More disturbing than the Joker, isn't he?
Hello guys! Today, here's my tenth PE proposal, and it's about The Batman Who Laughs, one of the most recently-introduced Batman villains who has appeared in Dark Knights: Metal, The Batman Who Laughs and the Year of the Villain saga among other stories.
WHO IS HE / WHAT HAS HE DONE?[]
The Batman Who Laughs started much like his mainstream counterpart in Earth -22, becoming Batman upon his parents' death, fighting off villains, bla, bla, bla. But all this changed when the Joker realized that he was dying from the chemicals which transformed him years ago and that Bruce Wayne was Batman, trapping Batman, rigging out most buildings of Gotham City, killing the rest of his rogues gallery alongside Commissioner Gordon and forcing him to watch how he killed parents and "jokerized" their children as a combination of both him and the Dark Knight. Finally snapping, Batman freed himself and killed the Joker, but he inhales a smoke which comes from his mouth.
Eventually, the nano-toxin transforms Batman into the new Joker, leading him to kill all his allies and eventually all his universe along with his Jokerized Robins, because Earth -22 is part of the Dark Multiverse, where universes are doomed to die from the beginning as they shouldn't exist. However, Barbatos comes and offers him the possibility to take over the main DC Multiverse and bring darkness to it. Agreeing to do so, The Batman Who Laughs recruits The Drowned, The Dawnbreaker, The Merciless, The Devastator, The Murder Machine and The Red Death. Once their make their way into the main DC Universe, The Batman Who Laughs releases all inmates of Arkham Asylum. Alerted, the entire Justice League comes to fight The Batman Who Laughs and his forces. Eventually, the League wins.
With all his Dark Knights, The Batman Who Laughs prepares for a final strike against Batman, but the Dark Knight and the Joker team up together and manage to defeat him, yet Laughs remains on Prime Earth with his Robins and joins The House of Conquest and the Legion of Doom. Sometime afterwards, The Batman Who Laughs teams up with The Grim Knight and starts bringing the Bruce Waynes from other universes, killing them over while planning to kidnap Commissioner Gordon. He continues on attacking Batman until he is finally imprisoned on the Hall of Justice when he tries to melt Dark Metal to open a gateway towards the Dark Multiverse. However, he succeeds on infecting Shazam, so Superman prepares to discover what he plans now...
MITIGATING FACTORS?[]
While you initially consider tragic this version of Batman, he goes away past from being excused. While initially as heroic and brave like his mainstream counterpart, although he was let with no other option than kill the Joker, he left himself to be consumed by the nano-toxin which slowly transformed him into the new Joker. Instead of searching a cure, Batman embraced the effects of the toxin an went to kill all his Bat-Family to avoid them from imprisoning him, committing an atrocious act of familicide. He spares his son Damian and jokerizes him before making him and the rest of the jokerized children of the Joker his Jokerized Robins, gromming them to make them like vicious dogs, losing nearly all traces of their humanity. He then goes to kill all his Justice League for the sake he doesn't need to hold himself anymore and wants to use their collected weapons against the world. When Superman refuses to accept his new ways, Batman uses Dark Kryptonite on him and his son, leading them to brutally kill Lois Lane before dying themselves. Laughs then goes to destroy all his universe just because it feels good, leaving nothing but a barren wasteland where only he and his Robins remain.
When Barbatos offers him to bring darkness to the DC Universe and make worlds suffer the same fate as his own, The Batman Who Laughs gleefully accepts, showing his sadistic personality. He then collects other Dark Knights from other universes within the Dark Multiverse and attack the Prime Earth. He carefully selects the Dark Knights for their cruel actions. Once in Prime Earth, as the Justice Leagues comes to realize, Laughs is mad as the Joker but intelligent as Batman, demonstrating that while retaining some parts of his previous self, he chooses to embrace his new side. As we can see, The Batman Who Laughs is an example of one of the Joker's longtime goals for Batman: provoke the Dark Knight into killing him and become a murderer not better than him, but Laughs is perhaps far worse than what the Joker could expect from his Batman. Indeed, the Joker himself even loathes The Batman Who Laughs to the point of refusing to remain on Lex Luthor's Legion of Doom because Luthor has recruited Laughs, showings that even psychos like the Joker can become terrified with his presence.
After his failure in helping Barbatos to achieve his goal and losing all his Dark Knights, The Batman Who Laughs sets into a new plan to effect Gotham City with a Dark Matter serum, where he drags Bruce Waynes from other universes to kill them just because they are happy and achieved peace in ways Batman hasn't and to power his serum, showing his love for killing for the sake of his own plans. No satisfied with that, Laughs then goes to kill the Court of Owls just because he wants to hear them all die after they refuse his offer in spite that he planned to kill them all along before dragging an alternate Bruce Wayne who became the leader of the Court in other universe, fighting him to the death. Laughs is imprisoned, but not for too long, and he later escapes to infect Shazam and Commissioner Gordon for as of yet unknown purposes....
VERDICT[]
Taking all of this into account, I would say yes about considering The Batman Who Laughs to be approved as PE.