself in calligraphed script, trying to find a good spot to make his cute Batman transformation. “This man – this KILLER – will be long gone by the time I reach the parking garage, I know. But I hurry anyway.” thinks Bruce McJuice. He wants to at least try to get there before the police do, before the police trample all over the evidence and smudge it all up with their fatass jelly doughnut hands! But, a trick up this sleeve! An Ace perhaps! Maybe even a wildcard! You know, the ones you usually remove from the deck. What are those called, again? Anyway, time to give the brand new Batmobile a trial run in the real world! Ahhh, purrs like a dream. That’s the ticket.
Hear that VRROOOOMM? That’s the sound of POWER, baby! Auughh auughh auuugghhh!
Later, when Gordon and his crew arrive at the scene, he gets a strong feeling in his gut that Batman already showed up before they did. “He’s been here. Nothing is out of place, but I can tell.” Your Spidey-Sense is on the right track, Gordo My Boy! Mr. Bat zoomed her long before the rest of you so he could place his dick on all the evidence beforehand! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
The police find a single shell casing, showing that Joker’s feed went out because he shot the cameraman. One officer finds shoe prints and will get a mold going. Exciting! Jim Gordon is so excited that he can hardly contain himself! He’s gonna go inside the building, maybe that’ll help him with his excitement and overstimulation.
Gordon creaks the old door open, leading to an empty foyer. Our secret little tryst begins! “Okay…what have you found?” Gordon asks a man hiding in some shadows. “Not enough…but enough to make me worried.” answers Shadow Man. The Shadow Man is actually the Batman. They are one in the same!
Batman discovers a message scrawled on a tile bathroom wall. “It looks like he spent some time in here, waiting for that TV crew to arrive.” Batman frowns. ONE BY ONE THEY’LL HEAR MY CALL, THEN THIS WICKED TOWN WILL FOLLOW MY FALL. That message could be worse, I suppose. It could be way more unhinged, something like POOP FUCK. EAT MY SHIT CLOWNS OF THE SEA. CLOWNS OF THE LAND AND CLOWNS OF THE SEA. GET FUCKED CLOWNS. POOP FUCK.
This Jokey Guy is worse than just a murderer, though, they can both agree on that. “What does he want?” Gordon flails after recounting the senseless violence of the last two crime scenes. “He wanted the TV crew’s mobile transmitter van,” Batman says simply, “with minor adjustments, he’ll be able to broadcast live anytime he wants now.”
Gordon scrambles to stay ahead. “Good God…this city’s going to go crazy if he really does kill Claridge tonight.” Sure enough, though, the city already took its crazy pills. A press conference had been organized long before Henry Claridge’s Midnight Death o’ Fun, and Gotham’s mayor gives his speech to the city that evening. “I can assure you that this madman will be brought to justice, and swiftly,” the mayor lies, because as we ALL know, the Joker has never, ever been brought to justice. Certainly not swiftly!
Bat? What bat? The one I’m going to crack into the side of your empty skull, idiot?
Mr. Gordon McFrownMustache stares daggers at the mayor as they all stand out in the rain. “Like a true politician, making promises he can’t keep. And who looks bad if things don’t go smoothly or swiftly?” But, unbeknownst to Gordon, he already looks pretty bad. So it shouldn’t be that large of a problem.
Gordon starts taking questions. “CAN YOU TELL US IF YOU HAVE ANY LEADS?” and “IS HENRY CLARIDGE GOING TO BE SAFE TONIGHT?” and “WHAT’S THIS LARGE, RED GROWTH ON MY BUTTHOLE?”. He tells them all that he can’t comment upon an ongoing investigation, but they’ll all do their very best to make sure everyone does their very best!
One press member asks if it’s true that “police have dubbed this freak the Joker”, and Gordon admits that, yeah, that sounds about right. He treats a question about Batman as something snide meant to piss him the hell off and he stops taking questions. “Grogan’ll tear my head off later, but I don’t care. I wasn’t hired to play nice with the press. I’m a police,” Gordon thinks to himself. And his first task is to find out how to keep Henry Claridge alive, even if that guy is some rich piece of shit.
Also, Grogan is the current police commissioner during this story’s timeline. Commissioner Grogan. Couldn’t they have picked a less similar name? HOW AM I GOING TO KEEP TRACK OF ALL THESE NAMES? Gordon and Grogan sounds like a couple of lovebirds sittin’ in a tree. I’m just gonna call him Charles Grodin from now on.
ANYWAY, MEANWHILE, Batman stakes out Claridge’s residence. He notices the big fat oaf chuckling about the whole ordeal, not taking it seriously, not going into protective custody, just being big and dumb and fat about it. The police had to lockdown the whole building, but since Claridge is one of the mayor’s big donors, the police have to suck it up and just do it. Claridge is a special boy.
Gordon reminds the man to stay away from the windows, but Claridge insists that this is all a ploy to scare him. He chuckles nervously, probably pooping his pants a little too. It’s about ♫♪ TWO! MINUTES! ♫♪ ♫♪ TO MIIIIDNIIIIIIIGHT! ♫♪
And Jim Gordon’s like “well, dumbshit, this Joker guy has already killed about 15 people in the last day or so and he’s still out there, so why don’t you just listen to me before you die?”
He’s dead, Jim.
A SWAT officer tells Gordon that there’s movement in one of the air shafts on the 32nd floor, but it turns out to be some skinny twerp from the press trying to sneak in for a photo. Claridge mentions that it’s now midnight on the dot and nothing happened…but his nervous laughter starts becoming slightly more frequent. And then, suddenly, his nervous laughter becomes uncontrollable, and his face has stretched into a maniacal, pained Jokery Joker grin! “HA HA– GORDON– HA HA-HELP– HA HA HA-HELP– HAHA”.
Batman busts through the window like an even ruder Kool-Aid Man. Like, really, what was going to do? Use his medical degree? Batman pronounces Claridge dead, and Gordon is like “ahhh snap”. Gordon tells the SWAT team to put their guns down, no one leaves the room until…well, somethin’! This is unprecedented shit. The plan is kinda nebulous right now. Sneakily, Batman appears to leave a corked vial of blood on the corpse. Certainly he doesn’t take a corked vial of blood from the corpse, that would be crazy-talk. Either way, Batman’s tampering with the crime scene like an even RUDER Kool-Aid Man. That’s a pretty rude Kool-Aid Man incarnation.
SWAT tells Gordon that something else came up, and Batman already noticed screams and cars honking six blocks away. He LEAPS into action, and discovers a couple of escaped mental patients jumping around the street shooting guns every which way! Civilians are terrified! There’s a dead cop bleeding out on the street already! lmao!
The Man Who Bats makes short work of these two cavorting looney bin ninnies! The street is absolutely packed with people, and Batman is already bemoaning his decision to make a very public appearance. No time to think about that, though, there’s more screaming happening another few blocks away. Duty calls! *poops*
Oh no, he’s shooting into the Security office! Someone should call Security!
“How many psychos escaped while we were all waiting for Henry Claridge to die?” Batman asks himself as he leaps across tall buildings with multiple bounds. No single-bounding with this guy.
Gordon’s already at the Williams Medical Center, from whence the “psychos escaped”. At 11:48pm, ♫♪ TWELVE! MINUTES! ♫♪ ♫♪ TO MIIIIDNIIIIIIIGHT! ♫♪, some maniac blew open the front doors with C-4, killing a few orderlies who were standing near the entrance in the process. Then this Joker feller just strolls on in like he owns the place (and maybe he does, maybe he owns all of Gotham with his joke money) and guns down the entire security office without even looking in such a direction! Then, this guy, this fuckin’ wiseguy, he makes his way to the psych ward, opens the door, throws the full room a bunch of loaded weapons, and invites them all to have some fun! Dawww, isn’t that nice? They seem so happy!
Gordon’s like “this sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me, son”, but the officer points him to the sole witness: a guard cowered in a corner, huddled with a blanket, sporting a shiner. The guy looks shaky and, possibly, not very reliable! I can hear Gordon groaning from here. He asks the officer how many psychos escaped. 16 total, all in for homicide. Or worse. Do you hear that low rumbling sound? That’s the sound of a pale, glasses-face, red-mustached police captain groaning again!
Ahh, but tomorrow is another day! Sleep on it, I say!
OK, well, neither Gordon nor Batman slept on anything (except maybe the Drug Church album that just came out in March, 2022! That’s some good stuff!). It’s the next morning, and Batman was only able to track down six of the escaped lunatics. The others were nowhere to be found. That leaves up to ten in Joker’s new army of mental miscreants!
Alfred, four inches away from Bruce’s naked torso, asks if they’ll be sleeping all today. Bruce is like “go fuck yourself” and heads downstairs to his freezing cold, shitty lair. Apparently, he WAS able to get a blood sample from Claridge. He was able to extract blood from the body, fill a vial, cork the vial, and slip it into a pocket, all behind his back, all with one hand, all while Gordon and three SWAT officers were a few feet away from him. Well done. Such nimble fingers. A lot of practice diddling his own butthole, I’m sure.
A moist, damp, bacteria-ridden cave is the perfect sterile environment for blood tests and poison analysis.
Bruce’s hunch is that Claridge was poisoned before the Joker made the announcement on TV. He observes two variants, one fast-acting and one slow-acting. During blood chemical analysis, another report from the Joker pops up on Bruce’s many Batcave television screens: “GOOOOOD MOOOORNINNNGG GOTHAMCITAY! Looks like good old hero cop James Gordon was unable to stop the fulfilling of my prophecy last night. But don’t let it get you down, Jimmy Boy, some things are just fate! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
Off-panel, Bruce disrobes below his waist and starts strokin’ it a little. The Joker goes on to announce that he was able to help free some “poor misunderstood souls” during the previous night’s distraction. And what a party they had! Streamers! Balloons! Fistings! And lots of blood. Hoo-boy! And now he comes to find out that he has been christened with a new name, and it’s way better than whatever his old name is. The new name references his penchant for joking, for example.
Joker pulls up a newspaper. “So, I bet you’re all asking yourselves, what can old Joker do to top last night’s show? How about another death-match?” He thumbs through the thing and shows a corner to the camera. It’s another fat millionaire. This new rich guy dies at midnight.
“As for the rest of tonight’s entertainment, well, that’ll just have to be a surprise, but I promise you’ll die laughing.”
Bzzt! Transmission gone.
Intermission time! Let’s take stock. I’m roughly halfway through this extra-large one-shot Batman/Joker first meet-up story, and so far this crazed, morally bankrupt supervillain is murdering a new millionaire at midnight? Every single night? And they want to stop him why?
Oh, right, because Bruce Wayne is also a dipshit millionaire with a biased interest in stopping someone from targeting millionaires.
Sounds like the Joker’s a good guy to me! INTERMISSION OVER.
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