The Batman Who Laughs #4 - DC Comics

THE BATMAN WHO LAUGHS #4, June 2019

Despite being the third best-selling comic of April 2019, at least according to “Diamond Comic Distributors”, this twenty-four page periodical probably didn’t go down all that well with its 103,645 strong audience, considering Scott Snyder starts the book off with Batman and his lifelong father-figure, Alfred Pennyworth, going toe-to-toe with one another deep inside the Bat Cave. In fact, as this publication’s highlight is possibly watching a partially undressed Jim Gordon pitifully cry somewhat hysterically as his fingers are bitten by a trio of fiendishly-fanged Robins, it is hard to correlate or recognise anything within the New Yorker’s frustratingly choppy narrative which could be associated with the Dark Knight’s ever-enduring success over the past eight decades; “No! Stay away! Please Sob Stop! Someone help me!”

Admittedly, Bruce Wayne’s agitated alter-ego is clearly in something of a deranged state, courtesy of wearing a heavily-spiked visor forged “from the dark metal we stripped from Gotham”, whilst Gotham City’s Police Commissioner has just heard how an alternative version of himself died horribly by having a booby-trapped notebook with spring-loaded acid melt away his face. But even so it is hard to imagine either the Caped Crusader or the heavily-moustached former United States Marine behaving in such a cowardly fashion, especially when Mark “Jock” Simpson pencils Batman’s opponent so very clearly acting out of love for his misguided ‘son’.

Sadly, this impropriety with two of Bob Kane and Bill Fingers most recognisable creations doesn’t stop there either, as the Stan Lee Award winner even pens a bizarre “three hours prior” flashback sequence beneath Gotham at the Last Laugh Resource Compound, in which the masked vigilante is suddenly confronted by a badly injured Joker who utterly bizarrely just wants “to talk”, so as to wish his arch-nemesis good luck in the crime-fighter's upcoming battle against the Grim Knight and the Batman Who Laughs. The duo’s subsequent conversation as to whether the pair will be at war with one another forever, and whether there is a way to end their rivalry, has debatably been done before in Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s 1988 one-shot masterpiece “The Killing Joke”, so such an attempted re-tread of so iconic moment genuinely feels disingenuous of Snyder and Jock to their now legendary predecessors.

The regular cover art of "THE BATMAN WHO LAUGHS" No. 4 by Jock