The Batman Who Laughs #5 - DC Comics

THE BATMAN WHO LAUGHS #5, July 2019

Described by the “SyFy Wire” website as “Scott Snyder's Batman opus”, this twenty-six page periodical probably surprised many of its 108,677 readers in May 2019, due to its disconcerting desire to depict the Dark Knight as a decidedly deranged costumed vigilante who seemingly has no issue beheading a freshly-deceased corpse, just so he can scare the wits out of a posse of trigger-happy police officers; “I will come… for you and everyone you love and I will make what happened to this Bruce Wayne here look like a damned mercy.” Unnervingly however, such barbaric savagery on behalf of the Caped Crusader doesn’t end there either with the New Yorker’s narrative supposedly showing the super-hero subsequently succumbing to his inadvertent infection of Joker serum and battering an already badly-bruised Jim Gordon before the Commissioner can stop him turning Gotham City over to his evil counterpart.

Mercifully, such perplexing plot developments are though interlaced with a couple of genuinely pulse-pounding sequences including an intriguing consultation between this comic’s titular character and the nefarious Court of Owls. Wonderfully atmospheric, as the secret society judge the macabre super-villain from the supposed safety of their ornate auditorium, this hearing genuinely plays out like a black comedy as a wheelchair bound “youngling” coldly sentences the leather-clad hybrid to death, and then all too quickly discovers that her suggestion that the Talons “take your head… to make it a lamp” is a little presumptuous.

This surprising show of prodigious penmanship by Snyder proves particularly poignant once this book’s audience realise that the adolescent socialite’s desire to have “a night light for my room” is the least of the girl’s worries as the Batman Who Laughs murders everyone around them, courtesy of some well-placed bombs, and then deftly kicks the sick child into the fatal waters of Gotham River. So surreal a mass-murder is incredibly impactive, and contrasts nicely to the much more dynamically-paced simultaneously-timed flight of Gordon from three of the Grim Knight’s flesh-chomping ‘hounds’ through the metropolis’ underground waterways.

Outwardly destined to die at the hands of his sons from an alternate universe, this breath-taking swim for survival is as frantic as it is horrifying, and owes a great debt to Mark “Jock” Simpson’s scratchy pencils, which imbues its fleeing figures with an inhuman quality all of their own. In addition, the British cartoonist, “best known for his work in 2000 AD”, arguably adds an extra element of ferocity to the blood-crazed Robins simply by providing the trio with such razor-sharp teeth…

The regular cover art of "THE BATMAN WHO LAUGHS" No. 5 by Jock