Batman: Damned Conjures DC's Darkest Superhero Universe Yet

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Batman: Damned #2 by Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo, on sale now.

Earlier this year, Batman: Damned #1 made headlines for featuring a brief scene of Bruce Wayne walking around the Batcave without any clothes. While that moment garnered international attention, the issue also kicked off DC's mature readers Black Label imprint with a mystery surrounding the apparent death of the Joker.

In that story's especially bleak version of Gotham City, Batman recovered from mysterious wounds with help from the mystical antihero John Constantine, met the ghoulish Deadman and a street-hustling Zatanna and had visions of a spirit that was tied to memories of his father's infidelity.

Batman: Damned #2 expands on those ideas and introduces some more ultra-dark takes on the Batman mythos that firmly establish its gritty world as the darkest reality in DC's massive multiverse.

BRUCE WAYNE'S FIRST GUN

After the events surrounding Thomas Wayne's affair were covered in the last issue, this issue highlights the costly emotional toll Thomas' apparent affair had on a young Bruce Wayne and his mom, Martha.

One early flashback sequence finds a young Bruce dressed up like a cowboy and getting ready to play with a real horse when an argument between his parents spills out onto the front lawn of Wayne Manor.

When Thomas drives off, Bruce runs inside to check on his mother. As tears stream down his face, he points a toy revolver at the back of Martha's head and fires the cap gun with a loud pop. The sound startles Martha, who's already crying over her husband's apparent affair, and she makes Bruce promise to never point a gun at anyone again.

Considering his parents famous deaths in Crime Alley, the image of a young Bruce holding a gun to the back of his mom's head is a macabre bit of foreshadowing that becomes genuinely unnerving when she tearfully turns to confront Bruce.

THE DARK SIDE OF DC'S MYSTICAL HEROES

In the present day, Batman continues investigating the apparent death of the Joker after getting some help from John Constantine and Deadman, the relatively friendly ghost of Boston Brand, in the last issue.

On the advice of Constantine, Batman tracks down the rapper J. Blood. As his name, lyrics and appearance indicate, this rapper is a version of Etrigan the Demon and his human host, Jason Blood. Like the classic Etrigan, J. Blood always speaks in rhyme, which he does in private and while performing on stage. While he eventually saves Batman from a burning building, he also tricks a crowd into "exalting" him by chanting his name, briefly forcing them to hold each other at gunpoint while under his thrall.

Although he seems eager to help Batman, Deadman shows a much darker side to himself, too. Batman: Damned #1 already established that living bodies don't respond well to being possessed by the ghostly Deadman, but this issue shows how little he thinks about the people he's taking over. After possessing a random person, Brand runs into a burning building with Batman. As flames begin to singe his human host, Deadman seems overjoyed to be feeling anything, even pain, and seemingly lets his host burn to death in the inferno.

While Deadman and J. Blood are still ostensibly heroes, they both display a callous disregard for human life that undercuts their heroic intentions in this issue.

NEXT PAGE: Batman Is Dark, But Damned's Harley Quinn Is Even Darker

HARLEY'S DARK TURN

While Harley Quinn has been more of a hero in recent years, she makes a striking return to outright villainy in some of this issue's darkest moments.

Despondent over the Joker's apparent death, Harley has taken on several hallmarks of his appearance, with dyed green hair, Joker-esque makeup and his trademark purple coat over her jester costume. With a look that crosses her signature costume with Heath Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight, Harley launches a massive attack that leaves much of Gotham City in flames.

After quickly dispatching her gang, Batman and Harley begin to fight. As he gains the upper hand, Harley tearfully turns to Batman and begs him to keep hitting her, saying that she doesn't want to live without the Joker. Batman pauses for a moment, and the scene recalls the look that Martha Wayne gave a young Bruce earlier in the issue.

As the sequence continues, Harley drugs Batman and attempts to assault him. After he recovers from the drug's paralytic effects, Batman responds by grabbing her by the throat and choking her against the Bat-Signal on the issue's final page.

While Batman's adventures have included plenty of dark, violent moments, this entire sequence is one of the more graphic depictions of violence in the character's 79-year history. While the content of the scene is already troubling, Bermejo's ultra-detailed art gives this sequence an unsettling visceral quality.

GHOST OF SUSPICION

As all of the aforementioned events play out, Batman is haunted by a mysterious spirit adorned in arcane symbols. The apparition debuted when Bruce first became aware of his father's infidelity, and has reappeared throughout that series. In Batman: Damned #2's final moments, the spirit seemingly possesses Batman as he chokes Harley.

Given its role in Bruce's memories of his father's affair, the spirit seems to embody his father's infidelities, at least on a symbolic level. The spirit also claims to represent secrets, and that could be the key to unlocking the mystery that kicked off the series.

Both issues of Batman: Damned are strongly informed by the very real possibility that Batman killed the Joker, possibly unwittingly while under the spirit's influence. Both Constantine and a human version of the Spectre, DC's spirit of vengeance, openly accuse Batman of murder. While the idea of Batman killing the Joker is usually unthinkable, Batman: Damned has been filled with similarly taboo ideas that probably wouldn't work in most other versions of the DC Universe.

When Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo introduced another Batman who killed the Joker last year, that Dark Knight turned into the Batman Who Laughs, one of the most frightening new DC villains in recent memory. But even though the Batman Who Laughs was born in the Dark Multiverse, he still fights the brightly-colored heroes of the regular DC Universe.

This Batman operates on a completely different plane of existence. He's DC's darkest Dark Knight in a bleak world where the most heroic figure is John Constantine. Instead of seeming like the most competent person in the world, this Batman seems subject to supernatural forces that are beyond his control. The back cover to this issue says that this issue "proudly puts the 'black' in Black Label," and this story certainly lives up to that promise with its grim world and decidedly adult themes.

While it's still not clear if Batman killed the Joker or what the spirit that haunts him truly is, those questions will likely be answered in Batman: Damned #3, which is set to be released on March 13, 2019.