Much like with the first issue, Snyder opened with yet another metaphor concerning the functionality of hearts and the sentiment that Bruce has infused it with while he recalled the last action his father Thomas Wayne ever did seconds before the man was shot to death--he covered his son's chest on instinct where the heart dwelt. Poetic prose like this lives on in Synder's other comics, and his Batman deserved such poignancy too, considering that more than the standard fanfare of a superhero comic book, Batman was also always the story of a fractured man whose privilege and trauma go hand-in-hand as he pursued a dark path to become the beacon of justice in a very violent city filled with disturbed individuals who often bled from the same vein as his own grief and slice of madness.
This second issue picked up immediately after the previous one's final moment, with Alfred operating on the Joker's heart where the toxin supposedly was released and infected Batman. Meanwhile, an understandably sluggish Bats (who was doing his darndest to curtail the spread of the toxin by injecting an array of syringes bearing antidotes) convinced his butler and most loyal friend not to even think about allowing the Joker to die, as tempting as that sounds. With deadly poison coursing through his body, he still went to work like the champ he was, disguised as Harvey Bullock, to talk to Jim Gordon. Yet another Bruce Wayne was killed, this time thrown from several stories up in a Building That Doesn't Exist, at least not in this version of Earth. This Bruce Wayne became Mayor after the death of the second Robin Jason Todd.
The working theory was that Batman Who Laughs had been picking out different Bruce Waynes from several intertwining universes to make a point to our Earth's Batman. He also brought along The Grim Knight, the Earth-22 Dark Multiverse version borne from when a young Bruce Wayne picked up the gun in the alley and shot his parents' killer with no remorse. That's why this Bats has no problem carrying firearms, something we all know Batman has always been against. Because I was missing this context from the last issue, I actually thought they are the same twisted version of Batman, but no, The Grim Knight was an ally of BMWL, acting as reinforcement. Someday, I'll touch upon this Dark Multiverse storyline across Bat-titles. Like I said, it's been five years, and I'm a bit rusty now that I haven't kept track of things. Moving on...
Batman would then share to Jim Gordon something called the Last Laugh. Apparently, the founding families of Gotham, after 1780 when a plague wiped out a third of the population in the city, feared that what they saw at the heart of the country could become the means to the infection. Just like your average Gothamite then and now, they decided to prepare for the worst, vowing never to allow Gotham to become the source of such darkness. That was how they set up a system called the Last Laugh. It's apparently a defense system "in which Gotham can be protected if anything terrible spread inside". Essentially, Batman installed something to that effect on Wayne Tower. It's a way of purifying the air in the city, restoring waterways and the overall health of its citizens independently. It can only be accessed through DNA, which would be Jim Gordon and Bruce Wayne's. Any Bruce Wayne, as it turned out.
BMWL and the Grim Knight entered the premises of the tower and went to work to disable the controls. It's worth nothing Batman was still under the influence of the Joker toxin which will turn him into BMWL if he didn't fix that shit soon, but he's got other concerns. Crime likes to multi-task after all. This below is my favorite set of panels because they harkened back once more to what Snyder opened up with regarding the functionality of hearts while also allowing readers to glimpse BMWL's twisted logic.
"You're an old man over a child's heart--weak, soft, protecting nothing." Well, shit, when you put it like that...
In his warped mind, he actually thought that he was doing Batman a favor by killing all these different Bruce Waynes and gift-wrapping them here in this Earth for some rude awakening. BMWL stressed that this world's Bruce Wayne/Batman was the least accomplished of all the versions of himself because he's caught in the same cycle unlike other Bruces who either chose to domestically be happy as a husband and father or politically effect change as a public servant. Hell, at least BMWL is...a social change crusader himself? In any case, he does make sense the same way the Joker's rhetoric often did if you stop long enough to stare into the abyss.
This mini series is slowly shaping itself to be another masterpiece for Scott Snyder, but it's only been the second issue so I will try to curtail my expectations. I have four more to go and I'm looking forward to reading and reviewing within this week!
RECOMMENDED: 9/10
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