For decades, Batman has had one of the most celebrated rogues’ galleries in comics. While iconic villains like the Joker, Two-Face and Bane are part of the foundation of the modern DC Universe, the Dark Knight’s roster of villains is still growing. And one of the most notable new additions to Batman’s rogues’ gallery, the Batman Who Laughs has turned Batman’s ultimate fears into an existential threat to the DC Multiverse.
While he may have simply started out as a Jokerized version of Batman, the Batman Who Laughs has gained a jaw-dropping amount of power since he debuted in Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Dark Days: The Casting #1 in 2017. Now, we’re taking a closer look at this villain, his bizarre slate of powers and how he transformed his body into something truly horrifying.
How the Joker Created the Batman Who Laughs
The Batman Who Laughs began life as a fairly regular Batman on Earth -22, one of the fallen worlds of DC’s Dark Multiverse. After one of the Joker’s killing sprees left several of Gotham’s villains, Commissioner Gordon and the parents of several newborns dead, this Dark Knight finally snapped the Joker’s neck.
With his final breath, the Joker infected Batman with a toxin which essentially turned him into a new Joker. As the Batman Who Laughs, this Dark Knight has both the tactical genius of Batman and the Joker’s madness, chalk-white skin and mild superhuman abilities of the Joker, which he used to decimate his world’s heroes before turning his attention elsewhere.
Why the Batman Who Laughs Wears a Visor
Since the Batman Who Laughs stepped out of his home dimension and began looking towards the multiverse, he’s rarely been seen without his spiked visor. In addition to giving him a menacing, ghoulish appearance, it also enables his existence in certain dimensions. As revealed in Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen #4, by James Tynion IV and Steve Epting, the visor serves as a tether to the Dark Multiverse that allows him to physically exist outside of it. It also allows the Batman Who Laughs to peer into the Dark Multiverse and see his victims’ worst fears and is constructed out of Nth Metal, one of the villain’s few weaknesses.
How the Batman Who Laughs Became the Darkest Knight
After a particularly brutal attack on the DC Universe, the Batman Who Laughs teamed up with Perpetura, the dark creator of the multiverse, in the lead-up to Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Dark Nights: Death Metal. After he used her limitless power to reshape the DC Universe in his twisted image, Wonder Woman attacked him with the Chainsaw of Truth, a weapon built from the wreck of her Invisible Plane and her Lasso of Truth.
While this attack killed the Batman Who Laughs, his brain and spinal cord remained intact, so his brain was transplanted into a new body. Unfortunately for DC’s heroes, that body belonged to a lobotomized Bruce Wayne who had been given the reality-reshaping powers of Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan.
What Are the Batman Who Laughs’ Powers?
Within his new body, the Batman Who Laughs gained an incredibly wide swath of powers that effectively turned him into the strongest being in the multiverse. Renaming himself the Darkest Knight in Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Dark Nights: Death Metal #2, the Batman Who Laughs absorbed the energy produced by every Crisis event in DC history.
At his strongest, the Batman Who Laughs could travel through time, space and the multiverse at will and possessed cosmic awareness. He also had complete molecular control over his body and could create copies of himself, in addition to giving himself powers like super-speed and super-strength at will.
How Batman Who Laughs Became a Zombie
Although his brain was in a new body, the body of original Batman Who Laughs also still had a role to play in Dark Nights: Death Metal. When Batman used a Black Lantern ring to resurrect an army of undead heroes and villains for the climactic final battle against the Batman Who Laughs, he tried to turn the original body of the Batman Who Laughs into one of his soldiers.
However, the Batman Who Laughs exerted control over his old body and turned against Batman in a story by James Tynion IV and Alex Maleev in 2019’s Death Metal: The last 52: War of the Multiverses #1. The two Batmen fought as they explained the various ways they tried to outmaneuver each other, while the brain of the Batman Who Laughs was still in the Darkest Knight, fighting his doomed effort against the heroes.