#Batman Broken City

[batmancurated]

by eduardo risso

[allgremlinart]

Batman drawn by Eduardo Risso

from Batman: Broken City

[martyrbat]

[ID: Bruce Wayne and Minhkhoa Khan breaking up in the rain. Bruce is in normal civilian clothes while Khoa has a white cloak on and a mask that hides his eyes. Khoa persuades, “We'll start in a small city in Southeast Asia, and systematically dismantle its criminal underworld. Out all the corrupt politicians. And then we'll go to the next, and the next. We'll build a high-tech base of operations that moves with us. We'll live well off the coffers of the gangs we dismantle. We'll expand from there. In time, maybe we could even tackle a city like Gotham. Not like boys, but like men at the peak of our skills.” Bruce simply tells him, “No.” Minhkhoa points an accusatory finger at him as his angry response has been edited to be a post by @/egirlbutternubs that reads, “But babe you love being gaslit.” END ID]

[mikami1992]

I just saw a post of a FanArt of Richard Greyson winning gold medals at the Olympics…

so an idea comes to mind…

A crazy guy is stalking the US Olympic team, at first the classic letters from a disturbing stalker, worrying but not enough to do anything more than increase security and start an investigation, after all they are in the middle of the inauguration and there is not much that can be done…

they don't plan to cancel anything… until the truck where the athletes are leaving the event is sabotaged/attacked…

despite the vehicle overturning, most of them had a scare and some bruises… but there are several of them who were left with injuries that prevent them from continuing in the competition.

which should end with the withdrawal of some competitions by the United States… but luckily they meet some of the Wayne boys who came to see the event and they are willing to be substitutes, even if it's just to fill in the spots…

Meanwhile, the Batkids are taking some time off, and by unanimous decision (no one votes against Cas) they decide to go see the opening and some events of the Olympics, what they didn't expect was to find a case involving the Olympic team, where everything seems to point to someone within it, targeting other athletes.

So they decide to investigate from within.

[distort-opia]

Ok idk if this is common knowledge or if I'm misunderstanding, but do we have an idea of when joker fell in love with batman? Did he come out of the sauce like that or was it during his young villanhood?

-@Tinygalaxykid

The answer depends a lot on writer and continuity, I suppose... and on personal preference. Some (like Tynion or Snyder) retrospectively wrote Joker as being obsessed with Batman from the very beginning, from their very first interaction. However, even then, I would say there's a difference between obsession and love. Because if we're talking obsession, Batman also got unhinged about Joker very early on.

Older comics portraying initial interactions between Batman and Joker actually show that when first emerging, Joker didn't target Batman at all. He was interested in taking down Gotham, and Batman was just an obstacle in his path (and I guess now I can add King's The Winning Card here too). I have a longer meta in response to someone's question here that might be of more help, going into depth on Batman and Joker's first interactions and the development of their obsession here. Personally, I think there's a lot more canon attesting that Joker wasn't in love from the get-go and that he genuinely wanted to kill Batman-- and that it took time for him to realize he even wanted Bruce alive. Joker wasn't playing around, he wasn't pretending; his schemes and attempts to kill Batman were real.

However, there's multiple moments in their first years in which Joker thought he killed Batman... and he's not entirely triumphant. But I'll put the rest of this under the cut because I've gotten long again.

You can visibly see Joker struggle with Batman's potential death here, for example:

Batman: Batgirl (1997)

This takes place around Year 8, and as you can see, Joker's jostled... but only for a moment. At the end of the day, as I mentioned, Joker's approach depended on the writer; some had Joker as purely homicidal and gleeful in trying to kill Batman, while others wrote him as coming to avoid killing Batman because then he'd be losing his playmate. I think one of the earliest and overt instances of the latter was this:

Batman (1940) #408

And that technically takes place around Year 10 of Batman's career. So if we're taking this as a progression, it did take Joker a while to arrive at these sentiments, and even then, he's conflicted about them. He acknowledges himself later on that he pivots back and forth between trying to kill Batman in earnest and not.. another time he decided that no he definitely wants to kill Batman now:

The Brave and The Bold (2007) #27

By the 2000s though, we got the infamous story Superman: Emperor Joker. Which entirely hinged upon Joker's feelings for Batman, but also his unawareness of them. Superman manages to make Joker realize that Batman is fundamental to his understanding of the world, and that he could not erase him, not matter how hard he tried:

Superman: Emperor Joker (2000)

Joker's memories of this are taken away, but to be honest, I do think this marked... a change in Joker's understanding of himself. Because the first time ever, to my knowledge, that Joker's told Batman he loves him, is this:

Batman (1940) #625

This was published in 2004, and let's say taking place around Year 15 (though in realistic post-Crisis continuity, it's even later). So, if we're trying to look at the timeline, to me it becomes obvious that Joker's feelings and his own awareness of them were a progression. He's always been obsessed with Batman, but he becomes more territorial and more... in love, with time.

Because what happens in this time? Batman saves his life, time and time again. Batman doesn't kill him. Batman keeps playing his game, gives him attention, doesn't give up on him... with The Killing Joke as an essential moment in which Batman offers to help, despite what Joker did. All these things Joker could not have known immediately after they met. So I guess my opinion is that while obsession was near immediate, love (of the very twisted kind) came later.

[firequeensrules]

Some Batman 138 leaks...Yikes!

At least for once Damian get his ass beaten by Tim and Dick goes feral for Jason Todd's sake! Batman possessed or not is not getting a pass hopefully this time 😔!!

[ungoliantschilde]

"Or just God... Laughing at me Again?", by Eduardo Risso, with Colors by Patricia Mulvihill, Letters by Clem Robins, and a Script written by Brian Azzarello.

[ciboriaadastra]

Having a thought about how the amount of wealth Bruce comes into and then amasses for himself changed over the decades of Batman media, and the reason he's beeen scaled up to be so impossibly wealthy is probably because cities and companies in DC lore are analogs to real life places and companies.

Wayne Enterprises probably reflects how homogenous American multinational corporations are now, where a single company can make and distribute almost all consumer goods because it has bought out/merged hundreds of smaller companies + purchased everything it needed from the ground up so it does not depend on many others besides itself.

Just something that crossed my mind when I was looking up what WE actually does and the Fandom (bleh) wiki listed so many branches. Wayne Shipping? Wayne Foods? Like...is this Amazon and Bruce is now Bezos? Wayne Entertainment? He's also Disney? Wayne Electronics? This is Apple? Wayne Aerospace? Boeing??? Bruce is trying to be in control of and monitor every single means of production and every production line fr

Feel like that should influence how people view Wayne Enterprises and Bruce himself. Steadily creeping in and taking root in every industry. People get curious about a new construction project in the city, but once it's revealed to be a Wayne Tower it's filling people with dread. Though, it was a long time coming...everything you order online comes in a box with a W on the tape delivered to your address in a black as night truck with a giant W emblazoned on the side. The meds in your cabinet were produced under Wayne Pharmaceuticals. The cable and streaming services were recently bought by Wayne Entertainment. The Wayne Foundation started offering scholarships at the major college campuses. Your phone is Wayne tech. Your car was built with Wayne Steel. Soon the hospitals will be all Wayne Medical, your insurance company bought out. The local newspapers and stations will be bought up. The libraries. The clinics. The orphanages. The schools. The grocery store. You're never going to scrub that b ig soulless W out of your head. The way the logo looks like the head of a pitchfork, ready to stab and capture the intended prey.

Thinking about how Wayne Medical seems so innocuous in what it does except for the bit on how Bruce has access to every person in Gotham's medical records, because he can access the Wayne Medical databases and use that information to track suspects. And the thing is WE does not just exist in Gotham, it's a multinational corporation with bases in major cities not just in the U.S. but around the world. This man has millions of people's medical records easily accessible to him which feels both extremely unethical and extremely illegal. Not that civilians can prove he can and does access those records though.

[catboybatman]

The 2000s were such a weird era for Batman/detective comics its like back to back mid and garbage runs

[loverboybrightsideghost]

bruce the batman wayne is something that can be so personal

[batgeance]

his type? kick his ass just once and/or be a complete mystery to him and he's done for

[allgremlinart]

he really was The Kid Ever...

[5nake-eater]

I normally really like Tynion comics but I truly hated DC Vs. Vampires past issue 6. And yet I am eagerly awaiting Volume 2

[sweetteaanddragons]

I have been thinking lately about a universe where Bruce Wayne killed the Joker.

I want to be clear here, since there are so many longstanding debates on this topic: I do not think Bruce Wayne should kill the Joker. I have just been wondering what would happen if the circumstances aligned in such a way that he did.

And to be clear on a related, yet slightly different topic: when I say I have been wondering about what if Bruce Wayne killed the Joker, I do not mean as the Batman. I mean Bruce "Brucie" Wayne.

Maybe it's kind of an accident? Like, he definitely did intend to hit the Joker, but he's Brucie right now, so he's trying not to look like he knows what he's doing while still doing enough damage to keep the Joker from killing someone, and meanwhile the Joker makes just the wrong move and -

And here we are. Brucie just killed the Joker.

Bruce's reaction here is one thing; he has his one rule for a reason, he's just broken it, he's determined to turn himself in -

His family's reaction is a whole different story. How does Cass feel about this?

How does Jason? Bruce has killed the Joker, just like he wanted, but it wasn't for him, not really, and -

And meanwhile, this happens in front of, say, a gala full of people, so now all of Gotham gets to react to it too.

Average Gothamite, seeing the words BRUCE WAYNE, JOKER, and KILLED in the same headline: OH, NO.

Average Gothamite, once they've processed the order those words are actually in: . . . I did not have that on this year's bingo card.

The city's most famous mass murderer has just been publicly killed by the city's biggest employer/philanthropist/source of tabloid harmless nonsense! Three days before Brucie was making tabloid headlines by tripping into a fountain and somehow losing his shirt in the process! Two weeks before, the newspaper was running a retrospective on the Wayne murders and what donation Brucie was making to help the families of victims this year! The article mentioned how one of his adopted sons had also tragically become a murder victim!

Now this has happened, and Bruce is having a breakdown over breaking his one rule, and the rest of Gotham just assumes that this is because poor Brucie thinks this somehow makes him like the man who killed his parents. They send a huge outpouring of support his way. This in no way helps Bruce's actual breakdown.

Ninety percent of Gotham is sure Brucie didn't actually mean to kill the Joker, and pretty much a hundred percent of them support him whether he meant to do it or not. No one wants to have anything to do with prosecuting this mess. Bruce is trying to make it as clear as possible that he will fully cooperate with the justice system and meanwhile an entire gala full of people is suddenly acting like they could in no way have possibly witnessed events that took place ten feet in front of their faces. Did Bruce kill the Joker? Is the officer sure? That doesn't seem like him. Maybe the Joker just tripped on his own. Marble floors, you know. Very slippery.

[fokker4311]

Little Boy and Fatman from Batman: Broken City (Issues #620-625)

I love their dynamic! He's a hulking brute and she's a smaller, but deadly fighter.

[trianglegoddess]

Feral McGee™

It starts with the Joker. 

His goons picked up Tim Drake. Not specifically because it was Tim Drake, he just so happened to be in the Joker’s neighborhood, and we'll, he can't pass up that opportunity now can he? 

Except Tim Drake is watching, along with the rest of Gotham, at the Batcomputer. He’s nursing a broken foot and has been put on monitor duty until he's cleared for field work again. 

The guy looks enough like him, though. Black hair, blue eyes, and bags under his eyes for days. He's also got the same lean sort of build like he does. 

It happens like this. 

The Joker is doing his monologue thing where he explains whatever twisted game he's come up with this time. He takes up the majority of the screen, so nobody can see Not-Tim behind him, not until the big reveal. Then he covers the screen again, getting up close and personal, before stepping back. In those quick few seconds, Not-Tim is no longer sitting there tied to the chair. 

Someone off camera lets the Joker know, and he whirls around, confused as the rest of Gotham. 

And then Not-Tim comes in with the steel chair. 

Or, well, a crowbar, but the reference holds up. 

He takes out one of Joker’s knees before punching him in the face. The Joker drops like a bag of stones, out cold. 

Then he looks towards the camera. 

“Hey there. I'm not really sure where I am, but also if he was after Tim Drake, he got the wrong guy. I'm not him, I'm just some dude. Anyway, I'll just-yep-” he carefully steps over the unconscious Joker, gives the camera a little wave, and then leaves. 

Batman and Nightwing enter shortly after, with the Joker and his goons out cold and tied up. The knots were complicated enough where, in the end, the police resorted to cutting the ties off of them so they could be properly cuffed and taken to Arkham. 

“A constrictor knot,” Batman tells Nightwing as they watch the villain be taken away. “Often used by sailors to temporarily tie things together to keep something in a bag, or to hold something to glue it back together.”

“Huh,” Nightwing says, scratching the back of his head. “Go figure.”

—

The next time it happens, it’s the Riddler. 

He’s laughing, giving his riddles to the Bats and recording himself to all of Gotham while his victim, one of the Wayne brats, hangs over a vat of something. From a distance, he looks like Tim Drake, or maybe a lankier Dick Grayson. And he’s not the only victim, they’re all scattered across the city, but he thought an important figure such as a Wayne should be under the Riddler’s direct supervision while he enacts his schemes. 

While the Riddler cackles and plots and waves his cane around, in the background all of Gotham can see the figure escape. Several Gothamites recognize him as the kid from before, who clocked the Joker. They all watch with bated breath as he sort of wiggles his way out of the ropes holding him up. Once he’s free, he climbs the rope and gets himself down safely. 

Gotham holds their breath as the kid casually walks up to the Riddler, who’s mid-rant. He politely taps him on the shoulder, and as the Riddler is turning around, the kid clocks him just as brutally as he had the Joker. He’s down with one punch. 

They think he’s going to say another sort of awkward goodbye, but instead he pats the Riddler down until he finds a piece of paper tucked into the inside pocket of his jacket. 

“Right,” the kid says, looking at the list. There’s a lot more static overlay now, and several wonder if it’s damage to the cameras. “Uh, the Clocktower, the Docks, and-” he squints at the page for a moment-”Mama Nacaroni’s? What the fuck is that? Anyway, uh. See you later, I guess. Oh! And we’re at the Gotham Arena. Have fun with him, I guess.”

The kid tosses the paper off to the side before the camera cuts to black. 

Just like last time, everyone is out cold and tied up. The Riddler himself is sporting a pretty bad shiner, but well deserved nonetheless. 

“Stop it,” Red Hood tells him. Batman just looks at him, and though Hood can’t see the top half of his face, he can tell that his eyebrow is raised. “You know exactly what I mean, B. Put the adoption papers away.”

“Hn.”

—

After that, it sorta becomes a game. The rogues of Gotham are no longer after a Wayne, or after anybody who holds any kind of social status like usual. They’re all going after this one kid, all determined to be the one to hold him. And each one is televised. 

Mr. Freeze freezes him in a block of ice, but due to the cameras glitching out, nobody can really see how he got free. They do, however, see the kid suplex Mr. Freeze. It should seem impossible, given his lanky figure, but he evidently has more muscle than he’s originally let on. 

Two-Face gets a hold of him, using chains and some power-dampening cuffs just on the off-chance that he’s a meta. They all watch as the kid leans down, pulls a bobby pin out of his hair, and picks the locks on his cuffs. One punch, and Two-Face is down. 

Gothamites are going wild for the kid. They’ve dubbed him Feral McGee™ (an online poll, of course), because every time he goes in for the punch he gets this feral look in his eyes. Also, just the fact that he casually goes up to these rogues and takes them out with all the casualness of doing something incredibly mundane? Incredible. The Gothamites are eating it up. However, despite the video evidence, nobody has been able to properly identify the kid. They know he has black hair and bright eyes, but any time he gets near a camera, it’s like there’s this weird, sort of warped quality the camera takes on. It doesn’t usually calm down until the fight is done-as one sided as they usually are-before he awkwardly skedaddles away.  

He gets kidnapped by the Penguin, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy (though that was more just a friendly chat than anything), Mad Hatter, and the Riddler again. 

And then the Joker escapes. 

It’s no surprise as to who he’s going to go after. 

Due to one too many careless goons, they manage to find their way to the Joker’s hideout pretty quickly. This time, it’s all Bats on deck, and they all hide away in the rafters as Feral McGee™ is hung over a vat of acid. His whole body is tied up, hardly a single inch of exposed skin to be seen except for the neck up. 

They watch the goons, they watch the Joker, and they watch Feral McGee™. 

The Joker is monologuing, practically begging the bats to come find him before the timer runs out. When it does, the kid gets dumped into the vat of acid. 

Despite these stakes, the kid seems to be only mildly annoyed. 

“Fuck this, I have homework I still need to finish,” they hear him say. 

They all watch, amazed and confused, as the kid starts gnawing through the ropes. Human teeth shouldn’t be able to do that so easily, but one bit after the other, and soon enough the kid’s got himself freed enough to just climb up the rest of the rope. When he’s at the top of the crane holding him up, Batman lets down a rope and pulls the kid up and out of danger. 

“Oh, cool, you’re all here,” the kid says casually, as if meeting the entire Bat Clan is just a normal Tuesday. And then he pulls out a notepad and pen and hands it to Red Hood. 

“Can I get an autograph? You’re dope as fuck, dude.”

Red Hood has to look away and hide his face in his arms for a few moments to not give away their location with his laughter before signing. And then, one by one, the others do as well. They pass along the kid’s notebook with shit-eating grins and barely contained snickers despite the fact that the Joker is still right below them. Even Batman signs it, after his children don’t stop hounding him about it. 

In their distraction, they didn’t see the kid sneak away. He’s far away from them now, nearly right over the Joker. Danny waits, though, until the Joker has turned around as the timer almost runs out. They watch as he snickers at Joker’s flabbergasted look. The Joker comically looks back and forth and under objects the kid obviously isn’t under. However, before he can do or say anything else, the kid drops from the rafters and right on top of the Joker. He crumples to the ground, unconscious. The kid, however, just brushes the dust off of himself. Despite the fall he took, there isn’t a scratch on him. 

When the bats join him, they give his notepad back to him, barely able to contain their laughter at the absurdity of it all. The kid, too, joins in the camaraderie, laughing and joking along with them as Batman secures the Joker. 

“Okay, okay, but I gotta ask, dude,” Red Hood says at one point, looking at the kid. “How do you keep getting kidnapped?”

The kid just shrugs. “I get distracted easily. And I’m sleep deprived, so you know. Social awareness is kind of at an all time low right now.”

“Why are you sleep deprived?” Nightwing asks, barely hidden concern in his voice. 

 “Finals are kinda kicking my ass right now. Especially this dumb English homework I have. You guys wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

“Oh, lucky for you,” Red Hood says, wrapping an arm around the kid’s shoulders as he walks them out of the warehouse, “I happen to know a lot about English. So, it is Shakespeare?”

“Yeah, Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

As they walk off, Batman calmly watches, though the rest of the bats can see his jaw twitching. Nightwing comes up behind him, clapping a hand on his shoulder. 

“If you don’t adopt him, I will.”

“Hn.”