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| Real Name: Bruce Wayne |
| Also Known As: Batman |
| Place Of Birth: Gotham City, Earth -22, Dark Multiverse |
| First Appearance: Dark Days: The Casting Vol.1 #1 (2017) Modern Age Villain |
| Known Associates: Barbartos, The Drowned, Merciless, The Red Death, Devastator, Dawnbreaker, Murder Machine |
| Group Affiliation: The Dark Knights |
| Base Of Operations: Earth -22, Dark Multiverse |
| Grudges: The Justice League |
| Creators: Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo |
| Gallery: Click |
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| The story of the Batman of Earth -22 was not much different from that of any other version of the Caped Crusader. However, everything went sideways when the Joker decided to go all out in his attempt to destroy Gotham. While being drugged and restrained, he was forced to watch as his nemesis systematically razed his home. After bragging about levelling hospitals, killing other villains, and brutally ending Jim Gordon, he forced Bruce to watch as he begins murdering adults in front of their children in Crime Alley. If that wasn't enough, he Jokerized the children and set them loose on what was left of the city. Driven beyond the breaking point, Batman overcame the drugs in his system and beat Joker to a pulp. When Joker promised to keep bringing the chaos he has witnessed over and over again, Bruce lost himself completely and snapped Joker's neck. |
| Two days after the murder of the Joker, Batman and Superman talked about what happened. Bruce revealed that Joker went as far as he did because the chemicals that changed him in the first place had eaten away at whatever sanity he had left. Though he felt no guilt, he affirmed that he was not planning to make killing a regular thing. When Superman updated him on the status of the jokerized kids, such as their violent tendencies, Bruce - uncharacteristically - lets out a small laugh, something that alarmed them both. |
| Three days after that, Batgirl, Nightwing, Red Hood, and Red Robin were training in the Batcave when they notice the training robots were fighting harder than usual. Though they succeed at the exercise, Nightwing voiced what they're all feeling; something was wrong and Bruce brought them there to talk about it. Bruce explained that an advanced toxin he had never encountered was inside the Joker's body, set to release when he died and infect a single person. It managed to spread just enough to infect Bruce, and has been altering his brain to mix his knowledge with Joker's lack of morality. The rest of the family immediately began thinking of possible solutions or methods to keep him locked up until they could do so, but Bruce explained the real reason he brought them there; so he could gun them all down because they would have noticed his change first, which he proceeded to do. |
| By one week after the fall of the Batman Family, Bruce had slaughtered the rest of the Justice League by using the stockpiles of various villains' weaponry they had built up over the years. On the Justice League Watchtower, he cornered the last ones standing; Superman and his immediate family. Bruce unveiled a warped Damian and the rest of the Dark Robins to Clark, then exposed he and Jon to a modified Black Kryptonite, designed to send Kryptonians into a killing frenzy before it killed them, which he had done previously to Supergirl to cause her to murder her foster parents. As the two murder Lois, Bruce's transformation into The Batman Who Laughs finished, allowing him to cackle as his best friend and the man's son tore Lois apart before dying. |
| The people of Earth -22 fight back, but Bruce annihilated everything they threw at him until he and his Robins were all that remained. As his world began to fade from existence, Barbatos arrived and revealed the rest of the Dark Multiverse to him, and his plans to go after the true Multiverse as well. Believing him to be the ideal Bat to help him, he made him the spearhead for his plans to drag all of creation into darkness. |
