#'my alternate plan was to either get bruce to kill the joker or kill all three of us in an explosion' and talia is like | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

inamindfarfaraway · 3 years

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Canonically, Alfred Pennyworth is willing and ready to use guns and kill people if it’s necessary - he served in the SAS, and feels no obligation to change his preexisting moral code to match Bruce’s. The only other member of the Batfam unafraid to take lives is Jason. He still hasn’t killed the Joker yet despite having every right and motive to and being understandably offended that Bruce won’t, and I agree with the fan opinion that he shouldn’t have to interact any more, let alone in such a traumatic way as committing murder, with the man who took everything from him and gave him a hell of a lot of PTSD. So I propose the obvious solution:

Alfred kills the Joker.

Batman vs the Joker is quite routine for everyone in Gotham, after decades of fights and plots and counterplots. Nonetheless, every time the citizens are on the edge of their seats watching the news broadcast, both because Joker always has to make it a fucking spectacle and because while Batman may not get his joke, he can get to Batman. No other villain has wrought as much emotion out of the Dark Knight. Has pushed him to such depths. Has come as close to permanently defeating him. Gothamites swear that the one thing in this wretched city they can be confident in is their protector, but the Joker alone can make them wonder. All the eyes fixed on the screens are wide with fear, and only children will admit that a fragment of it is for the hero himself.

It doesn’t help that this battle is going badly. Red Hood, Red Robin, Robin and Black Bat have been called in as backup. Nightwing’s in Blüdhaven and Batgirl’s preoccupied. So with the Signal sound asleep from the day shift, this is all available hands on deck. The battle moves into one of those large, dilapidated buildings seemingly made of more shadow than concrete that Gotham is in such great supply of, beyond the news crew’s vision. Barbara can of course see and hear the whole story via the suits’ camera feeds and the comm system, monitoring and strategizing in the Clocktower. In the Batcave, Alfred can too.

He isn’t sure what does it. Maybe the flicker of concern on Bruce’s face when Damian gets a little too close to capture. Maybe Cassandra’s grunt when an attack lands, or Barbara swearing under her breath, pinpointing the exact moment the initial game plan is rendered unviable. Maybe Joker’s latest quip in his typical exceptionally bad taste. Maybe just the laughter. On and on and on and - maybe everything at once. Whatever it is, something changes within him. Nothing cracks or breaks. No tether is snapped or cage is burst open to unleash his inner beast. It’s quite the contrary; he’s strengthened, the loadbearing walls and pillars he’s built himself on are reinforced. It’s like he’s kept a rising ocean of all his family’s blood and sweat and tears in his chest and he’s finally decided to go with the tide. He’s completely lucid, sane, controlled and morally resolute; and he’s had enough.

By the time he arrives on the scene Bruce is injured, clutching his side tightly. His breaths come slower, ragged. Alfred’s remain even. The other four heroes are positioned to cut off the exits; the Joker is covertly drawing an explosive from his pocket to make a new one. Alternatively, it’s Joker toxin. Either way, he needs to act now. Nobody notices the slim figure crouched on the remnants of the floor above them. He aims his rifle.

Bang!

A bullet rips through the air and likewise through the Joker’s back. He seizes up with a strangled gasp, staggers around and stares up at him uncomprehendingly. The Bats follow his gaze. Their eyes are wide and Tim is slack-jawed.

“That was for my son,” says Alfred. His voice is steel.

Batman is the Joker’s greatest enemy, but he raised Batman. Every fight; wound; ruined day; restless night; crushed hope; every loss that Bruce has suffered because of this one excuse for a man, he’s been there. And what stings most is that he knows the man is like him: too responsible. He too keeps a fathomless ocean of his loved ones’ suffering inside him. He’s witnessed Bruce barely tread its surface. He’s stood on the shore of it, helpless to prevent him drowning.

Joker splutters, “What the fuck?”

Alfred doesn’t dignify him with an answer.

“And these are for my grandchildren.”

Bang!

For Dick, twelve years old, unable to sleep with the sociopath’s words ringing in his head, his job no longer a wondrous adventure where the good guys always won. For his bone-white fists as he wept himself breathless at his little brother’s grave.

Bang!

For Barbara, her shriek as metal shattered bone and the future she’d planned and dreamed of in one fell swoop. For her cloudy gaze fixed on her hospital room’s ceiling, hand gripped in her father’s, an unspoken question deafening her to the world: who was she now?

Bang!

For Jason, battered and bleeding, his certainty that Batman will save him turning to hope turning to ash. For the rage in his masked eyes, broken pieces sharpened into blades as he pointed a gun at his father over the idea that his pain (his love) didn’t outweigh any morals.

Bang!

For Tim, choking having given way to that terrible laughter, his hands clawing the antidote away, lost to reality. For his self-reprimands when he slapped himself awake while he poured over data, trying in vain to plot the bane of strategy’s next move.

Bang!

For Cassandra, hunched and haunted in the corner after her first encounter with him. For the slightest tremble in her hands as she raised them to sign, then faltered, struggling to think of a word that could convey such pure, undiluted evil.

Bang!

For Stephanie, pale and still and utterly unlike herself on the operating table, her pulse and breathing so faint that when he’d first seen her he’d feared the worst. For how her constant smile failed to reach her eyes the next day, and he knew she also had.

Bang!

For Damian, who acted cold and fearless, who’d boasted that such a ridiculous villain would give him no trouble, and suddenly found himself to be ten and horrifyingly human. For Bruce’s sullen frown far too old on him, a look of disappointment that he had innocence left to lose.

Bang!

For Duke, begging his parents through his sobs to recognize him, to even acknowledge him - he’d searched so hard, and this was how he found them? For the glistening tracks on his cheeks as he slept in the chair next to their beds, exhausted after hours of no results.

For Alfred’s family, and for Gotham, the Joker falls. He’s dead before he hits the floor. His jacket is more red than purple. Afred notes with satisfaction his dire frown, his most prized possession destroyed forever. He blows the smoke off the tip of his gun, places it gently on the ground and looks to the heroes in greeting.

“Apologies for the interruption. I thought it was time someone did away with him,” he explains calmly, “and I didn’t want it to be any of you.”

The silence lingers a moment more. Well, besides Barbara’s long, deep exhale in the comms. Jason’s helmet clunks to the floor, revealing a face like the dawning sun. Damian moves first, to stand directly in front of Alfred. His mouth twitches into a crescent of approval.

“You are now officially my favourite member of this household,” he declares.

“Much appreciated, Master Damian.”

Before he can even look away from the youngest Wayne, there’s a heavy thump on the floor next to him and his frame is enveloped in a tight hug.

Jason mutters a wet but warm, “Seconded.” When Alfred returns the hug, the young man leans deeply into it, shuddering with sobs, shedding every tear he’s kept bottled up inside since he had to live with being murdered. Good. He’s earned it. They could really all stand to let out their feelings in a non-violent manner more, Jason especially.

Jason pulls away at last, eyes indeed brimming. His arm still on his grandfather’s shoulder, they go back down the stairs. The kids have congregated around the doorway.

Alfred clears his throat. “I brought refreshments in the Batmobile.”

“Your special chocolate cookies?” Cass asks. Her posture, though tired, is buoyed by relief and she wears a cautious smile. She gains no pleasure from death; quite the opposite. But their safety means everything to her.

“Why Miss Cassandra, I’m insulted you feel the need to ask.”

Bruce hasn’t moved. He is a statue, expressionless and limp with blank eyes. Alfred gently squeezes his hand. “It’s okay, Bruce. It’s over,” he says softly.

That melts him out of his numbness, but doesn’t quell the storm that froze him.

“This is Gotham. It’s never over.”

(He’s right. Villains will swarm to fill the power vacuum. The streets will soon be no less dangerous. Perhaps without the Joker’s threat to provide a common enemy and his iron grip on his lion’s share of territory, criminal activity will even get worse in the immediate aftermath. Gotham is still rotten and fragmented. Its people will still be forced to live in fear.

Yet… a monster is dead. One reign of terror has ended. His family’s darkest demon can hurt them no more. And they all deserve a celebration, not to mention a rest.)

“True. But he’s gone and we’re here. So let’s go home.”

Bruce’s brooding face softens. He sighs and nods, and for now that is enough.

The death will be a mystery eternally unsolved, an act of providence. Well, that or Jason could take the credit. Every criminal will certainly be clamouring to. Bruce leads the way with brisk strides; then Jason, practically with a skip in his step; Damian, who takes care to kick the corpse hard on his way past; Cass and Tim hand in hand; and Alfred bringing up the rear, not sparing the body another glance. The kids banter and bicker like normal the whole drive home.

It’s over. By Gotham standards, it’s okay.

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king-crane · 2 years

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Rehabilitation

tw for discussion about torture, imprisonment, ableism, and other darker themes

okay so @brokentoys already posted a discussion on this in this post but i also wanted to add my own two cents and i dont think the reply function is long enough for what im thinkin of saying

so, like, as they pointed out, Ark Asylum is intentionally designed to be outdated, and, beyond that, the Ark games, especially the first one, are all about the corruption of power, and the inherent flaws in the American Prison-Industrial Complex. The only reason Joker’s plan goes off without a hitch is because he got the full cooperation of not only Frank Boles, but Doctor Young. Yes, Joker could have simply been manipulating Doctor Young in the same way he manipulated Harley, but the fact remains that the Asylum even allowing this kind of contact without being monitored or interfered with shows a gross negligence on behalf of pretty much all of the Security team. As well, the only ‘competent’ officer, Aaron Cash, is ALSO shown to be extremely trigger happy and willing to shoot and kill. Cash is under no illusion that the ‘Asylum’ is just another prison. Hell, even the founder of the Asylum, Amadeus Arkham, founded it on an extremely shaky basis, and he was the first true patient of the Asylum himself. Warden Sharp confesses to regularly beating and torturing the inmates, just to feel control over them.

to me, Batman in general is a story about a man who is trying so desperately to bring justice and clean up the city he loves so much to make sure nobody suffers like his family did, while also being unable to either see or fix the flaws in the system itself. and i love these themes, and how they’re explored. Commissioner Gordon is a great man, but nearly every other police officer in the GCPD is on someone’s payroll, abusing suspects, or simply feeding into the corruption. I don’t think there’s ever been a single Mayor of Gotham who has been portrayed in a positive light, and a repeated theme is the absolute disparity between Gotham’s Upper Class and the working class that most if not all of these criminals belong to.

In addition, the existence of both Belle Reve and Blackgate are alternatives for being institutionalized, and HAVE been used before - Waylon Jones and Harley Quinn are frequents in both the Asylum and Belle Reve. Belle Reve’s use as a disgusting recruiting ground for government black ops, and Blackgate’s complete ineffectualness as a prison, where a fire can destroy the entire prison, are both indictments on the system.

I think the easiest way to summarize the problems of the system, is with Lyle Bolten.

Lyle Bolten encompasses everything wrong with Arkham, and also correctly identifies and points out the problems in the system, at the same time. His methods are cruel, inhumane, and almost certainly violations of human rights, but he is completely correct that these ‘methods’ keep everyone in line. Do you know how terrified Crane must be of someone if he would rather risk getting pummeled by Batman out in Gotham, than stay in there with Bolton? How much it must take to scare Harley, AND SCARFACE?

At the same time, during Bolten’s hearing when he finally snaps, he screams his condemnation of the useless bureaucracy, corrupt police, and ineffectual doctors. sure, the representatives of these fields that he’s screaming at are actually the level-headed and reasonable ones - but everyone else in their profession are completely in the wrong. the fact that Bolten was in power for quite a while and the only reason the hearing was even called was because of Batman taking notice of Crane’s fear, and having the power as Bruce Wayne to bring up a committee.

i could talk for years about how horribly i think the rogues in batman are treated by the very same system that condemns them.

but yeah uhhh this got way longer than i expected so um shoutout to brokentoys for getting my brain neurons all fired up

#ooc #on strings ( mun. )#torture tw #imprisonment tw #abuse tw #ableism tw #theories and practice ( meta. )

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olivia-anderson-fanfic · 3 years

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For you fic called Satisfied. I wasn’t even reading it and I couldn’t help but be curious about the alternative ending. I know you said that you didn’t plan on continuing it, but I couldn’t get the thought out of my head because I really want to see the batfam’s reaction to Marinette trying to kill Batman.

You know, I was going to do some cute fluff for Valentine’s Day... and then I got this and I was like neW PLAN

Also, I think I’ve gotten worse at angst since starting antidepressants. Now that it happened it's obvious, but >:(

original

batboys’ feelings

@solangelo252 wanted to be tagged if I ever continued so here’s how the bats would react

She swung her legs absently as she waited for the bats to come home. She’d turned on the fire, and then taken a seat on top of the fireplace. It was a testament to just how long she’d been there that she was pretty sure her legs would catch if nothing happened within the next few minutes.

Not that she would have cared, really.

Her eyes swept over the room for what felt like the millionth time in her boredom.

She decided she didn’t like this living room. Too many couches. Rich people are weird.

And then there was the pictures…

She eyed the picture frames from across the room. She’d turned all them around a few minutes after she’d come in. There was something uncomfortable about looking at them… or maybe her problem was them looking at her? Either way, she didn’t like it.

Besides, she was probably going to be seeing them in person in a few minutes, and they definitely wouldn’t be having those smiles then.

Marinette didn’t quite know who would get home and when. She could have figured it out if she’d wanted, could have studied them for days on end, but why would she?

She knew Cass and Duke were asleep in their apartment, at least. They’d patrolled together all day. They wouldn’t be involved.

But any of the other batboys were fair game to show up at any moment.

Not that Marinette wanted them to. She didn’t know how she felt about most things anymore, really, but she definitely didn’t feel like killing them.

She could. If she absolutely had to. With her powers it would be easy… but she hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

She was pulled out of her musing when she heard chatter coming down the hallway. They were close. Maybe. She couldn’t tell. Her ability to tell volume had been greatly diminished since her ears had been cut off.

She strained her not-ears to try and discern Bruce’s voice from the mix. She didn’t think she heard it…

They were definitely coming this way, though, so she’d know for sure in a few moments.

After all, there was no way that they wouldn’t hear the crackling of the fire. It was why she’d set it up, to bring them there.

The door swung open. Her legs stopped swinging.

Wow. Really? She knew her luck was bad, but really? How had she managed to get four out of the five people in the house to come in and not one of them was her actual target.

For a moment, the five of them stared at each other wordlessly.

She bit the inside of her cheek. Should she just portal out…?

No. They’d already seen her. If she left the bats would be more on guard the next time she saw them. This was probably her only chance.

But that meant --.

“Mari?” Dick’s voice broke through the silence.

Could she play this off as just her coming back? Sure, Harley likely wouldn’t approve of how long that would take her… but then again Harley likely wouldn’t approve of her coming home empty-handed, either.

She brought a hand up to rest over the tiny pin on her lapel. It was broadcasting everything that was happening straight to Harley and Joker…

She wondered, vaguely, what they were thinking.

They were probably laughing.

“Is that really you?” Said Jason.

She considered the question for a moment, then brought a smile to her face. “Maybe.”

Dick took a couple steps forward. A hand reached out and grabbed the back of his shirt, holding him back.

“You’re pale,” observed Tim.

Of course he would notice.

She giggled a little. “Yeah. Lack of sunlight and chemical baths do that.”

“Chemical baths?” Repeated Damian cautiously.

“Don’t worry, I was only thrown in chemicals… once? Well, I was thrown in once and pushed under twice.”

This didn’t seem to console anyone. Shockingly.

She hopped down from her spot on top of the fireplace. The bats tensed a little.

She gave a mock pout. “Don’t trust me?”

“Sorry, kid, you’re just acting… weird,” said Jason.

Weird? She hadn’t thought she was acting any different but, then again, she couldn’t really remember how she used to act.

“None taken,” Marinette said. “But, really, if I wanted you guys hurt, you already would be.”

Damian clicked his tongue. “Is that so?”

Her eyes narrowed.

Dick sighed. “Why would you challenge her? Why did you think that would be --?”

“Well, I might as well prove him wrong, don’t you think? I mean, I could kill you guys with a couple portals if I wanted. A little snip --”

Two portals appeared dangerously close to Damian’s head and then closed again.

“-- or a good hit --”

She opened a portal underneath herself and touched ground behind the bats. She poked Tim in the back and smiled when he turned around, reaching out and stealing the pen attached to his chest pocket.

“-- and then there was this thing I learned how to do a little bit ago!”

She tossed the pen in the air and, with a brief flash of blue light, it was gone.

“... I still don’t know where things go when I do that,” she admitted.

Everyone stared at where the pen had just been, more than a little concerned about their own safety.

“How…?” Said Tim carefully.

She tipped her head to the side as she considered the question. Should she tell him the truth? That Nygma had asked her what would happen to an object if she overlapped the portals? Or should she lie and say that she used it to escape?

… probably the escaping thing. That might make them less wary of her.

“Well, after…” How long had she been in there? She didn’t know. “... after a while, I figured I should take my escape into my own hands.”

The boys flinched a little at that. Odd.

“I figured out that when I press portals close enough together whatever I catch in them just kind of… collapses in on itself? Or, at least, they stop existing. It’s hard to tell.”

They were all silent.

Except for Jason, who shook his head. “Wait, that doesn’t make sense. You would have just escaped if you could have done that. And didn’t you say that you needed to know where you were to make a portal?”

And now they were all way more suspicious. She could see them all properly raising their guards.

Even if they were all dressed in their civvies, she knew them well enough to know they had to be hiding weapons on them. They were paranoid bastards, even in their own home. On the off-chance that they didn’t actually have anything on them, they were still trained in hand-to-hand combat. It wouldn’t be a fun fight.

“Where’s Bruce, by the way? If we’re going to have a reunion, he needs to be here, don’t you think?” She tried.

“You don’t need to know,” said Dick.

“... he’s in the Batcave, isn’t he?”

Jason shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. You don’t know how to get in.”

Damn. True.

“Any chance we could skip the next hour or so and you guys lead me there?”

“I think we all know the answer to that,” said Dick.

She sighed lightly. “Yeah…” She detached her lasso from her waist…

And then portaled behind them and took off running.

Marinette didn’t know where Bruce was, but they definitely did.

She waited until Dick had almost caught her before dropping through a new portal and clinging to the rafters of the next room. She watched him come to a halt, the rubber of his shoes screeching against the hardwood floors, and then look around.

The other bats weren’t far behind, coming to a stop beside him.

She watched their hands carefully to make sure they weren’t about to use their comms, straining her not-ears to hear what they were saying:

Damian checked the shadows of the room before clicking his tongue. “Does she know where to go? Should we report to father?”

“She’s on comms,” said Jason.

“Doubt it. If she still had access to comms she would have said something over the past five months,” Dick pointed out.

Damian raised a hand and she readied her lasso --.

Tim stopped him. “Don’t. It’ll put him on guard, but he’ll probably…” His blue eyes scanned the room as well. “... he’ll…” She tried not to move as his eyes passed over her. “... it might give up his location. She doesn’t know where Bruce is yet and she’s probably waiting for us to lead her to him trying to help.”

Alright. Fuck it. She may have had a crush on Tim back when things were good but he had to go.

“So what do we do?” Said Jason.

“Split up. We’ll text each other who is going to be the one to see him. She can’t follow all of us.”

Yep. Definitely had to go.

The four of them split off.

Tim and Jason had gone back the way they’d come, Dick and Damian had headed off in the opposite direction.

She waited for a while after Tim and Jason had split up, enough to make sure Jason wouldn’t hear and come to his aid, and then dropped from the rafters silently.

His steps came to a stop and he gave a tiny sigh.

“I know you’re there.”

“How’d you know?”

“Because, Bean, I know you.”

Her heart skipped a beat at the old nickname.

He pulled his hands from his pockets and she saw the outline of his collapsible bo staff extending even in the dim light of the hallway. He spun on his heel to look at her.

“Any chance we can talk this out?”

She took a short glance around. They were in a hallway, so he couldn’t wield his bo staff quite the way he liked.

Then again, he wasn’t really trying to beat her. If he’d known she was going to follow him, then he was just using himself to buy more time. That was probably why he hadn’t outright attacked her yet, too, the longer he could drag this out the better.

Should she leave…?

No. He was too big of a problem for her to leave.

“I… I just want you to know that none of this is personal.”

“I know,” he said gently.

She raised her fists to fight and advanced on him slowly. “Oh, and if you do somehow knock me out, be a dear and don’t take off my glasses? I’m pretty sure I’d die. Apparently, it’s been five months and I wasn’t fed much.”

He winced ever so slightly.

And then he changed his stance. Business mode, then.

“Noted.”

She dodged his first swing with ease, he always started with a right swing.

Her eyes narrowed slightly as he attempted to jab her with the staff. He nearly stumbled in her haste to get out of range. They both knew that it would be over if she got in close, she’d be able to get a hit in and he wouldn’t be able to get any force behind his attacks.

She took a chance to look back to see how far they were from the nearest room. A good bit, he’d have to force her back quite a lot to get into an open space…

She turned around just in time to get hit in the jaw. She groaned and fell back, then did a quick backroll to get back to her feet.

“You’re out of practice,” he said.

She swallowed back blood. “And you’re a bitch, but you don’t hear me saying anything about it.”

They looked at each other in silence for a few beats…

Their fight styles were both calculated, albeit in different ways; his attacks were always meant to do enough damage to bring someone down quickly, hers were meant to use other’s habits against them. Tim had the disadvantage, what with her miraculous making his attacks less effective and her knowledge of him beforehand, and they both knew it.

She ghosted her hand over the lasso on her waist, wishing for her yoyo. A weapon she was used to would have made this go by far faster...

But it wasn’t the time to be sad over her loss of Tikki, she had other things to do. People to beat.

He ran forward suddenly, bo staff swinging, and she narrowly dodged the right swing. However, that was apparently not his goal, because swiftly used the staff to vault over her and rush towards the room for better mobility.

She grit her teeth and opened a portal on either end of the hall and he narrowly avoided running through it.

His eyes met hers and she sent him a smile.

“Worth a shot,” he said.

“Was it?” She teased, slowly advancing on him.

“I think so,” he said smugly, his eyes focused on a place over her shoulder.

On instinct, she turned to look. Then, when she found nothing, she mumbled a curse.

The end of the bo staff slammed into the side of her head and she stumbled back to try and avoid the worst of the pain. Stars danced in her eyes from two consecutive blows to the head, but she couldn’t concentrate on that. She shook her head a bit and brought her hands up to fight again.

“That should have taken you out. I hate your miraculous right now,” he decided.

“Trust me, you’re not the only one.”

He frowned. “Isn’t it the only thing keeping you alive?”

“See? You get it.”

His frown, somehow deepened. For a moment, he dropped his guard a little.

“What happened to you?”

“I’m sure you have a guess.”

She lunged forward and for once he was the one taken off guard. He quickly dodged the blow to his face and brought his staff towards her shin. He was trying to sweep her legs out from under her, but she had been ready for that.

She hooked her leg around the staff and brought it up. His body jerked forward, pulled by the staff. She drove her elbow into his back and Tim fell to the floor.

She moved the bo staff to her hand and pressed it to the back of his neck before he could get up.

“Any chance you’ll tell me where your father is?”

“Jason would be sad to hear you call him my father.”

“I... don’t care about him right now. Tell me where Bruce is.”

“Nope.”

She felt a little annoyed despite knowing that was going to be the answer. She hit him as hard as she could in the back of the head and winced when he went slack. She dug in his pockets for his phone and turned it on.

Thank kwami you could see notifications even when the phone was locked.

Redhoodiewastaken: should be there soon

She bit the inside of her cheek and pushed herself back to her feet. Her eyes flicked over Tim’s still unmoving body.

It couldn’t be that easy…

Right?

She didn’t know.

She nudged him onto his back with her foot and delivered a blow to his knee to slow him if he woke up too soon (she had a rope, but she wasn’t fond of tying him up with her miraculous weapon, and killing him was off the table if she could help it).

She rolled him onto his side gently and tipped his head back to make sure he could breathe.

She started back the way she came. She needed to decide who she was going to follow next.

Marinette needed to logic this out. Dick would be the best option to go look for their father, he was the most experienced and could hold his own… but Damian would likely want to go for his father because of his weird ‘blood son’ thing… but Jason had sent the text… but Dick was the best fighter… but Damian had a complex… but --...

… aaaaand now she was going in circles. Literally and figuratively.

She stopped her pacing.

It didn’t really matter, did it? She didn’t quite know where any of the people were. She knew the general directions they had gone off in, but that wasn’t enough. The mansion was huge… because it was, y’know, a mansion.

Whatever. She’d open portals in random rooms throughout the house and see if she could find a batboy that way.

After a few more attempts than she’d like to admit, she’d managed to catch sight of someone right as they left a room. She silently dropped into the room and then followed after them, Tim’s stolen bo staff in hand. Maybe it would give whoever it is pause if they saw her.

Damian. She was tailing Damian, she realized as she noted the glint of his shuriken.

Great. The one who was most likely to outright kill her. She loved her luck.

He had opted not to turn on lights because he was currently sneaking and he’d been trained by the League to use the shadows to hide. This was good, she could also use it to hide.

This was unfortunate, too. It meant that she only caught brief flashes of him to follow.

A shuriken sailed past her head when she was halfway through the hallway and she froze up instinctively.

Damian stepped out of the shadows.

“What gave me away?”

He considered her for a second before shaking his head. “Nothing, I just happened to look back at a good time.”

She nodded her understanding and then raised the staff. “Just tell me where your dad is. I don’t want to fight you.”

“That’s your mistake,” he said.

She dodged his next shuriken and collapsed the bo staff for the confined space. If nothing else, she could use the metal to pack more of a punch.

They sized each other up. They both knew that the first hit was usually a disadvantage unless you could get a knock-out first try. Neither of them were eager to put themselves at a disadvantage when so much was on the line.

She’d let him attack first. He’d get impatient at some point, and she needed to think of a strategy.

She couldn’t take him down. Physically, yes, he was probably -- no, definitely -- better than her at fighting, he had years of training on her... but she also needed him to be taken out of the equation. The less people she had pretending to search for Bruce, the better. He likely wouldn’t go if he thought she was tailing him…

A portal opened at her feet. She sent him a wink and a wave before hopping through.

She’d meant it when she’d thought he was a paranoid bastard. Now that she knew where he was and had proven that she could tail him without him noticing (unless he was lucky, which hardly ever happened twice), he would constantly think she was after him.

Tim’s phone buzzed and she looked down.

Therealdamianwayne: Drake is down. She’s armed with his weapon. Assume she has his phone. Everyone else confirm.

Idontwantpicturesthatsjustmyname: haven't seen her

Redhoodiewastaken: me neither.

That was the entire chat.

Nothing about Bruce and who was looking for him. Fair enough, they were assuming she had the phone, but still disappointing.

She started checking rooms again, head resting on her hand as she looked for a flicker of movement and strained to hear anything.

She managed to catch sight of Jason inside his father’s study. He’d changed into his Red Hood gear. She wasn’t sure if she should interpret this as him going to protect Bruce and wanting to be as geared up as possible or him attempting to be as good a distraction as he possibly could be.

Either way...

She dropped down behind him, letting her feet hit the ground louder than usual.

Jason whipped around at the sound and she couldn’t see his face behind his helmet but she didn’t think she wanted to.

Her eyes scanned over him briefly. He was wearing thick padding and armor, she knew…

Wait, was his outfit different? She looked at the red bat on his chest, which was brighter than she remembered it.

He clenched his fists. “You don’t want to do this, Mari, you hardly ever beat me when we spar together.”

“I have more to lose than a bit of honor, now,” she said. She extended Tim’s staff.

“Same here.”

She scowled and twirled the staff in her fingers. She eyed Jason carefully. He wasn’t wrong about her track record. He was all about pins rather than actual hits (or, at least, he was when she was involved), and that was hard to use against him. There were too many variations, too many ways to improvise.

And he had a weight advantage.

And he had very few vulnerable parts at the moment with his outfit. None, possibly, but… she had an idea.

She swung the staff at him and a small groan of frustration left her lips when he let it hit him dead on without budging.

Okay. Fine.

She jabbed the bo staff at his helmet and watched him actually step back to avoid it.

Her eyes narrowed.

She opened a portal above him and dropped down, her bo staff aimed for his head, and she scowled when he ducked to the side.

No matter, she thought as she latched onto one of his shoulders on the way down. The sudden addition of weight, light as it may have been, pulled him off balance. He went crashing into the desk.

Hands struggled for purchase as he drowned in her dress. She grabbed his helmet and started attempting to remove it, bo staff discarded for the sake of getting even one viable place to hit him.

Straddling one of his shoulders, she felt it.

A jolt of electricity ran up her leg and her body seized up in a mix of shock and pain. This was definitely not a good reaction, because she was still touching the stupid taser that he’d had installed in his outfit kwamI DAMNIT THIS HURTS --.

She managed to tear herself off of him, every muscle aching in a way that was way closer to the way the chemicals had burned her for her liking.

And then the pain was gone. Or, at least, the thing administering it was. Her body still tingled with electricity. Every little involuntary spasm only seemed to make it worse.

Jason leaned over her, the bat on his chest back to the shade of red she was used to.

The fucker CHEATED.

He pulled off his helmet and looked down at her mostly unmoving body, his lips drawn in a frown.

She glared up at him as much as her face would allow through the pain. It would be so easy to kill him. A little portal was all it would take.

He reached out and closed her eyes for her.

She forced her eyes open and cringed at what she saw.

The walls and ceiling were white and featureless. She had no clue where she was.

She remembered, vaguely, that Jason had once told her Bruce had contingencies for everyone, including his kids. She’d laughed at the time. Now…

She shifted out of the bed they’d put her in, ignoring the dull ache of her muscles, and explored the room. There was a door on one wall, she wasn’t surprised when she found it to be locked. Beyond that… nothing.

Except for a speaker. Her breath caught as she looked at it and she tried to fight back the sudden wave of panic.

What if this wasn’t Bruce?

This could just as easily be her punishment from Harley and Joker for failing. They’d put her in a white room before, this could just be the upgraded one since she’d actively disappointed them.

Would they have given her a bed if they were mad at her? She was pretty sure they wouldn’t, but then again it could just be one of their experiments.

She shuddered a little bit at the memory and suddenly found herself wishing for a jacket.

What would help her figure out if this was Joker or Bruce?

Her eyes scanned the room for any glass and found there wasn’t any observation windows. Point towards the bats.

She looked at her lapel and she whimpered a little when she found that the bug Joker had put on her was gone. It had been mostly hidden by the natural ruffles of her outfit. It wasn’t impossible that the bats had noticed it, but it was definitely unlikely. Point towards Joker.

… what else was there?

She didn’t need to wonder for long, because the speaker crackled to life:

“Marinette, we’re going to come in to talk to you about some stuff we found out while you were out, if you can promise not to attack us.”

She bit the inside of her cheek as she considered it.

“Fine. As long as it’s not Jason, I won’t attack.”

She could practically hear Jason’s whines. And maybe she could. Who knows, the others might be just outside the door.

Probably not, because it took an entire minute before the door opened to reveal Tim.

Well, they appeared to be Tim, at least. She wasn’t going to discard the idea that this was some new fear toxin-induced nightmare just yet.

He stepped through and it closed behind him.

She took a seat on the bed and he came to a stop a few feet from her. They didn’t trust her.

Fair. Tim’s head and knee were still wrapped in bandages from when she’d attacked them.

She allowed herself to wonder, momentarily, why he had come in alone when he was injured. She brushed this off, though. She’d already proven her goal wasn’t really hurting him or the other batkids, and the way he had come in had made it clear he didn’t actually have a key or anything on him.

She rested her head on her hand, scrutinizing his expression. He was trying to maintain a neutral facade, but she recognized the slight downturn of his lips.

“So? You had some findings?” She prompted when he didn’t say anything.

“Right.” He looked down at the clipboard in his hands. “I checked your vitals, and…” He cleared his throat. “You were right. Your miraculous is the only thing keeping you going, your cells haven’t had anything to go on for a long time. You’re… pretty much dead.”

She decided that this had to be real, not fear toxin. Or, at least, if this was fear toxin it was the worst batch Scarecrow had whipped up in a long while.

“... yeah? What’s your point?” She said, waving for him to get on with it.

This only seemed to distress the man in front of her.

“Bean, I don’t think you heard me, you’re dead. Like… not going to come back dead.”

She giggled. “I’m dead inside. Literally.” She held up a hand for a high-five.

He high-fived her on instinct then gave his hand a betrayed expression.

She smiled and put her hands in her lap, running her thumb along where her hand had touched his.

“Please take this seriously,” he pleaded.

“It’s not news to me, I’m the one who brought it up to you. I had, I think, seven granola bars, a cookie, and a few glasses of water for five months. Not exactly three square meals and eight glasses of water a day.”

He gripped his clipboard so tightly his knuckles had turned white. “Your ears were also cut off.”

“No? Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

“Please just… react normally!” Said Tim, his voice a mix of exasperated and saddened.

She didn’t bother looking at him. “If you haven’t noticed already, I don’t care.”

“You should! You’re dead!”

“What’s the point? I’ll die when I take off these glasses, whenever I’m ready to do that, and that doesn’t change whether or not I want to overreact about it.”

“WE AREN’T OVERREACTING! YOU’RE UNDERREACTING!”

She flinched and reached up to wipe the tears trying to form behind her eyes.

The reaction was instantaneous. Tim dropped his clipboard and, despite her having recently attacked him, dove towards her. Hands locked around her wrists and forced them back into her lap.

She blinked a few times, her brain struggling to figure out why he’d done that. She stared at the hands that had moved down to gently rest over her own, at the thumbs rubbing circles into her skin. She hadn’t done anything good. Why was he…?

She saw the way he looked to be on the verge of tears as well and it clicked.

Ah. He’d thought she was going to kill herself.

Marinette swallowed thickly and looked back down at their hands, trying to ignore the wave of happiness that had decided to rush through her at the tiny action. It wasn’t because she was good, she told herself, it was because he’d thought she was going to die.

She’d be useless if she was dead.

Not that she was very useful right now. She hadn’t succeeded at the one thing she’d been asked to do.

Now she was definitely crying.

So was he, actually.

Wild. She didn’t think she’d ever seen him cry before.

She hesitated, unsure what she was allowed to do, and then slowly leaned her head on his shoulder.

He rested his head against hers.

“We were so… we thought you…” He trailed off, unable to finish any of the thoughts aloud.

She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry for worrying you.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

She didn’t answer.

Time passed them by as they sat there, leaning into each other, their fingers intertwined.

But...

Should she ruin the moment? She had something she had to tell him. She was pretty sure he already knew, but if he didn’t...

She bit the inside of her cheek.

“Tim,” she whispered.

He nodded slightly to say he was listening.

“They have the ladybug miraculous.”

“We know,” he said quietly. To her surprise, he didn’t pull away. “That’s not what I’m worried about right now, though.”

“It should be.”

He shook his head slightly.

“What happened to you?” He repeated his question from when they’d fought.

Her eyes fell on their hands and she tried her hardest to ignore the tears sliding down her face. “Nothing much. Harley and Joker said they wanted to break me like they tried to do with you.”

He stiffened under her but didn’t say anything.

“But after one trip to the chemical vats Harley changed what they were doing. Put me in a white room like this one. Sometimes they’d dose me with fear toxin, most of the time I would just sit around waiting for Harley to come to try and talk me into killing Bruce. I think that was daily, I don’t really know.”

He drew back a little bit to look at her and she tried not to whine at the sudden cold that came over her.

“That’s… are you okay?”

“I think so. Like I said, it wasn’t much.”

He looked more than a little skeptical. “Okay, so why did they let you go?”

“Wanted me to kill Bruce.”

“But they trusted you to do it without running away, and you did.”

She shrugged. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

How do you say ‘I crave the validation of a supervillain’ without saying it? Because even saying it in her head makes it sound pretty bad.

And it wasn’t bad, just… abnormal?

Yeah. That was it. Abnormal.

Shit. He was looking at her for an answer and now that she was trying to think of literally any other sentence to say her mind was just blaring the same words over and over again.

“Uh… didn’t cross my mind?” She said lamely.

He stared at her for a few moments. “You want me to believe that you left the place they had been keeping you in, traveled all the way here, waited however long for us to come home, and fought us… and you didn’t think about leaving once?”

“... yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying happened.”

“I’m not buying it.”

“I’d be concerned about how stupid you thought I was if you did.”

He cracked a tentative half-smile before pulling her into him. “I don’t know what happened, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m just… I’m glad you’re safe.”

“Won’t be safe for long. Do you know who’s using the miraculous?”

“Catwoman. She was a little upset she couldn’t keep up the ‘cat’ thing, but I think she doesn’t mind much anymore because of the whole ‘can summon anything at any time and fix every mistake she makes’ thing.”

“Makes sense.”

She breathed a sigh of relief.

She pressed against his chest to pull away from him. “Right. Can I have a marker or pen or something?”

He looked a little confused before he dug into his pockets and found a pen for her. He handed it over. “Sure. Why?”

She twirled the pen in her fingers as she considered the question.

“I need to make a plan to get it back. Obviously. Now get out, I need to think.”

She attempted to shoo him, only to have him catch her wrists again.

“You need to rest.”

“I’ll be fine. Can’t work myself to death if I’m already dead, right?”

He looked reluctant to leave her after that, but she was already pushing him to the door. She watched him step through, trying to catch sight of the space beyond where they’d trapped her, but he was careful to leave in a way that blocked her view.

They still didn’t trust her.

Fair enough. She clutched the pen tighter in her hands.

She fell back on the bed. Even if there wasn’t an observation window here, there was sure to be at least a few hidden cameras to make sure she didn’t do anything to contact Harley and Joker.

And she probably would have if she could. They’d taken the bug on her and the cheap pager she’d been given in case something like this had happened, though.

Her brain wandered to Tim’s question from earlier. Why was she so determined to help Harley?

She’d thought it was just affection. But that couldn’t be it. Tim had given her some affection while he was there and, while it was nice to have someone touch her in a way that wasn’t violent, it didn’t have nearly the same effect as Harley’s hugs and praise did.

Marinette scooted up until her head rested on a pillow and closed her eyes.

Whatever. She could plan. She was good at those.

The options were to a) behave until she was allowed out or b) wait to be visited by Bruce and then put the pen Tim had given her to good use.

She didn’t like either of those options, but they were the only ones that would have a chance of working if she wanted to kill Bruce.

She let herself drift off. She had a lot of waiting to do.

#alternate ending #satisfied #submitted prompt #marinette dupain cheng #ladybug #red robin #tim drake #harley quinn #harley quinzel #joker

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monkeebratz · 4 years

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@vixen-uchiha @mochinek0 @kuroko26 @mewwitch @iglowinggemma28

@zazzlejazzle tbh I would love to see your similar au! Don’t be discouraged that I jotted down my stuff first in a fit of work induced rage. I would love to see your version of it, so go for it! (Also thank you so much for your kind words I’m just kinda happy crying over them. You’re so sweet!)

@mylife-demonstrates-murphys-law As long as you link back to the idea/give credit, I have no problem with you doing something with this au! Honestly I would be super duper excited to see somebody else turn their hand to this story, especially because I don’t really have any plans to continue it seriously lol. If you DO end up doing something with it, please tag/link me too it, I would love to see what you do with it!

... And y’know in the interest of actually finishing this bc there WAS a whole part of the au i was too tired to keep writing (what happens with Lila/Marinette’s Parents/etc) I figured I’d write it out now, especially since there seems to be so much interest in this!

Because the idea was that both Batman AND Damien (as his civilian self) sue Lila into the ground. She’s also charged with being an accessory to kidnapping and what have you since she knew Marinette was missing and kept lying and saying otherwise. Lila gets send to jail and tried as an adult bc seriously. She was responsible for the kidnapping and torture of another classmate, and no matter how young you are that’s just. So fucked up. Consequences for Lila please and thank you.

As for Marinette’s parents, they absolutely know what’s going on. They’re contacted by the Gotham Police, as well as the French Embassy, there’s lots of apologies from both but neither of them give one single shit. They shut down the bakery and go to Gotham to see Marinette in Arkham and they’re just... devastated. They knew things in school weren’t great, but their daughter didn’t want to transfer and maybe if they had pushed the issue this wouldn’t have happened. Their poor little girl...

Marinette, is, honestly, a little terrified to see them. Because this was never supposed to happen. Not to her. And she knows they’ll blame herself but its nobody’s fault but hers. (Its nobody’s fault but LILA’S but its gonna take some serious therapy and reminders for that to stick.) Mari is happy to see them when they do first show up but insists that they should go back to Paris and take care of the Bakery. She doesn’t want them to see her like this. Bruce Wayne, of course, offers to cover the cost of any trips, extended or short, for the Dupain-Cheng family so they can see their daughter as they wish... .Honestly they probably just end up staying at Wayne Manor with everybody else until Mari comes to stay with everybody when Arkham deems her ‘not a threat to herself or anybody else.’

And as far as the class goes, they also get charged with some things. Nothing as serious as Lila, and they certainly don’t do any jail time, but still. They were partially responsible for what happened to Marinette. For Alya it still takes some time that Marinette wasn’t akumatized so there’s no quick fix to what happened. And that she, believing Lila over Marinette, helped ensure this happened to her best friend. She’s just so angry, at herself, at Lila, at the world. This isn’t fair!

But life has never been fair.

Honestly the whole class is pretty shaken up about it. It can be up to you guys where they go with it.

Now, honestly, I didn’t think at ALL what the city of Paris would think of this! And there’s no way they don’t find out what happens. I mean, Marinette babysits for Nadja fucking Chamac, who seems to be one of the only news reporter in Paris, or at least the most popular. Once she hears what happens, vaguely, from Sabine and Tom, after she calls them to see if Marinette can babysit Manon, she goes full deep dive into the story. And, after checking in with the Dupain-Cheng’s, airs the story to all of Paris. Everyone hears how Miss Busteir’s class had a hand in one of their own being kidnapped by Gothams (former) Clown Prince of Crime. They hear about how Chat Noir killed him after coming onto the scene. (Nobody thinks too hard about why he was there.) There’s mixed feelings about how and why a teenager had to do this but the overwhelming agreement is that the bastard had it coming. The video of Marionette!Mari is taken down but the internet is forever. Despite any names not given, the people of Paris still figure out what happened. Mari gets a lot of encouraging fanmail and gifts sent to Arkham that get filtered by her parents. She gets to look at letters and such while she’s still at the asylum but gifts wait until she’s at Wayne Manor.

(Also insert Jagged Stone and Clara Nightingale doing all SORTS of fundraising and outreach so something like this doesn’t happen again. Any and all proceeds from their concerts or merch for the next few months goes to pay for Mari’s treatment and supporting the Dupain-Cheng’s afloat while they help Mari heal form what happen. They also slap some lawsuits to Lila bc she LIED ABOUT THEM AND ALSO GOT MARINETTE IN THIS SITUATION. FUCK THIS GIRL.)

... Also, the huge news coverage is also probably how Fu finds out what happens and he’s just. horrified. Immediately drops everything to come to Gotham and help. Has his own meltdown. Its like, vaguely known that Mari knows Fu, but they didn’t realize they were so close. But lets be real they don’t care, since Mari is so happy to see him.

And as far as Marinette breaking through the Jokers... whatever you’d like to call it. Its a combination of being with Joker for a week less than Tim was, as well as just. She knows Chat Noir. They’re partners. Two halves of a whole, if you think of their Miraculi. He’s always been there to help her even if he got caught by the villain. Though this time, their usual roles are reversed. And she just knows that Chat is going to save her. There’s a lot of Chat trying to get Mari (ngl he calls her Princess and Mari alternatively for the entire conversation) to remember that this isn’t who she is! She’s their everyday Ldaybug! Please, Princess! Mari, please...

(Also just. Watch this scene of Robin killing the Joker. Christ. This is, in essence, what happens with Marinette and Adrien, though Adrien’s the one to kill Joker once Mari tires herself out with her breakdown.)

Now, I’m going to be honest, I don’t plan on continuing this au! This was mostly a one/two shot getting out some frustrations after a rough day and having an idea in a fit of wanting to strangle my co-workers. Now, if any of you would like to continue this au, please do so! Or, if its inspired you, go for it! Tag me either way, I’d love to see what you guys do with it.

#i want it known my kittens did not like me writing this and were constantly tumbling all over my keyboard and hands/arms while trying to #write this up. they eventually put themselves between me and my laptop and decided that was good enough (i usually write laying down lol)#maribat #miraculous ladybug #batman #marionette maribat au

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ty-talks-comics · 4 years

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Best of DC: Week of February 19th, 2020

Best of this Week: DCeased: Unkillables #1 - Tom Taylor, Karl Mostert, Trevor Scott, Neil Edwards, John Livesay, Rex Lokus and Saida Temofonte

Ahhh shit, here we go again. DCeased was awesome.

In much the same way that the original Marvel Zombies filled my heart with dread, DCeased absolutely blew my mind with the short six issues that it took place in. It was equal parts violent and heartbreaking as the heroes of Earth had to figure out a way to either stop the Anti-Life virus or die trying. We had a good spin off with the single issue, A Good Day to Die and now we have Unkillables, another spin off focusing on some of the more violent heroes and villains while the events of the main series unfold elsewhere.

The book begins on the first day of the Anti-Life virus being released as Deathstroke finds himself on a job in Kentucky. Throughout the original story, I did kinda wonder what people like him or the other assassins were up to, given that we saw a select number of other dead supervillains throughout like Giganta and Clayface. As Tom Taylor and Karl Mostert unfold the story we see that Slade Wilson was killing some infected Neo-Nazis before an attempt to renegotiate his price ends with him infected too.

Mostert and Taylor set this opening up in a very comedic way with the white supremacits running from something in the local church as Deathstroke looks on, puzzled as to why they’re running before taking a few out before heading inside. Mostert, Rex Lokus and I think Trevor Scott then give us an awesome single page of Slade facing down a horde of zombies with only his gun and a bloody sword. He looks like a badass and, in the following panels, proves it by killing them with ease.

Mostert doesn’t shy away from Slade’s brutal violence and shows how fluidly he can kill with dynamic poses as he shoots and slices multiple enemies at once. This accentuated by the excellently colored spurts of blood from the zombies and the gory detail of blood on the walls. There’s even a really good panel of one of the zombies being cut in half with Scott inking the silhouette as their blood and insides drip down. Even better is when Slade gets infected and violently rips his mask off before coming back to his senses while choking a guy.

Tom Taylor introduces a unique aspect here as Deathstroke returns to normal on the second day of the virus being introduced. As we learn later, it’s due to Slade’s unique super soldier DNA that allows him to fight off the infection, effectively being immune to a point. I can definitely see this being a double edged sword for him as the infection seems to last for a day before being purged from his system. This makes him unique amongst both the heroes and villains of Earth as maybe a potential savior.

I’d also like to praise Saida Temofonte for her amazing lettering as well. She does an amazing job, not only with word balloons, but with captions that have a bloody background and the typefaces she uses for sound effects. For the most part, they fit the gruesomeness of the story with intense and bloody BANGs to eerie RRRRRRs, signaling the incoming zombies. Deathstroke’s scream as he claws his own face is intense, scratchy and blood curling until we get an AMAZING title page with names filling the empty space.

As things progress, we cut to Jason Todd in the Batcave. The silence is eerie as we get one small “spsh” sound as Jason steps through the blood trail of Bruce, Tim and Dick. Unfortunately, this seems to take place shortly after the events of DCeased #2 when an infected Dick and Tim attack and infect Batman, leaving Alfred to kill them all. Jason, like most readers, is shocked because he thought Bruce would have found a way to survive and then he’s met by Ace the Bathound. After letting Ace see that he’s not infected, Jason proceeds to make graves for his brothers and father before speeding off in the Batmobile to find the rest of his family with Ace.

These scenes are powerful as Jason, normally the black sheep of the family, has to deal with the fact that he’s one of few left. Why wasn’t Bruce prepared? Why was he the one left and not Dick or Tim? Damian’s still alive in Metropolis, but effectively, Jason is all alone. Mostert and I believe Neil Edwards show Jason’s love for his family as he carves out wooden headstones and buries them in the cave. Without a word of dialogue, this speaks volumes about Jason’s love for his family.

Elsewhere in Gotham, Ravager, Rose Wilson with a missing eye, unlike her main continuity counterpart, is curled up in her apartment in fear. The zombies are pounding on her door when Slade radios in and tells her it’s time to escape. Rose has the ability to see into the future in short bursts and sees that everytime she goes for the door, Zombies come through and kill her. Deathstroke, however, has a plan. As a side note, it’s great to see Rose in gear similar to what she wore in Geoff Johns’ “Teen Titans” while also complementing Deathstroke’s current armor.

Unfortunately for Deathstroke, as he keeps his eyes to the sky, he sees the terror that is an infected Man-Bat flying at him with a terrifying SCReeeee as he crashes through the window and smashes the plane on the roof Rose runs to her dad and, believing him to be infected, plunges her sword through his chest and he screams “Ow.” This scene is pure comedy made even better by the dramatic rain and fire in the background. Soon after, Mirror Master, Evan McCulloch, shows up offering them help.

I don’t know what the reason is for using the Scottish version of the character, but it doesn’t really matter as the representation of the Mirror Dimension is still cool as hell. While wearing special glasses that block signals, they walk through the dimension and Mostert draws an epic depiction of it with all of the violence, gore and death through the many mirrors while the characters look miniscule compared to the vastness of it all. The Mirror Dimension has always been terrifying and McCulloch could do a lot to solve the problem, but it makes sense that he doesn’t. Cause it’s terrifying.

After many pages, we arrive at the rest of the stars (fodder) of the series in Vandal Savage, Solomon Grundy, The Creeper, Cheetah, Lady Shiva, Bane, Deadshot and Captain Cold. I do have a bit of a continuity issue as Cold was shown to have been one of the Infected during the events of “A Good Place to Die,” but alternatively this series could explain how he got there or, much like that story, it’s off base with what’s happening in the main pages. But some of these additions are pretty interesting to say the very least.

Savage is near immortal, but has been shown to have been killed before. There’s a high chance that using Deathstroke, he’ll find a way to cure and rule over the people of the Earth after the heroes leave. Grundy is already dead, so can he get infected? The Creeper is much like Deathstroke in that he can heal from anything, so it makes sense that he’s managed to survive. Cheetah is strong and fast, but I don’t rate her chances high and the rest, while immensely skilled, are still just human. This is a ragtag group, but they’re not averse to getting the job done by any means.

The rest of the issue focuses on Jason Todd and his fight to rescue the remaining members of the Batfamily. Mostert, Lokus and John Livesay give readers an awesome assault on the Gotham PD with Cassandra Cain as Black Bat, James Gordon and Harvey Bullock fighting back against the zombies. Cass awesomely kicks and knees zombies in the background while Harvey and Jim shoot them. I LOVED Cass as Batgirl/Black Bat and it was awesome to see the return of the iconic costume and a character that I like so much.

Of course, Temofonte thrills with the lettering here again. She sells the panic in both Jim and Bullock as they fight off the horde as well as the frankness of Bullock as he has to break it to Jim that Blck Bat is the only one coming. The static-y bubbles that she uses on Bullock when he gets infected is also amazing and saddening, but gets even worse when Cass has to “CRCK” his neck to kill him. Soon after, Jason plows through the GCPD in the Batmobile with a “CRNNNCH” that shrinks around the vehicle.

Jason rescues Cass and Jim after shooting the remaining zombies in the head and plans to get the hell out of dodge. Jim, still holding out on the idea of hope, tells Jason that Barbara is still out there somewhere, but Jason, knowing that it’s no longer the time to keep secrets, reveals his and Cass’ identities and shows Jim that Barb is dead. He then takes the haggard detective to her last known location and Mostert and Lokus sell the utter despair of the scene.

Infected versions of Barb, Stephanie Brown, Batwoman and Catwoman were killed by Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn in Issue #3 of DCeased (if I remember right). This scene of James finding his daughter is depressingly grey and his facial expressions show us just how painful this is for him. He’s lost just about everything and cries in his grief. Jason, however, finds the dead body of the Joker and ties him to the front of the Batmobile before they all make their escape to Bludhaven.

This first issue of a three part miniseries already has me as excited as the original story did. I love each of the characters being used, the callbacks to past history and the way that everyone is being written. Each of these violent characters sees that there’s no need to hold back anymore as the regular rules are tossed out of the window. Everyone now has different amounts of pain and grief to deal with while others have different hopes of power or a cure. Ultimately, I don’t think things will end ultra well given the events of the main series, but I have no doubts that this will stand on its own.

Tom Taylor continues to be excellent when writing the despair and tragedies of DCeased and lifting up lesser characters, like The Creeper. His scripting and dialogue are a joy to read and I really feel like he’s got a grasp on everyone. Karl Mostert brings their all to this book with awesome panels and scenes that make readers want to wince, but look again to see the utter brutality of what they’re witnessing. His art is stellar. The various inkers definitely bring it to life alongside Lokus’ vibrant colors and Temofonte’s amazing letters.

I’m already gleefully anticipating the next issue and it more than justifies the $5.99 price, high recommend!

Also, y'know, support me on Patreon: patreon.com/TyTalksComics

#dceased #dceased unkillables #jason todd #cassandra cain #james gordon #deathstroke #rose wilson #tom taylor #karl mostert #rex lokus #saida temofonte #dc comics #comic books #comics #zombies

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jcmorgenstern · 5 years

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@superohclair oh god okay please know these are all just incoherent ramblings so like, idk, please feel free to add on or ignore me if im just wildly off base but this is a bad summary of what ive been thinking about and also my first titans/batman meta?? (also, hi!)

okay so for the disclaimer round: I am not an actual cultural studies major, nor do I have an extensive background in looking at the police/military industrial complex in media. also my comics knowledge is pretty shaky and im a big noob(I recently got into titans, and before that was pretty ignorant of the dceu besides batman) so I’ll kind of focus in on the show and stuff im more familiar with and apologize in advance?. basically im just a semi-educated idiot with Opinions, anyone with more knowledge/expertise please jump in! this is literally just the bullshit I spat out incoherently off the top of my head. did i mention im a comics noob? because im a comics noob.

so on a general level, I think we can all agree that batman as a cultural force is somewhat on the conservative side, if not simply due to its age and commercial positioning in American culture. there are a lot of challenges and nuances to that and it’s definitely expanding and changing as DC tries to position itself in the way that will...make the most money, but all you have to do is take a gander through the different iterations of the stories in the comics and it’ll smack you in the fucking face. like compare the first iteration of Jason keeping kids out of drugs to the titans version and you’ve got to at least chuckle. at the end of the day, this is a story about a (white male) billionaire who fights crime.

to be fair, I’d argue the romanticization of the police isn’t as aggressive as it could be—they are most often presented as corrupt and incompetent. However, considering the main cop characters depicted like Jim Gordon, the guys in Gotham (it’s been a while since I saw it, sorry) are often the romanticized “good few” (and often or almost always white cis/het men), that’s on pretty shaky ground. I don’t have the background in the comics strong enough to make specific arguments, so I’ll cede the point to someone who does and disagrees, but having recently watched a show that deals excellently with police incompetence, racism, and brutality (7 Seconds on Netflix), I feel at the very least something is deeply missing. like, analysis of race wrt police brutality in any aspect at all whatsoever.

I think it can be compellingly read that batman does heavily play into the military/police industrial complex due to its takes on violence—just play the Arkham games for more than an hour and you’ll know what I mean. to be a little less vague, even though batman as a franchise valorizes “psychiatric treatment” and “nonviolence,” the entire game seems pretty aware it characterizes treatment as a madhouse and nonviolence as breaking someone’s back or neck magically without killing them because you’re a “good guy.” while it is definitely subversive that the franchise even considers these elements at all, they don’t always do a fantastic job living up to them.

and then when you consider the fetishization of tools of violence both in canon and in the fandom, it gets worse. same with prisons—if anything it dehumanizes people in prisons even more than like, cop shows in general, which is pretty impressive(ly bad). like there’s just no nuance afforded and arkham is generally glamorized. the fact that one of the inmates is a crocodile assassin, I will admit, does not help. im not really sure how to mitigate that when, again, one of the inmates is a crocodile assassin, but I think my point still stands. fuck you, killer croc. (im just kidding unfuck him or whatever)

not to take this on a Jason Todd tangent but I was thinking about it this afternoon and again when thinking about that cop scene again and in many ways he does serve as a challenge to both batman’s ideology as well as the ideology of the franchise in general. his depiction is always a bit of a sticking point and it’s always fascinating to me to see how any given adaptation handles it. like Jason’s “”street”” origin has become inseparable from his characterization as an angry, brash, violent kid, and that in itself reflects a whole host of cultural stereotypes that I might argue occasionally/often dip into racialized tropes (like just imagine if he wasn’t white, ok). red hood (a play on robin hood and the outlaws, as I just realized...today) is in my exposure/experience mostly depicted as a villain, but he challenges batman’s no-kill philosophy both on an ethical and practical level. every time the joker escapes he kills a whole score more of innocent people, let alone the other rogues—is it truly ethical to let him live or avoid killing him for the cost of one life and let others die?

moreover, batman’s ““blind”” faith in the justice system (prisons, publicly-funded asylum prisons, courts) is conveniently elided—the story usually ends when he drops bad guy of the day off at arkham or ties up the bad guys and lets the police come etc etc. part of this is obviously bc car chases are more cinematic than dry court procedurals, but there is an alternate universe where bruce wayne never becomes batman and instead advocates for the arkham warden to be replaced with someone competent and the system overhauled, or in programs encouraging a more diverse and educated police force, or even into social welfare programs. (I am vaguely aware this is sometimes/often part of canon, but I don’t think it’s fair to say it’s the main focus. and again, I get it’s not nearly as cinematic).

overall, I think the most frustrating thing about the batman franchise or at least what I’ve seen or read of it is that while it does attempt to deal with corruption and injustice at all levels of the criminal justice system/government, it does so either by treating it as “just how life is” or having Dick or Jim Gordon or whoever the fuckjust wipe it out by “eliminating the dirty cops,” completely ignoring the non-fantasy ways these problems are dealt with in real life. it just isn’t realistic. instead of putting restrictions on police violence or educating cops on how to use their weapons or putting work into eradicating the culture of racism and prejudice or god basically anything it’s just all cinematized into the “good few” triumphing over the bad...somehow. its always unsatisfying and ultimately feels like lip service to me, personally.

this also dovetails with the very frustrating way mental health/”insanity” or “madness” is dealt with in canon, very typical of mainstream fiction. like for example:“madness is like gravity, all it takes is a little push.” yikes, if by ‘push’ you mean significant life stressors, genetic load, and environemntal influences, then sure. challenge any dudebro joker fanboy to explain exactly what combination of DSM disorders the joker has to explain his “””insanity””” and see what happens. (these are, in fact, my plans for this Friday evening. im a hit at parties).

anyway I do really want to wax poetic about that cop scene in 1x06 so im gonna do just that! honestly when I first saw that I immediately sat up like I’d sat on a fucking tack, my cultural studies senses were tingling. the whole “fuck batman” ethos of the show had already been interesting to me, esp in s1, when bruce was basically standing in for the baby boomers and dick being our millennial/GenX hero. I do think dick was explicitly intended to appeal to a millennial audience and embody the millennial ethos. By that logic, the tension between dick and Jason immediately struck me as allegorical (Jason constantly commenting on dick being old, outdated, using slang dick doesn’t understand and generally being full of youthful obnoxious fistbumping energy).

Even if subconsciously on the part of the writers, jason’s over-aggressive energy can be read as a commentary on genZ—seen by mainstream millennial/GenX audiences as taking things too far. Like, the cops in 1x06 could have been Nick Zucco’s hired men or idk pretty much anyone, yet they explicitly chose cops and even had Jason explain why he deliberately went after them for being cops so dick (cop) could judge him for it. his rationale? he was beaten up by cops on the street, so he’s returning the favor. he doesn’t have the focused “righteous” rage of batman or dick/nightwing towards valid targets, he just has rage at the world and specifically the system—framed here as unacceptable or fanatical. as if like, dressing up like a bat and punching people at night is, um, totally normal and uncontroversial.

on a slightly wider scope, the show seems to internally struggle with its own progressive ethos—on the one hand, they hire the wildly talented chellah man, but on the other hand they will likely kill him off soon. or they cast anna diop, drawing wrath from the loudly racist underbelly of fandom, but sideline her. perhaps it’s a genuine struggle, perhaps they simply don’t want to alienate the bigots in the fanbase, but the issue of cops stuck out to me when I was watching as an social issue where they explicitly came down on one side over the other. jason’s characterization is, I admit and appreciate, still nuanced, but I’d argue that’s literally just bc he’s a white guy and a fan favorite. cast an actor of color as Jason and see how fast fandom and the writer’s room turns on him.

anyway i don’t really have the place to speak about what an explicitly nonwhite!cop!dick grayson would look like, but I do think it would be a fascinating and exciting place to start in exploring and correcting the kind of vague and nebulous complaints i raise above. (edit: i should have made more clear, i mean in the show, which hasn’t dealt with dick’s heritage afaik). also, there’s something to be said about the cop vs detective thing but I don’t really have the brain juice or expertise to say it? anyway if you got this far i hope it was at least interesting and again pls jump in id love to hear other people’s takes!!

tldr i took two (2) cultural studies classes and have Opinions

#wow this was a hot fucking mess #i tried to be organized but my thoughts weren't coming out super well #again anyone interested please feel free to jump in or correct me at any place you feel like #i die on the ''jason todd would be treated horribly by fandom if he were a character of color' hill tho #i could go on about 1x06 until im blue in the face but that's the uhh overview. the executive summary.#dc titans #i need meta tags and shit for this show #god help me in too deep #finding the meta side of fandom was a GIFT tho i love this shit #so excited

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awhitehead17 · 5 years

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A Phantom Presence

Tim & Jason, Ghost AU, Alternate Universe, Ghost!Jason, Fluff, Angst, Friendship

Summary: Becoming Robin Tim expected a lot of different and unusual things to happen to him, however seeing the ghost of his dead predecessor was not something he had planned for at all.

A/N: This was done for 'AU: Ghosts' on my Batfam Bingo card. Just a side note, I've changed most canon to fit this story so it does not follow anything specific in the comics. The original inspiration I got for this fic was from the Umbrella Academy where Klaus talks to Ben, I sort of followed that idea but gave it my own twist.

Also on AO3

Enjoy! :D

At first he didn’t believe it. He thought he was dreaming, that it was just something of a freaky coincidence considering what he’s just begun doing.

The first time he sees Jason Todd’s ghost he’s on patrol, a few roof tops behind Batman. It was just a glimpse from the corner of his eye but it was enough to startle him and make him stop to double check what he was seeing.

Jason Todd stands opposite him on the adjacent roof top staring back at him, unmoving. He was dressed in a red hoddie, baggy sweatpants and well-worn trainers. Tim stares at him in shock trying to comprehend what he was seeing. He opens his mouth to speak but gets cut off when a rough voice calls him.

“Robin!”

Tim turns, almost reluctantly, away from Jason and looks to find Batman several roof tops away waiting for him.

“Coming!” Tim yells back looking back towards where he had seen Jason only to find him no longer there. He blinks a few times before finally turning away and making a move to catch up to the Bat.

As he runs he tries to forget about it, it was just his imagination playing tricks on him. Jason was dead, there’s no way that could have been him, but he knows that face, he’s stared at Jason’s picture enough for it to be etched into his mind by now, then again it was probably just another kid who just looked very similar to the deceased Jason Todd.

The second time Tim sees him is in the cave when he was training. He was going through his routine with his bo staff when Jason suddenly appears on the edge of the mats. Tim startled when he finally notices him. Tim observes that his appearance was the same as last time, he was dressed in that red hoddie and baggy sweatpants.

Tim eyes him wearily before glancing around the otherwise empty cave. Jason does nothing but stand there and watch him. Feeling uneasy with the sudden audience Tim tries to continue with his routine. It takes a while but he eases back down and settles into doing his movements despite Jason standing off to the side.

When he finishes an hour later Jason was no longer there and Tim was once again just convinced it was his mind playing tricks on him.

After that it basically became the norm, Tim seeing Jason Todd’s ghost around. It takes several months but he realises that Jason only appears when he’s Robin and never as Timothy Drake. Jason appears on roof tops where he’s patrolling, by the mats where he’s training and even on occasion at the cave with Young Justice.

Tim soon accepted the silence presence of him and just went with the flow, he’s accepted that it’s a little messed up but he doesn’t question it and he never, never, tells Bruce or Dick about it. He can only imagine what their reactions were going to be like.

It’s now been about two and a half years since Jason’s ghost has been hanging around him. It even crossed Tim’s mind that the Robin suit could be cursed or something, Jason had in fact died wearing it so maybe his ghost is just attached to the it. Either way Tim has grown used to seeing Jason around, even to the point where he’s silently looking for the ghost and relaxing when he finds him standing off to the side.

Sometimes he observes the ghost, noting how Jason has seem to grown up as the time has passed by, almost like he really was alive. He was taller than before, his hair a little longer and his chin more defined. Tim figures this is what he would look like if he never died in the first place. It hurts to know that he knows what Jason looks like when Bruce, Alfred and Dick will never know.

On a particular day Tim was doing some training in the cave, trying to get his mind off of everything going on in his life. It’s been really stressful lately and he wants to blow off some steam. As he repeatedly hits the dummy in front of him he’s aware of Jason’s presence behind him and the way the ghost casually walks around observing everything surrounding them.

It’s when he makes a sloppy punch that hurts his hand an unfamiliar voice speaks out. “You’re sloppy today.”

He jumps at hearing it and spins around trying to find the owner. When he finds the cave empty he looks over at Jason to find the ghost staring back at him with a raised eyebrow. Tim blinks, did he just - that’s not possible...

“Did you just-”

“Speak? Yeah I did.” Jason responds back smirking.

Tim stares in shock. “You can talk?!”

Jason now scowls at him, “What am I a pig? Of course I can talk, I’ve just never chosen to before.”

Tim turns away from the ghost and rubs a hand against his head, feeling a headache coming on. He’s cracked, he’s finally cracked, all of the recent stress has finally gotten to him.

He turns back to Jason and gives in an incredulous look, “Then why haven’t you spoken before?”

Jason shrugs, looking nonchalant. “Dunno, just haven’t. What’s wrong with you today? I know you just hurt your hand from that crappy punch you just threw.”

Tim huffs and turns back to the dummy, throwing a couple more punches at it and a kick, “I’m fine.”

“Sure you are Timbo.”

Tim glances uneasily at Jason, unsure on what to feel about this situation and the fact that Jason is communicating with him after two years. It’s a bit mind boggling really.

A hand appears near the dummy’s neck, startling him out of his thoughts. “Hit here. If you’re going for efficiency, you want to aim here.”

Tim looks at Jason who was watching him back. Then slowly Tim does what Jason suggested, striking out at that place his hand was pointing to. Jason grins, “Good.”

After that it became a guided training session, Jason was giving out different bits of advice and guidance to Tim’s fighting techniques and how he could improve them. Tim thoroughly enjoyed it, soaking in everything the ghost had to say. Having Jason guide him through the moves was completely different to how Bruce teaches him. It made a change.

Later on when Bruce questions him on his improvement he simply tells him he’s been practising and watching professionals online.

For the next couple of months he and Jason converse back and forwards and Tim really gets the chance to learn about his predecessor, about the kid Dick, Bruce and Alfred had lost. While Jason was fun to have a laugh with, share a joke or two with he wasn’t actually all fun and games all the time. He did have a dark side to him, one of which Tim was surprised to see, but should have expected really.

The particular conversation about him being Robin came up a lot later than he expected it to. It came about when he laid up in a medical cot after a rough night against Killer Croc. He was sporting several broken ribs, a fractured wrist, sprained ankle, bruising all over and a mild concussion.

Once he had convinced Bruce to take a shower because he’ll be fine on his own for a few minutes Jason makes his appearance. The teen ghost stands by his bed scowling down at him. Tim sighs and rolls his eyes. “Don’t bother. I have a giant ass lecture coming my way already I don’t need you to add to the baggage.”

“Tough shit Timmy because I have shit to say.” Jason snarls at him. Tim was taken back by his aggression. “You were a mess Tim, uncoordinated, unfocussed and that almost cost you your life tonight.”

Tim grits his teeth, trying to ignore the headache that’s developed in the back of his skull. “I was helping civilians get free! It was me or them goddammit. I know I wasn’t my best and clearly I paid the price for it but next time I’ll be better, I’ll know what to do to not repeat my mistakes again.”

“Well you can’t be better if you’re dead!”

Heavy silence fills between them and Tim is left staring at Jason in a mixture of guilt, anger and sadness. Jason on the other hand was seething in anger, Tim could see the way he had his fists clenched at his sides.

“He shouldn’t have taken you on as Robin Tim. You should have never replaced me. This life isn’t meant for kids.”

Tim blinks in surprise at that before his feelings merge into anger. “I never wanted to be Robin in the first place! I just wanted to help Bruce and to stop him from going down that dark path. Your death destroyed him Jason. You’ve seen it for yourself how much it hurt him, and even Dick. It hurt them all. My intention was to never replace you, I could never be as good as you, I can’t be you, I can only try and live up to the name you and Dick both wore.”

Jason was silent for a long time and Tim was really trying to keep his breathing under control, his chest was hurting and every breath painful to take.

Eventually Jason talks again, still glaring at Tim, “Yeah I saw it, but how much of it is actually real? If he really cared he would have killed the Joker in revenge for what he did to me!”

“He nearly did!” Tim cries out to him. “He nearly did but Superman stopped him from doing so, because once he goes down that path there would be no coming back. If he killed the Joker it would have went against everything he was fighting for, it would have went against everything you were fighting for.”

“Tim?”

Tim blinks because that wasn’t Jason. He looks over to find Bruce rushing to his side and checking him over. “Are you alright, what’s wrong?”

It takes a moment to realise that the heart monitor was blearing away at a rapid pace and he was struggling to breath. Once he’s calmed down with Bruce’s help he glances over to find Jason no longer standing by his bed, the ghost has faded away like he never existed to begin with.

After that he didn’t see Jason for about two months and he has to admit that it was weird. He was missing Jason despite him never actually being there in the first place. Even after three years he was still the only one who has ever seen him, the only one who has ever spoke to him.

The next time Jason appears is when he’s at the Tower with the others. They were having a get together to catch up with one another as life has gotten crazy recently. After gathering all of their snacks and drinks for their movie marathon from the kitchen they make their way to the media room, Tim was the last one to leave the kitchen and was thankful for that because he suddenly jumps and drops the entire bowl of popcorn he happened to be carrying all over the floor.

He puts a hand on his chest and gets his breathing under control. “Jesus Christ. Don’t do that!” He says lowly to the figure just off too the side.

Jason says nothing as he leans against the wall and watches him. Tim rolls his eyes and bends down to start cleaning up the popcorn and putting it back into the bowl. Once he was done he stands up and glares at the ghost.

“So what, you disappear for two months then suddenly pop back up again?” Jason shrugs and continues to watch him. Tim raises an eyebrow in annoyance, and huffs, “The silent treatment, really? Fine whatever. I gotta go, got a movie to watch.”

With that Tim walks down the corridor, he’s annoyed but relieved at the same time because at least Jason is still around but on the other hand appearing after two months of nothing and wouldn’t offer an explanation to as of why really annoyed Tim. That wasn’t fair.

They fall back into an old routine after that, Jason seeming to have gotten over his little temper tantrum of Tim becoming Robin and has gone back to being friendly and chatty with him. It seems to have moved on a lot further than last time because he starts appearing when Tim is simply just Timothy Drake and not as Robin. They talk, have banter, joke and argue. It’s like Tim’s got another older brother looking out for him and he finds that he really doesn’t mind it at all, the only thing that sucks about it is that Jason is a ghost and no one else can see him but Tim.

Another few months go by and they’re worst Tim’s ever had to face. He loses his dad, followed by his best friend, then his other best friend dies as well, his girlfriend fake’s her death and leaves him in the dark, then after all that when things started to look up slightly a few months later he loses his second father figure and the one thing he always thought he would have gets taken away from him and given to an ungrateful demon brat.

To say he was low was an understatement. He’s in his place sitting on the floor, smashed glass and furniture surrounding him from where he threw it in anger. He’s against the wall, fists clenched tightly and his chest heaving up and down from his breathing. This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening keeps on being repeated over and over in his head. It just wasn’t fair. Why did so much crap have to happen to him, what had he done to deserve all of this grief and misfortune?

He’s so caught up in his thoughts that he completely fails to notice Jason appearing by his side and moving so he’s sat down opposite him. He jumps when Jason speaks.

“Well that some fit you threw then Timbo.” He comments.

Tim looks up, letting his head hit the back wall as he does so and glares at him, “Fuck off, I’m not in the mood.”

Jason’s unmoved by his anger. “Of course not, you’ve just had everything ripped away from you, all that you had left just gone, of course you’re not in the mood.”

Tim looks away from him, not really understanding what Jason was getting at. He stares into the space between them, thinking over everything, going through everything that had happened, why and how it happened. There’s gotta be something he’s missing.

While he digs through the depth of his mind Jason continues speaking. “Now what Tim? What are you going to do? Just allow Dick to hand Robin over to that brat? Allow him to drive you away despite how hard you worked for your place in the goddamn family? Or are you going to get up and fight back. Go and do something about it.”

That’s when it hits Tim. He was going to go do something about it because there is something to be done.

“I have to go and find Bruce.” Tim says quietly. He peers at Jason, saying it again but this time more firmly. “Bruce is alive and I have to go and find him.”

He pushes himself up from where he was slouching, believing his words more and more. “Bruce is alive Jason and I’m going to go and find him.”

Jason grins at him from his seat opposite him. “Well then baby bird what are you waiting for, go and get him.”

#Tim Drake #Jason Todd #Ghost AU #Ghost!Jason #angst #fluff #friendship #alternate universe #fanfiction #batfam bingo 2019

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blackbatpurplecat · 4 years

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My Thoughts on Joker (2019)

Alright. I’ve finally seen Joker.

Warning: SPOILERS ahead!

It’s a well-made movie. The cinematography is good, the use of music is absolutely outstanding, Phoenix carries the film with his quite decent performance. I really liked his laugh towards the end! I was surprised at how little dialogue was in it, it was more about nice shots and slowmos while we were following Arthur Fleck through his despressing life and mental decline. And we got a few DC references too.

Unfortunately, it didn’t live up to the hype to me. I had wrongly expected much more after the big buildup surrounding the movie’s release. The trailer had made me want to see it, reviewers have been praising it, saying it’ll have a big influence on future DC films and even movies in general - I don’t see that though. Sure, its success might change DC/WB’s approach to turning their characters into movies but Joker wasn’t a gamechanger. It’s basically about a depressed dude who makes bad decisions and blames others for the consequences, nothing new. A dude who takes revenge on those who treated him badly but spares the good people, not very Joker-y. And let’s not define what mental illness he has or what kind of sOcIeTy the characters live in, let’s keep things as vague as possible and don’t focus too much on world building.

What I don’t understand is people’s comments on how violent and disturbing the movie is - it REALLY is not! The most violent moment is when he’s stabbing his ex colleague in the eye but that’s it, the rest is nothing too graphic or gory or overwhelmingly bloody. Even when he’s killing his mother, all we see is a close-up of his face, the camera doesn’t linger on her (which I prefer. don’t fetishize killing, just show us how it affects the main character).

While I noticed some points that didn’t make sense (e.g. who recorded him?! that movie doesn’t take place during the cellphone era!), moments that weren’t necessary (movie, you don’t have to explain that his girlfriend was just an illusion, your audience isn’t dumb), moments that were too predictable (his mom was insane? his girlfriend wasn’t real? he killed the man he had idolised? wHo WoUlD hAvE tHoUgHt?!), and moments that were dangerously close to “I’m 14 and this is deep” or were taking themselves WAY too seriously so I couldn’t help but cringe, I did enjoy the last 30 min and kinda liked the ambigous ending.

It’s very likely that the finale was just another delusion. Like killing Robert De Niro, walking away from TWO car accidents, the city so easily falling into chaos, the Waynes getting killed (are we REALLY doing this?!), even Arthur chasing the ward through the halls in the very last shot were possibly just Arthur’s fantasy. Maybe they caught him earlier in the movie and the rest is just him thinking of what could have been. Granted, “it was all a dream” is a bad trope and the makers will 100% use it to explain away script issues, but it’s okay here. It’d be part of the character’s development: at the beginning, he imagined himself to be liked and famous for being nice and at the end, he’s imagining himself being famous for doing bad things since killing those 3 douchebags no one knew but no one liked for some reason (?!?!?! imagine if that happened in real life: a man wearing a clown mask shoots 3 random guys dead and people reacted with I’M GLAD THEY DIED! THAT MAN IS A HERO!) made him feel appreciated by hundreds. Since he couldn’t handle the fact that he was adopted, he made Bruce an orphan (btw that child actor was horrible). You just don’t know for sure what is real and what isn’t anymore, similar to Arthur. It’s up to interpretation.

I’m relieved that this is a DC movie without any universe behind it, no sequels or prequels are planned, it’s just ONE movie telling the story of what made an already deranged man take the last step to becoming a killer. I probably would have enjoyed it more if it didn’t have any ties to DC though. Like Nolan’s shitlogy, this didn’t have to be a DC movie. This could have been an entirely original character, the source material wasn’t needed at all to make the story work.

Phoenix’ take on the character was slightly closer to the actual Joker than Ledger’s take from 7 years ago but it was mostly its own thing. Dunno how many more actors and alternative interpretations they’ll burn through until we finally get to the Joker we all know from the comics. While Arthur Fleck was mildly intriguing, I stand by what I said eons ago: I don’t need this version of the Joker, I don’t need a Joker origin movie. If you can actually call it that because Fleck will be either a geriatric or, more likely, dead by the time Bruce becomes Batman. If that is even a possibility in the more realistic universe of the movie...

To sum it up, Joker was a good movie, possibly DC’s best movie so far, but I doubt I’ll ever watch it again. The script was its biggest problem, it wasn’t nearly as clever as it thought it was, there were no risks, no horror nor fun (and I think these are the two main ingredients of Joker’s character), and Arthur wasn’t particularly interesting until he doned the orange suit.

However, I still recommend it because they put effort into making it - something you can’t usually say about DC movies.

Random note: I was SO happy when I saw Marc Maron from Glow show up!

#Personal note #review

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lfthinkerwrites · 5 years

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Happy Anniversary

Part 3 of ‘To All The Ones I’ve Loved Before’, this time with Riddlebat. Specifically, Bruce and Ed from A Riddle for a Bat. I missed these dorks.

Bruce had thought that with Thorne and the last vestiges of the mob families in Gotham gone, that things would get better. And for a time, they had.

In the weeks after Thorne had been taken into federal custody, Bruce and Gordon had managed to capture most of his foot soldiers and lieutenants, as well as confiscate his ill-gotten gains. Thorne was in federal prison now, having decided to plead guilty and salvage what he could of his life. His power was well and truly broken in Gotham. Then the weeks turned into months and the hard-earned peace gave way to a fresh wave of crime and violence. Not from the remaining few minor organized crime members. From the Rogues. With Thorne, Falcone, and Maroni gone, there was new territory for the Rogues to claim and fight over, and collateral damage for Bruce to contain. More than once, he'd thought about what Falcone had said in his hospital bed all those months ago. Maybe, on some level, the wizened old gangster had been right. Perhaps the old guard had been a check on the more chaotic violence that the costumed Rogues represented.

Now, a year to the day since Thorne had been taken away, Bruce was tired as he drove the Batmobile back towards Wayne Manor after dropping Dick off just outside of Gotham University. They'd just been out in the industrial district, foiling the Joker mid-spree. They'd spent the previous two days, him and Dick, tracking down his movements, stopping his madness before he could hurt too many people. Well, him, Dick, and Edward.

Edward. The thought of the man brought a smile to Bruce's lips, as tired as he was. It had only been a year since he'd met the man at that party at Veronica's, but Bruce could barely imagine what his life had been like without him in it. How many times had his assistance been invaluable to his work? Too many to count. How many nights had he spent in his company, exchanging witty banter, arguing, seeking solace and escape in each other's arms? Not nearly enough. He sighed. They'd had a reservation tonight, ahead of their first anniversary. The disappointment in Edward's eyes when the Joker's crime spree made the news and necessitated the cancellation of their plans had been palpable, and it tore at Bruce to see it. Edward had seemed to shrug it off, however, and he'd descended into the Batcave to set himself up at the Batcomputer, to be his eyes and ears, just as he had so many other times before. Bruce shook his head. He'd make it up to him. He pressed the communication button on the dashboard. "Edward? Are you still awake?"

There was a brief period of silence before Edward responded. "Of course. Sleep, as Dick likes to say, is overrated. Are you almost back?"

"I just dropped Dick off. I should be back in about twenty minutes."

"Good-" Edward's voice was cut off by a yawn.

"Edward," Bruce said not unkindly. "You don't have to wait up for me."

"Riddle me this: how many times have you said that to me now? And how many times has that worked?"

Bruce shook his head. "You're almost as bad as Alfred."

"Almost? Clearly, I'm not trying hard enough."

Bruce chuckled. "See you soon, Edward."

Bruce had collapsed into bed at 3:30 am, Edward nestled into his arms beside him. He was exhausted, but sleep proved to be elusive. He lay flat on his back, staring at the ceiling and thinking about everything that had happened in the past year. His eyelids were heavy and his body cried out for sleep, but his mind was still alert. At 4 am, he felt Edward's hand on his face.

"What's wrong?" his lover asked.

Bruce sighed. "I'm tired, Edward."

"Well, it is 4 am. And not to be a complete nag, but I do believe you've been up for two days straight chasing after a psychotic clown. That would be enough to make anyone tired, even the Dark Knight himself." His tone shifted, lower, more serious. "But it's more than just the Joker, isn't it?"

Bruce exhaled. "A year ago, back when I was still investigating Thorne..." Bruce's voice trailed off as he recalled the date with precision. "The night I met you, actually." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a pleased smile come to Edward's face. "I spoke with Falcone in his hospital bed, the night O'Reilly tried to kill him. He said that I did more harm to the city than good by stopping men like him. That all I was doing was trading one group of crooks for another."

He heard Edward let out a snort. "Well, of course, he'd say that. Don't tell me you believe him."

"No," Bruce said. Then he let out another sigh. "I have to wonder though. All this chaos this past year with the Joker, with Scarecrow, with Harvey, and Ivy, and the rest. Sometimes I wonder if he didn't have a point."

Edward didn't speak for a moment. Then Bruce felt his body shift a bit, from being next to him to being half on top of him. Edward had pushed himself up to glare at Bruce. Even in the darkness of the room, he could see the other man's vivid green eyes boring into him, searing into his very soul. "You know," Edward said. "For a man as smart as you are, you can be very stupid."

Bruce, although no stranger to Edward's at times caustic personality, was still taken aback. "Edward-"

"No," his lover cut him off. "You put too much on your own shoulders. Did the mob's absence in Gotham create a void that the Rogues took advantage of? Yes. We always knew that was a possibility. But what was the alternative? Letting the likes of Thorne continue to have a stranglehold on the City? We couldn't have done that either. You are not the one who forced these damaged, disturbed people to put on costumes and commit acts of supervillainy, Bruce. And even if your presence 'inspired' them, so what? There's a lot more good that you've inspired too. Dick. Gordon. Yours truly, even. Where would we be without you?" Edward leaned forward and placed a gentle kiss on Bruce's lips, one that he drank in, like water to a man dying of first. Edward pulled away and the angry look on his face was replaced with a soft look of adoration. "So no more of that. Go to sleep and if you've got another argument in the morning, I'll demolish that too."

Bruce wrapped his arms around Edward and pulled him into his chest. "The real question is, where would I be without you?"

Edward hummed a bit. "Brooding away in your cave, I suppose. Now go to sleep."

Bruce nodded, placing a kiss on top of Edward's head. "I love you." Then he shut his eyes and in a matter of minutes, was out.

At noon, Bruce woke up alone, with Edward's spot cool. As if he'd been gone for a while. "Edward?" Bruce called out. When he received no response, he pulled himself out of bed, not bothering to put a robe on. He walked out of his bedroom, down the stairs into the expansive living room of Wayne Manor. "Alfred?" he called out. "Edward?"

"In the kitchen!" he heard Edward's voice call out. Bruce followed the sound of his voice, more than a bit curious. When he walked into the kitchen, he saw Edward, showered but still in his pajamas, pulling a tray out of the oven and putting it on the counter. He pulled off the red kitchen gloves and placed them to the side of the cooling tray, turned to Bruce and smiled. "Just in time!" he said. "The tea cookies should be ready in a few minutes."

Bruce smiled back. "You made tea cookies? I didn't know you baked."

"I don't," Edward shrugged, going to pour himself and Bruce a cup of tea. "But Alfred told me how much you love the cookies he makes, so I thought I might as well learn."

"And just what else has he been teaching you while I'm away?"

Edward shot him a smirk, the smirk that he had hated once upon a time. "If you have me, you want to share me. If you share me, you haven't got me. What am I?"

"A secret, huh?" Bruce said. He took a few steps towards Edward, not bothering to conceal the fact that he was eying him. He'd always appreciated just how well-fitted his clothing was. In a moment, he had him pressed up against the kitchen counter. "You know," he said, bringing his voice to a low pitch, the kind that made Edward's face flush, "I have ways of making you talk."

Edward traced a hand across Bruce's bare chest. "It's the funniest thing," he said lightly. "Alfred just happened to have a few errands to run today. He'll be gone until this evening."

"Will he now?" Bruce asked. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you two had that planned."

"Us? Conspiring against you? Never," Edward sassed. He leaned upwards to plant a kiss on Bruce's cheek. "Happy anniversary, Bruce."

Bruce brushed locks of auburn hair out of Edward's face. "Happy anniversary. I'm sorry about the reservation."

Edward shrugged. "I knew the moment I fell for you that I'd have to share you with Gotham, just like you have to share me with my clients. You'll just have to make up for it today. Preferably multiple times."

Bruce responded by crouching down, then lifting Edward into a bridal carry. "How about now?"

Edward laughed, throwing his arms around Bruce's neck. "What about your cookies and tea?"

Bruce kissed him soundly on the lips. "We can always reheat them. Right now, I have time to make up for." He carried Edward out of the kitchen and back towards his bedroom.

#riddlebat #A Riddle for a Bat #to all the ones i've loved before

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douxreviews · 5 years

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Gotham - ‘Penguin, Our Hero’ Review

Selina: "So this is the Dark Zone? They should call it the dull zone."

Gotham lately has put me in a very troubled position as a writer; 'Trespassers' last week left me with the sourest of aftertastes, and yet as eager as I was for the oncoming episodes to redeem the season's quality, I also knew that any misstep 'Penguin, Our Hero' took could shatter this eagerness like a cut-rate drinking glass.

And while I confess my enthusiasm now sports cracks and fractures along its glass circumference after my viewing of 'Penguin, Our Hero', because I'm a good sport, I feel it's important to stay as objective as possible, and give even the best of the bad lot its day in the sun.

Like 'Trespassers', this week's episode is also diverged entirely into two plots: Gordon and the GCPD work to protect Haven - the community of civilians taking refuge from the rest of the city's mayhem - from Oswald and his own goons, and Bruce and Selina go hunting for Jeremiah. Back in Season 4, 'One Bad Day' attempted to sell its own twist on The Killing Joke comic, albeit with Gotham swapping out Barbara Gordon for Selina. 'Penguin, Our Hero' quite neatly succeeds in the first half of its run by continuing its homage to Alan Moore's story, this time with the positions of Batman and James Gordon being replaced respectively by Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne; Selina's got the bloodlust bad for Jeremiah's head, yet Bruce insists that he and Selina pursue him by the books, so that Jeremiah may face true justice for what he has done. In my Season 1 reviews, I mentioned once that I never grow bored when Gotham creates scenes like this to remind us that Bruce and Selina come from entirely separate upbringings. What's more, Bruce now has wisdom, reasoning, and even a bit of experience to back his assertions to Selina that sending Jeremiah to Belize isn't in her best interests.

Expanding upon Bruce and Selina's story, they learn that they may have a chance of finding Jeremiah in the 'Dark Zone', a sector of territory where Jeremiah rules over those crazy enough to be inhabitants. The grisly deformities and almost-outlandish costumes (which are major nods to The Dark Knight Returns) were able to capture a small sense of what it was I was expecting to see when Gotham City became a no man's land. It's grisly, it's a little zany, and it absolutely gave off a sense that Bruce and Selina could be goners had they stepped into this territory uninformed and unprepared.

It's a tad odd for me hearing Selina remark on and on to Bruce about how she's changed, and how she's now a different person after taking Ivy's magical medicine last week; in fact, Selina is every bit as quippy, as acrobatic, and as badass as I remember her in her prime. Gotham's showrunners have been insistent this year that Selina will be making additional and gradual changes as she moves closer to her destiny as Catwoman, but I think they might be scratching at the bottom of the barrel if they really want to come through on that promise; Selina has the whip, she has the claws, she has the spandex, she's already the spitting image of Gotham City's infamous cat burglar. So I personally think Gotham can take a break from all this prattle about how much more Selina has to 'change' before she starts wearing cat-ears and making poorly timed feline-themed puns.

Meanwhile, Oswald discovers that most of his thugs and followers have defected to Haven to seek protection from the GCPD. So naturally, Oswald handles this 'betrayal' the way he handles everything - by overreacting. I suspect though that all Oswald really cared about was getting his bulldog Edward back from Haven, above anyone else. The fact that Gordon wouldn't even give the pooch up actually had me siding with Oswald for a majority of this episode. As always, Robin Lord Taylor's scene-chewing here is a delight and a half, even if he is still strangely lacking a shotgun-umbrella. And when it's evident that Oswald's goons have double-crossed him, he resorts to teaming up with Gordon to drive the gangsters out of Haven for good. Gotham seems to have forgotten already that an alliance seemed to be brewing between Gordon and Barbara last week, and so instead we get the first of hopefully many more team-ups between Gordon and Oswald. I also suspect this turn of events sets into motion a domino effect leading to the prelude we saw at the beginning of 'Year Zero' depicting Gordon, Bullock, Oswald and Nygma teaming up against an unknown army.

With the good set aside, now we must come to both the bad and, characterization-wise, the ugly. Specifically, it's one of my biggest gripes with Gotham in years. In regards to portrayal, I haven't seen Gotham so poorly deconstruct one of its most memorable rouges since the introduction of Victor Fries way back in Season 2. I'm talking about this series' rendition of Harley Quinn.

Harley Quinn is unique among Batman rouges because she actually made her debut way back when during the airing of Batman: The Animated Series. She was a character created exclusively for the cartoons before her fusing into mainstream comics, and mainly operated as the Joker's No. 2, though as the series continued, she was fleshed out even further, shown to have once been a psychiatrist that treated the Joker at Arkham Asylum, before ultimately becoming exploited and manipulated by the Joker to turn to a life of crime.

Alternatively, last year, Gotham introduced Ecco, a mysterious subordinate of Jeremiah Valeska who, quite frankly, followed him into battle unquestionably, and in this season, into no man's land as well. Gotham hasn't outright referred to her yet as 'Harley Quinn', but the use of her catchphrase 'Puddin' in this week's episode, as well as the colors of red and black scattered along her clothing is very much a dead giveaway.

Gotham has had difficulties in the past trying to incorporate their own iteration of Harley Quinn into the series. It's come out that there were plans at the end of Season 3 to turn Barbara Kean into the character. There were also rumors that the little girl Bruce saved in an alleyway, also at the end of Season 3, would also grow up to become Harley. To this day, I absolutely believe the inclusion of Harley Quinn isn't an essential factor to Gotham's gutsy, spunky narrative. Simply put, she's a character best saved for a day when the city actually has a properly established Joker (and Batman for that matter), but at best, shelving the character for another time would mean that we would get to be spared Gotham's rendition at...whatever Ecco is supposed to be. And whatever Gotham's intentions were for this character, they've managed to make Ecco everything Harley Quinn is not. Traditionally, Harley does not earn every reader/viewer's sympathy, but the character always steals the show whenever she shows up. She can be funny, she can be entertaining in her own demented methods, it's actually a little unsettling as the viewer to stay tuned with the character as she gets joy out of the most twisted and sadistic things. Even Margot Robbie's portrayal of the character in Suicide Squad remains a personal highlight for me in an otherwise hopeless film because though she brings her own attributes to the character, there are still plenty of homages written into her role that evoked a bit of nostalgia in me for that classic animated series.

Gotham's rendition of Harley Quinn by the end of it is tragically boring, but worse than that, Francesca Root-Dodson's performance fails to share any likeness either with the characteristics of Harley. She's more akin to a hype man (or hype woman in this case) for Jeremiah, much like how Ebony Maw was to Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, minus the chilling motion capture and dainty fingers. A week ago, I had a hope that Gotham could learn to better blend all of its characters into a single narrative this season, but now I'm left with a single and very potent desire outweighing all others, and that is that Ecco's appearance this week was a one-time occurrence only. Any further appearances down the winding road will all result in a dogged struggle to sit through her scenes, which felt like being stuck in a room with a Harley Quinn cosplayer whose only knowledge of the character comes from what Warner Brothers advertises on t-shirts.

Aaron Studer loves spending his time reading, writing and defending the existence of cryptids because they can’t do it themselves.

#Gotham #Bruce Wayne #Selina Kyle #Harley Quinn #James Gordon #DC Comics #Batman #Gotham Reviews #Doux Reviews #TV Reviews

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britesparc · 6 years

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My Justice League, by Me

I've never really been one to write fan-fiction, not since I was a kid and I used to make dozens of Transformers comics. But one thing I did used to do quite a bit – which is obviously fan-fiction – was write synopses, outlines, and treatments for film or TV adaptations of my favourite properties (this was about 10-15 years ago; I don't really have the time nowadays as I'm trying to write my own original stuff). I think I thought, however unlikely, that maybe one day I'd be in a position to pitch for them, and I wanted to be prepared; and, indeed, I'd be lying if I said I didn’t still harbour some faint hope of one day being in a similar position, even if I don't genuinely think I'll ever get a crack at a big superhero or sci-fi movie or anything like that.

One thing I wrote – back when the prequels were still coming out – was a treatment for a whole new Star Wars trilogy, my own Episodes VII, VIII, and IX. I know the first one was going to be called The Ancient Fear and the last one The War of the Jedi, but I can't remember what I'd named Episode VIII; I do remember I was trying to avoid "The Adjective of the Noun" type titles and go with something similar to The Empire Strikes Back, but I just can't recall what I'd decided - something like The Broken Prophecy I think. Anyway, I might write more about these some day. I also wrote a very detailed outline for a Star Wars mini-series, but I'm not saying anything about that at all, in case I do ever get a shot at pitching any kind of Star Wars story (novel, comic, game, whatever).

Something else I wrote – and I'm pretty sure this pre-dates the Marvel Cinematic Universe – was a detailed plan for a Batman/Superman team-up movie. Indeed, it was designed to serve explicitly as a jumping-off point for a wider shared universe; I think I was inspired by the release of Superman Returns and Batman Begins and just wanted the two heroes to share a universe (it might have been even earlier and inspired more by the Justice League cartoon). So here I present, mostly from memory as I can't seem to find my original documents, a very brief summation of Young David's DCEU.

World's Finest: the ideas for this one were the most fleshed-out. It was set about a year into the careers of Batman and Superman. In brief, the plot centred around Luthor attempting to prove that Superman was dangerous and that he was the real hero. In doing so, he ends up creating Parasite (who proved a physical threat to Superman) and also releasing Joker from Arkham, to stage a bit of chaos (Joker's doctor, Harleen Quinzel, is taken hostage at the same time and essentially "becomes" Harley Quinn over the course of the film, although she never donned the costume or fell in a vat of acid or anything). The basic idea was that the film was a buddy-cop movie: Superman was open-hearted but very by-the-book, Batman was caustic, sarcastic, and all about the end result. They never have a physical fight in the film at all, but ideologically they're on different sides until the end of the second act, when Supes realises that Batman is far more of a hero than a vigilante, and Bats realises that he can't win this fight alone and his way isn't always the only way. At the end, they form a loose partnership; the Joker is back in Arkham, Parasite is locked away in STAR Labs, and Luthor is halfway to being ruined politically and financially (although still free as they couldn't pin anything on him).

World's Finest: Trinity: the sequel brought Wonder Woman into the mix. This film was a bit less well-planned. I'm going to try to be honest about my ideas, although in retrospect I think they're a bit "male gaze-y"; not that the film was salacious, but the idea of a "battle of the sexes", however it was framed, is absolutely not something I'd do nowadays, and I disagree with its interpretation of the Amazons. I was inspired by the comics I was reading, and at the time I viewed them as warriors first and foremost, and often quite anti-male. Anyway, the basic idea is that the Amazons start invading and attacking/assassinating prominent (male) figures. But this new character, dubbed "Wonder Woman" by the press, turns up to protect them. Supes & Bats attempt to find out who she is, who these "Amazons" are, and why they're attacking. Bruce has to get a bodyguard, and is assigned one Diana Prince – you see where this is going. Catwoman, Zatanna, and Poison Ivy were all in it. It is revealed ultimately that Circe had bewitched Hippolyta and Diana had been banished for opposing her mother, but at the end the villain is defeated, peace is restored, Diana officially becomes Wonder Woman and remains in the world at large. I still think, broadly, the plot works, but introducing Diana as an adjunct to Batman and Superman rings a bit false to me nowadays, as does introducing the Amazons as enemies (even if ultimately they're redeemed by the finale). Like I said, it's not the plot I'd write today.

World's Finest: Justice: The final part in the "trilogy" so to speak was – naturally – a Justice League movie. Now, by this point, I anticipated having a Green Lantern origin movie, and possibly Flash too, so these characters wouldn't be brand-new or introduced here. This film I'd planned the least; the villain was actually Mongul, who was (I believe) using his "Warworld" (which was a Death Star-like space station bristling with armaments) to conquer earth and build a slave army (I think his ultimate aim was either to defend himself against Darkseid, or win favour by providing him with an army; I forget). He may have used Starros to enslave the populace, I can't quite remember. It was Martian Manhunter who united the League (this was conceived in the days before Cyborg replaced J'onn as a founding member). Robin was in the film – I may have planned for there to be a Batman & Robin movie in between this and Trinity – and played a crucial role in the film's climax, freeing the League when they were all captured. I'm trying to remember who was actually in the League; Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, and Martian Manhunter for certain; I think I may have skipped Aquaman; I'm pretty sure I wanted another female character but I'm not sure who I went for – Zatanna, I think, as she was introduced in the previous film and I always like having a magic-user on the team. As a nod to a wider universe or sequel-bait, it was firmly established at the end that there was a worse threat than Mongul – specifically Darkseid, who was turning his attention to Earth.

So there we go. I had, naturally, planned further – I know that I envisioned a kind of two-part Justice League sequel (I think called Justice League of America and Justice League Unlimited) which was all about Darkseid’s invasion, with a cliffhanger at the end of “episode one” where Superman is apparently killed, and his resurrection being a significant plot point in “episode two”.

Now at the time of writing I’ve still not seen Justice League. I’ve read some reviews and I know it’s not very highly thought-of. That’s disappointing. I don’t know if my ideas are any better; certainly, apart from some concepts from my first World’s Finest plot, I’m not sure I’m awfully fond of most of it myself anymore. I’m not even sure why I’m posting this at all, but I guess sometimes you have stuff that you’re thinking of and it’s kinda nice to get it off your chest. And, for me personally, it’s fun to imagine an alternate universe where a Batman and Superman team-up movie was more optimistic action and sardonic comedy than people miserably shouting the word “Martha” in the rain.

#justice league #fan fiction #dc comics #movies

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syranaluvr · 5 years

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If Batman had killed Superman before the Man of Steel said anything further, how would that turn of events change Bruce (Batman)? Note: This will take place in an alternate DCEU.

Honestly I don’t think I’m the best person to answer this since I’m not too big on knowing Batman’s character, but here are my thoughts...(also I’m assuming u are referring to BvS with this ask)

For my answer, I’m assuming that after Bruce kills Supes, he realizes (probably through Lois and/or Martha Kent) that he was actually a person despite being a powerful alien so Bruce will feel terrible and regret immensely what he did. To add to this, him killing Supes may contribute to Lex’s plan succeeding (which I honestly don’t remember the details of) which could result in Martha Kent dying and then Bruce would feel even worse. Either way, I think it would really affect him to his core which could go multiple ways:

1. He feels so terrible and like a failure of all that he was supposed to be because he killed an innocent man that he would stop being Batman for good and wallow in misery for the rest of his life, unable to stop any of the evil surrounding him because he feels that he doesn’t deserve to.

2. He would snap and go crazy I honestly feel like Bruce is always close to this and be like fuck it, I killed supes so I may as well go all out now. So he would start to kill the villains he fights (Joker, Penguin. etc.) He would probably do this until another hero stopped him or he died.

3. He would wallow in misery for a while with the regret of what he had done, but he would get out of it, probably with the help of some support network. He would always carry the weight of the wrong he committed, but he would use that to fuel him into doing even more good now that he stopped Superman from being able to.

Sorry I couldn’t give you a clear answer but that’s what I got.

#ask #frostbite883 #batman

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numbuh-7-knd · 7 years

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So I just read this great fanfic about what the batfam does during a thunderstorm (found here), and it reminded me of an idea that's been floating around in my head for some time. Namely, what if somehow Bruce wound up taking in Barbra Gordon, either temporarily, or permanently. Anyway I can see this happening in a few different ways, like Barbara's father, commissioner Gordon, going missing/undercover/leaving Gotham for a case, and Bruce offers to take her in and keep her safe while he's away. Similarly Gordon could also be hurt on a case, leaving him in the hospital or temporarily too disabled to look after Barbra. More below the cut because this is super long.

Gordon could also somehow decide to abandon barbara, either because he suffered some kind of mental breakdown and couldn't bare to have her around anymore, or maybe because of Batgirl killing his son. I know that happens when Barbara is an adult, but maybe here it happens younger, and Gordon is either paranoid and thinks Babs would be safer with someone else as her legal guardian, or she reminds him of Batgirl (hint hint) so he doesn't want to be near her anymore. He also could discover her identity, and decide that while he can't bear to arrest his own daughter and have her tried for the death of his son, especially when he comes to understand that said death probably couldn't be helped, he also doesn't want her living with him anymore. Here Bruce would probably step in at some point and take Barbra in. There's also of course the possibility of Gordon dying, leaving Barbra an orphan. In this case he would probably fall victim to some supervillain, (maybe the Joker) and be killed on the job. My thoughts on this are that Commissioner Jim Gordon almost definitely knew raising Barbra that there was a chance he could be killed on the job, and probably kept a plan in place for who would care for her should something happen to him, especially with him seeing how many bad things tend to happen to kids in Gotham, and how horrible the system for protecting and caring for said children is. He'd especially want to insure that she wouldn't end up on the street, or worse in a abusive foster home or orphanage (or the detention center, seeing as that's where they sent Dick Grayson when the orphanage was full). I'm going to say that in this he and Bruce are good friend, and he trusts Bruce enough that Bruce would be on the list of people he would want to raise Babs if something happened to him. Of course that list would also include her Mother, as well as any extended family the Gordon's have, and possibly some other people involved with the police force. Assuming in this case that anyone ‘higher’ on the list than Bruce either isn't available/doesn't want to raise Barbara (or maybe they do take her in for a bit but it doesn't work out.) Bruce eventually decides to take her in making her and even more official member of the bat clan.

It would also be cute though for no angst to be involved and for Bruce and Commish Gordon to just fall in love and decide to raise their kids together though. Especially with the interesting family dynamics of the entire family trying to hide the fact that they're all superheroes from their “step” dad lol. (All the while Gordon totally already knows and is secretly laughing as the kids fumble to hide evidence and Bruce makes up excuses as to why he's not home or why he's up so late, and Alfred is so totally in on it, it being that Jim actually knows exactly what's going on with his family. We also get to see Jason (and the rest of the family) teasing Dick for his crush on their newest “sister”. Or maybe there are no secrets and Gordon knows that they're superheroes, and they know that he knows. Either way it would be adorable and they could refer to Bruce and James as “Bat-Dad” and “Cop-Dad” (or commish Dad, or non-bat Dad, or “the only non super besides Alfred in this family”) lol Also a lot of these could take place after Babs become Batgirl, or even before she becomes Batgirl, maybe even being an alternate origin story where she becomes Batgirl to help her Dad on a case that’s resulted in him sending her to live with Bruce, or to take down the people who either hurt or killed Commish Gordon. Or just because she learned that Bruce was Batman and that Dick was Robin, and she wanted to help them her new family and keep them from getting them from getting hurt or killed out there. Sorry for the long winded post, I just got all these ideas in my head and really needed to write them down. I might extend upon any of these in the future, but in the meantime feel free to use the ideas yourself or extend upon them, just please link back to this post and mention me so I can see it, because I'd love to read/see any of these ideas brought to life. Also feel free to send me any links for fanfics you see/know of where Bruce does adopt/take in Barbra, because I would love to read anything along those lines lol.

#batman #batgirl #barbra gordon #batfamily #batfam #commissionergordon #commissioner gordon #my ideas

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radioleary-blog · 5 years

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The Injustice League

If we had to elect a billionaire womanizer with anger issues, I wish we had elected Bruce Wayne instead. That I could get behind. Think about it, President Batman. How does that sound? Pretty damn awesome, that’s how that sounds! “Pow!” “Biff!” “Ka-Pow!” I love those comic book sound effects that accompany a solid kick to the face or a roundhouse punch on the old Adam West Batman show. I bet “Ka-Pow!” probably hurt a hell of a lot more than “Biff!” or “Pow!”, right? There was definitely a wide range of fight sound effects, I actually did a little research to find some other real examples of superheroes hitting each other, and they weren’t all great:

“Bam!” That’s not a punch, that’s the sound of that obnoxious midget Emeril Lagasse cooking food on TV.

“Zonk!” Sounds less like a mighty blow from Thor’s hammer and more like the stoner from Doonesbury doing blow and getting hammered.

“Boom!” “Crash!” These two word show up a lot in comics, and what scares me is these are the same words they use on Wall Street every day to describe what’s happening to our retirement accounts. It doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence that fluctuations in the market are like Batman’s fist, and my 401K is the Joker’s face.

“Crack!” “Zap!” “Crash!” That sounds like the drug you did, the police hitting you with a taser, and the sound you make as you hit the sidewalk. I would imagine the next sound effects would be “Make-Bail!” “Court-Appear!” and “Do-Time!” “Fap!” “Fwap!” “Sock!” “Bonk!” “Bamf!” “Wank!” “Splooge!” I kid you not, these were all really used in Marvel Comics from the 1980s. But it sounds more like the soundtrack of every teenage comic book nerd discovering masturbation. The next sound effect was most likely “Ma! Don’t You Knock?!”

But I digress. President-elect Batman. The Caped Crusader-in-Chief. The Dark Knight POTUS. Sure, it’s crazy, but I think that actually sounds less insane than our reality here on Earth-Prime, with President-elect Donald J. Trump. What the hell happened? Is it just me, or does it feel a little like we somehow stepped into an alternate reality that really wasn’t supposed to happen. Like someone messed up the timestream, and we all have a residual memory of things having been better somehow in a significantly different world. We can feel it in our bones, that things were intended to go down another way. It’s kind of like The Man In the High Castle, Philip K. Dick’s dystopian novel of an alternative reality where America lost World War II. It was a book I loved as a young man and read over and over, but now I know it as that show that’s supposed to be good that I can’t see because I don’t have Amazon. I preferred the book. There are certainly parallels, Trump actually lives in a high castle. But it’s more like The Man In the Gaudy Ostentatious Gold-Plated Tower. And rather than leading an underground resistance against Nazi and Imperial Japanese rule, he just kind of causes traffic in midtown Manhattan to become a permanent unmoving cluster-fuck from MoMa to The Met.

Maybe Donald Trump is like Batman from an alternate reality where his parents don’t get killed in an alley during a robbery attempt. So rather than devote his life to seeking justice and protecting the city from evil, he instead goes on the Howard Stern show and talks to Baba Booey about third-world swimsuit models he’s banged while he and one of his three wives were “on a break”. You know, Bruce Wayne only pretended to be a shallow, rich, gropey asshole so people would never suspect he was secretly a hero. I don’t think our President is pretending, and I don’t suspect he’s secretly a hero, either. I hope he is a hero, sure, but I still hope Andy Kaufman is just faking his own death, too.

Hey! Wait a minute! This explains why Trump’s eyes are so white while the rest of his face is burnt orange! He wears a mask! Holey Moley, It’s all starting to make sense! But whereas Batman fought the Penguin, The Riddler, and Poison Ivy, Trump mostly just fought Rosie O’Donnell. And a girl in a beauty pageant. And the cast of Hamilton. And I don’t think he actually won any of those fights, either. While Batman keeps the peace in Gotham City, one time on the Celebrity Apprentice Donald Trump kept Meatloaf and Gary Busey from fist-fighting over missing art supplies. Yeah, Batman seems like the better choice to me. Although I wonder what the sound effects would be for a Batman administration? “Veto!” “Photo-Op!” “Fund-Raise!”

As I’ve been thinking about this, and taking this weak premise far too seriously, I’m beginning to realize I may have some real problems with a Batman presidency. Not so much with the hitting and the vigilante stuff. Not with the fact that he’s a lunatic who deludedly thinks he rules a major metropolitan city, and if anyone else in a costume challenges him, he locks them away in Arkham mental asylum. No, my problem is the way he treats Alfred. Batman just may be a republican after all, because he treats Alfred the way the Walton family treat Wal-Mart employees.

How come every villain in Gotham City, from Clayface to Two-Face, they all have dozens and dozens of well-trained mercenary henchmen working for them, but Batman? He’s just has Alfred. He makes Alfred do absolutely everything. Bruce Wayne is like the richest man in Gotham City, but he’s too cheap to hire any real workforce? No wonder Gotham City is constantly overrun by criminals - Bane’s got an elite squad of para-military assassins knocking off the Gotham Bank, and Batman’s got an 85 year old British guy who’s gotta finish a load of laundry before he gasses up the Batmobile.

Alfred is like, “Yeah, right away, ‘Master Bruce’, mind if I put your damn socks away before I do the pre-flight check on the Bat-Copter? ‘Cause if I don’t take them out of the dryer right now, everything is going to be wrinkled AF by the time you get back.”

“You do realize I’ve only been trained to kiss rich people’s asses and serve soup, right? You want me to set the table and get the door? No problem. You want me to load Kryptonite missiles onto the Bat-Tank? Then you better download the manual, Caped Crusader, because they didn’t cover that shit in butler school. It’s bad enough you’ve got me changing the oil in the Bat-Jet while I’m wearing a tuxedo, but then I gotta keep dinner warm all night while you brood over the city from the top of a watertower.”

“You know, you employ like 50,000 people worldwide with this Wayne Foundation and Wayne Industries, and routinely hire thousands more temporary workers and independent contractors. You know that, right? You are on the board of directors. Here’s a crazy idea, let me get back to polishing the silver and ironing your cape, and maybe you bring in some people who are actually qualified to run your advanced-weapons motor pool.”

Is it my imagination or does it look like Alfred works seven days a week? Every crisis I’ve ever seen in Gotham, Alfred is always right there. I’ve never seen him take a day off. You’d think if something happened on a weekend, Bruce Wayne would have like a part-time guy there. “Hey, Travis, is it? Can you hold off on doing those dishes and run down to the Bat-Cave and dig out my underwater Batsuit? Killer croc is starting some shit. No, I don’t know where it is exactly, Have you looked by the giant penny? Or the T-Rex? Alfred has his own system. You guys need to communicate on things like this.”

You think Alfred ever hangs out with Jarvis, the Avengers’ butler, and they just bitch about their jobs? “You just have Batman, you have it easy, Thor leaves his hammer laying around and I can’t move it, I have to vacuum around it, and I always vacuum up Ant-Man. And they ought to call her the Scarlet Bitch, let me tell you.”

But it just goes to show you how old these characters are that they have a butler. Who the hell has a butler these days? Mike Tyson had an entourage of like 50 people, but even he didn’t have a butler. A tiger-wrangler? Sure. A Maori Tattooist? Yes. No butler. Butlers are an anachronism from an antiquated class system. Batman still reflects the culture of the 1930s when he was created. Good thing Batman isn’t from like 70 years earlier than that, or it probably wouldn’t be a white guy working for him, and he probably wouldn’t have a choice. And when he said ‘Master Bruce’, he’d really mean it.

So let me see if I got the story straight here. Alfred raises Bruce from a kid after his parents were killed. And in gratitude, Bruce makes him work like thirty years past retirement age. No pension plan? So he’s just gotta keep working until he drops dead? No 401K? Bruce Wayne is one cheap bastard. No. He’s a Cheap Bat-stard.

Batman is so cheap he won’t even rent a nice place for his Batman stuff, he just lurks in an underground cave full of batshit and stagnant water. I don’t know which he’s gonna catch first, the Riddler, or dysentery. Is he gonna collar a criminal, or just get cholera. A damp cave? Really? It’s a breeding ground for mosquitos. He’ll get the zika virus before he gets the Joker. He’s basically in a subterranean pit filled with bat guano, breathing that shit in, he’ll get double-pneumonia before he gets two-face.

And they thought Howard Hughes was a crazy billionaire. At least Howard Hughes was smart enough to bang some movie stars. Batman? What’s his thought process on a Friday night? “Hmm, what to do tonight...I could date that supermodel who’s been sending me nude selfies….but on the other hand I could impale some junkie mugger with a couple of Batarangs… I gotta go with Batarangs. Hey Alfred!”

Make America and Gotham City great again.

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Best of DC: Week of May 29th, 2019

Best of this Week: Doomsday Clock #10 - Geoff Johns, Gary Frank, Brad Anderson and Rob Leigh

And yet another wrinkle is added to the DC Universe.

Or should I say, “Metaverse” now? Yes, after I think three months since the last issue, Doomsday Clock returns with yet another strong issue that expands upon the mythos of the DC Universe and just how Doctor Manhattan viewed and affected things at the many different positions of time that he has been able to inhabit.

The issue is framed around an actor by the name of Carver Colman, a very huge star in DCs 1954, who has been referenced or used in previous issues. This gives some kind of continuity in the context of the story as Johnny Thunder was seen watching his movie in the retirement home al the way back in issue two or three. Colman, unfortunately, has a secret that gets him killed soon after wrapping up the filming of his biggest hit, The Adjournment and as we make it through the issue and the back and forth of his life, we find the biggest change to Doctor Manhattan’s character and how he has to bend to the rules of this new universe.

Doctor Manhattan actually meets Colman in 1938 when he was a struggling actor who had just lost his job delivering mail to a movie studio after an unfortunate accident and things he saw. Manhattan takes Colman out for some food, attempting to use him as a rod to focus on to look towards the future as he can’t seem to do so on his own after arriving. He does so and is able to see a year into the future, then four and so on. His abilities work again, but then he hears something strange.

A radio report of a man lifting a car into the air. The first appearance of Superman on April 13th, 1938. Suddenly, it was gone, the crowds of people were gone as if they never existed. He follows the path where Superman existed in 1938 and finds the Justice Society, having formed and waiting for Superman to answer their summons. Jay Garrick “Flash”, “Green Lantern” Alan Scott, Hawkman, Doctor Fate and others, waiting for the Man of Steel to join their ranks and suddenly, they too have never heard of him.

Manhattan follows the many arrivals of Superman, from 1956, to 1986 and sees his arrival change again and again, noting the many deaths of Ma and Pa Kent and how this “Universe” seems to use Superman as a focal point, even going to a thousand years from now when Superman was briefly part of the Legion of Superheroes. So to test how things revolve around Superman, he changes the past by moving the Lantern away from Alan Scott, killing him, and drastically changes the future, creating the New 52 Timeline.

Everything is recontextualized as Manhattan sees that this action changes this universe and that it’s constant state of flux affects the wider multiverse. From the parallel worlds, to the anti-matter, to the Dark Multiverse, Earth Prime is a “Metaverse” in his words. The others change to match whatever is going on in the Prime World and once it realizes what he’s done, it begins to fight back. Manhattan sees Wally West trying to fight his way back to the Universe. This one action causes a chain reaction that will lead to his inevitable confrontation with Superman where Superman either kills him or he kills the Metaverse.

Cutting back to 1954, Manhattan is at Carver Colman’s home on the night that he’s murdered. He doesn’t do anything to stop it.

There’s a saying that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” In the Watchmen Universe, Doctor Manhattan was allowed to do or not do as he pleased because that world was a little bit more grounded or at worst cynical. Though, one might say that because he refused or didn’t care to use his power at a larger scale, Ozymandias’ “evil” won. Though Ozymandias thought what he did was the right thing, this series proved it it be disastrous in the wake of Rorschach’s journal being published, but initially Veidt’s plan did succeed. Doctor Manhattan escaping to the DC Universe put him into direct conflict with the Metaverse and its Hope. Its innate desire to have the good triumph over evil won’t let Doctor Manhattan get away with inaction and in his words, “To this universe of hope… I have become the villain.”

Words can’t describe how hype I was for this. With each and every issue, a new layer is added and brings us closer and closer to the epic conclusion that only Geoff Johns and Gary Frank can realize. I also love how they’ve expanded on the importance of Earth Prime, seeing as how it has indeed gone through many changes. It’s good to finally have an explanation that implies that even through the many reboots and retcons that if DC wanted to, they could tap into those timelines as main universes at any time. Everyone’s favorite time period matters or will matter again soon.

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"One last adventure together…"

Runner Up: Batman: Last Knight on Earth #1 - Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion, FCO Plascencia and Tom Napolitano

Joker's words to describe his and Batman's last run together in the hell that is the world after some unexplained event killed numerous heroes, villains and just about anything else. It also describes what MAY be the last time we see Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo do a big Batman story together and I already feel like we're in for a BIG one.

After a curious case of large scale chalk drawings, showing a dead Batman, leads the Dark Knight to the Crime Alley he inadvertently sets off a trap laid by an unknown assailant using the decomposing body of a ten year old child. He later wakes up in Arkham Asylum, apparently having been there since KILLING HIS FAMILY in Crime Alley all those years ago. Capullo does a great job of setting atmosphere and making things unsettling as even a small fly buzzing around and "Dr. Redd Hudd" looming over a straight jacketed Bruce Wayne looks creepy.

Arkham appears to be just a regular Asylum with Alfred showing up and trying to convince Bruce that Batman was all in his head, showing him a mock costume they made to keep him calm with a cowl stitched to a straight jacket. Bruce sees through it all and fights his way through Arkham until Alfred reveals the truth. He only wanted to keep his boy safe because half of Gotham was just gone. Years had passed and Batman has no idea what happened.

He later wakes up in a desert and coincidentally finds the head of The Joker. He wakes and immediately begins cracking jokes as Batman takes him and they begin to walk to Coast City. I don't know how much of this is real and that adds to the mystique of the story. We're never given an explanation as to how he got there from Arkham or how Joker is surviving.

They arrive at Coast City and the decayed corpse of Mogo looms over a giant crater and ruins. Joker says that all of the Lanterns fell and rings are just there for the taking. Suddenly the duo are attacked by projections of babies before being saved by Vixen and Poison Ivy. Ivy then knocks Bruce out just in case and he wakes up surrounded by the new Amazons; Vixen, Donna Troy, Poison Ivy, Supergirl and Wonder Woman.

Wonder Woman explains that one day, Luthor just… convinced most that they should just take what they deserve. He told them that goodness was a lie and they just ate it up. It echoed the future that Luthor saw back in Justice League/Legion of Doom #5, but given that this is a Black Label book, one wouldn't be wrong if they didn't want to think of this as the explanation of that timeline because they're not in the same canon.

Wonder Woman also tells Batman that the one wielding the Anti-Life Equation may be one of the Boys and pleads with him to join the Amazons in Hades.

But Batman is Batman and he decides that he's going to put a stop to this.

Last Knight on Earth reads like an alternative ending for Scott Snyder's Justice League epic. Even though that story is far from over, not even close, there's this unsettling feeling that, if Scott didn't have to have the heroes win in the end, this should be the absolute endgame. A world, no UNIVERSE possibly, under siege by someone wielding the Anti-Life Equation, hope dead and dying and the ever creeping feeling of dread knowing that somehow life and death have lost enough meaning that Joker as a decapitated head still lives… this story is terrifying.

Honestly, this might be some of Capullos best art to date. With Glapion and Plascencia's help, this book feels so atmospheric and dark. Glapion accentuates Capullos lines and shading well with dark-dark inks, making Batman appear to be shrouded in it even in the sun. It's haunting, especially in the Arkham scenes where things are absolutely not as they seem and dark secrets hide behind and within the walls. Plascencia, on the other hand, can make even light and vibrant colors threatening. The red sand on Jokers jar is intense and the Green Lantern babies are deadly. Hell, Coast City, Hall Jordan's crown jewel, looks unbelievably desolate, colored like a wasteland. Capullo pulls all of this together with as much detail as he possibly can and his work shows.

Faces are expressive, from Batmans fear, to Alfreds regret to Jokers madness. Body language is utilized greatly as Batman fights like a caged animal. He's taken aback by Jokers head, but still finds his resolve. Wonder Woman is still fierce, but even her edge has dulled with the sheer lack of hope that running away and going underground has given her.

This story is terrifying and I absolutely love it. From the creepy visuals of Capullos art, to the expression of thought because of the mature liberties Black Label books can take, it's all beautiful. This one is absolutely going to match my love for Batman: Damned and every one should go and read this. High recommend!

#comics #dc #dc comics #geoff johns #gary frank #doomsday clock #doctor manhattan #watchmen #the multiverse #superman #alan scott #dc universe #scott snyder #greg capullo #last knight on earth #batman #joker #the joker #dc black label

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