Rosemary

And yet, after everything, he kept coming back like a stray mutt wanting fed. Haunting him of everything he wanted in his youth but couldn't have.

'I'm sorry, Wade.. But I can't abandon my daughter'

'My daughter is all grown up.'

Now, He knew he was delusional. He knew he was dilerious even, but this? Oh, No, honey. There was no way around this. Because THIS 'between the lines' notation was actually a huge bright shining flashing sign.

The olive branch of 'Let's get back together'. Painted in gold and put on a pedestal... just to tease him.

Shaking his head, Wade had blocked out the argument before but came back to "He's his own person. He can talk to who he wants."

"No the fuck he can't! Not if they're just going to hurt him!"

"Im not going to hurt him, Logan."

"What do you call this!?"

Wade's tears hadn't stopped, his eyes red from crying, and all he could do was whimper and stare, his visson blurry.

Even when Cable WAS his, he was barley home, returning at nights and leaving again before dawn. Time cop things I guess. Sometimes he wouldn't return for days.. bringing in perks, setting things right within the balance of time, killing bad dudes, visiting his daughter, etc.

And while Wade didn't blame him for this, he didn't want that anymore. He could barely handle it back then, and now? That Logan had conditioned him with morning lovings, smothering him in the sunnight that came into their room, peppering kisses all over him, whining when Wade left the house and always scooping him up to go to the bedroom when he returned.

How he made him breakfast after holding him for hours and held his head so nicely when he gave him shower head. THE shower head. My bad. To save water, you know? It's expensive in New York, sue me.

The way he cared for puppins and fell asleep during some dumb documentary. How Logan held his hand to go grocery shopping and went as far as telling the X men that they were married, and they could kick rocks if they didn't like it.

It was... nice.. to be wanted. To be loved and to settle down. Not a lot - just about as much as Deadpool COULD settle down. He's been shown the light of routine affection, and he was not about to go back to cold nights alone, wondering when he'd come back.

It's not that he didn't love Nathan. No, the oppisite, actually. But they didn't work. As much as they clicked and how much fun he had with him, He couldn't take another heartbreak.

"T-this isn't fair.." he chokes out.

Mid argument, Logan turns. "What's not fair?"

"Breathe, Wade." Cable says, having put the clothes down, pushing it up against the side of the couch.

Taking a deep breath, it's pushed out of his lungs the moment it comes in. "It's not fair!"

Backing away from the both of them, he's holding the flowers so tight that the stems are breaking. The tears become thicker, heavier, his heart beat pounding in his ears.

"I did what I was supposed to do!! I grew up! I moved on!! I-i settled down, Nathan!! I'm married!!"

Both went quiet, an obvious frown and a concerned look plastered onto their faces.

"Why'd you leave me if you just wanted to come back? I didn't do anything wrong!! I thought you liked me! You said you loved me!!" He was shouting, sobbing, and clearly stressed out.

(And all because he thought the amazon guy was here.)

"Wade, calm down. Breathe."

"Don't you tell him to calm down! He's allowed to be pissed. You up and left him."

"For my daughter! Yes, I did-"

"So shut the fuck up!"

Breathing heavily, Wade began to pace, hugging himself and the flowers, crushing them to death, a metaphor to his desire for the future man.

"I-it's not fair!! You chose what you chose, and now you have the nerve to come back and ask me to throw everything I made for myself away! For you!? But you wouldn't do that for me!"

Now that he thought about it, this was his first time fully processing and letting out his emotions since the breakup. He was angry and grieving.

Nathan nods softly "I know and I wouldn-"

"Am I fucking finished talking!? Huh? No! So shut the fuck up!" He had spent years shoving deep down, trying to burry the anger alive.

Logan has been there. He knew this feeling all too well. But seeing Wade explode like this was kind of terrifying. He always knew Wade had that fire in him, What he didn't expect was for Wade to throw the bouquet at him. Him out of the two.

Swallowing, he scrambles to pick them up, not sure if Wade simply missed or if he wanted to keep them or not. The crushed petals on the floor were the pieces of Wade that Logan couldn't glue together, but that was fine. He loved him none the less.

"And you!"

"Me?"

"I should gut you right now for ever thinking I would leave you! I'm a grown man, I can handle myself! I-i'm allowed to cry! I don't need you to fight my battles for me. Just pick me up when I fall. Got it!?"

Logan nods quickly.

"Good!! Cause I will! And you! You should have thought about this when you abandoned me. I've tried to be your friend, I will still be your friend, but I won't let you come here with your stupidly gorgeous future flowers and think I'll bend over like a fucking bitch for you. You lost that chance!" He says, throwing his hands up and pointing at him angerly.

Nathan was going to mutter how he didn't see him like this, but was too afraid Wade might stab him, so he just nodded subtly.

"Now. Get the fuck out of my house." The growl is through grit teeth.

"But I really think-"

"I don't give a rats ass what you think! This is MY life and I'm tired of people thinking I care what they think. Now, I'll talk to you about this later when I don't feel like gauging out your only good fucking eye. Got it? Good. Nice seeing you. Bye!"

Turning on his heel, Wade goes towards the bedroom, leaving Logan to glare and start to snarl.

"Logan! Come! Nathan, leave my fucking clothes and close the door on your way out! If my dog gets out im gonna be one pissed off cunt!" He screams, now holding puppins who was desperate to lick the tears and snot from his face.

Giving each other a look, Cable picks up the bag and Logan is quick to come when called, giving him a final 'Fuck you' with a claw before he left.

Mr. Space cops eye's roll, shaking his head as he headed out.

Hearing the door clicking, Logan watches as Wade snuggles up in the blankets, hugging himself tight. He was seething.

"....you wanna talk about it...?"

"...." clacking his nails together, Logan put the flowers in a tall cup, filling it half way with water and put it on the dresser before coming to sit on the edge of the bed.

He was right.. the flowers were beautiful. They still were, even now that they were all broken and crumbled... this isn't about flowers.

Wade huffs, making a whining growly sound.

Logan nods, understanding but he's rarely been on this side of the argument. Ussually its him being all growly.

"..Im proud of you, Wade.."

The words are like an instant pull of a trigger, sniffling before breaking down again, starting to sob. This time, less angry and more mournful.

Logan sighs, crawling close to him before pulling him into his arms, rubbing his back.

Puppin's whines, wagging her tail.

"..I-it's not fair...t-the one time I do the mature thing.."

"I know... you love him. It's hard."

"I-i did.." Wade whispers, his chest tight with various emotions.

Logan knew because this was the exact feeling he felt with Scott. He thought they fit, but I guess not cause he went off and married Jean instead, and still sometimes told him things that made his chest tighten with painful grief of what they could have had, and only toyed with him when he felt convenient.

Like father like son.

Even if it felt so right to be wrong, how good it felt to be given the attention, it hurt so bad when it ended.

And that kind of hurt took decades to go away...

Ending a story is hard, if they're long or short. Whether you wrap up key threads or leave them open, you want some kind of takeaway that puts a period on things. Even in comics, where we know these characters will go on and on, ideally a story will end in a way that just... fits. Even amateur fic writers have loads of WIPs just sitting there because exactly how to end this damn thing eludes them.

I don't know if Rosenberg had an ending in mind when he started The Man Who Stopped Laughing. I don't know if he decided he'd figure it out by the end of it's year-long run. I don't know if DC Editorial lets people do that; it sounds insane, but if you've been paying attention to their current level of editorial "oversight," which I imagine is supposed to make concurrent titles mesh together reasonably well, I wouldn't be shocked if they let people wing it. Or, more likely, perhaps DC Editorial swooped in and made Rosenberg change the ending he had planned and that's why the result falls flat.

In any case, after 11 issues of enjoying myself, I'm left feeling deflated.

But let's start where #12 does, with the Joker who's been told he's John Keyser, a toxin'd henchmen that the real Joker made into a doppelganger for funsies. He approaches a hotdog vendor.

I'm stuck on "Hello. I've been looking for you"?? I didn't catch that on my first read. Joker has a favorite hotdog vendor? lol

Shut up, Waffles!! All we have is your word for it!!

In any case, hey, Keyser Joker has already been Jokering this long, so yeah, why not keep going? And why not with help from poor woobie Jason, fresh from nearly getting himself killed in Gotham War?

Bruce did not fix Jason at the end of Gotham War, so his adrenaline is still triggering fear in his brain. But Keyser Joker has a solution for that!

It's a tiny dose of Joker toxin to take the edge off of Bruce's programming. Joker makes a point of saying that the effects are only temporary, though. (And like, I assume this is just the quick-fix solution Rosenberg came up with to pull off his own ending when told Bruce's plans for Jason over in the other titles.) Jason is skeptical of this "help," naturally, but Keyser Joker brings up their matching interest: getting rid of the other Joker.

Jason, why you gotta ruin Albert's good time? 🙄

Cut to Red Hood dragging a clown henchman through the streets of Gotham.

But "his" face being blacked out and some of the dialogue clue the reader in: things aren't what they seem.

DERAIL TIME: what is up with this batmobile?

Like from some other angles, it looks sportier, but in most of the panels it looks like an old Buick? lol ANYWAY.

With the flaily way this person jumps off the bike and runs, I was sure that this was Keyser Joker and we might see Batman interact with him. Alas.

It's Ravager, who survived last issue's explosion. She's helping Jason 1) distract Batman and 2) get Albert out of harm's way, far from Keyser Joker's plan.

Naturally Keyser Joker is planning something more destructive than he's led Jason to believe. Also like…

The idea that Keyser Joker really is this John guy, not the real deal, is still not sitting fucking right with me. Seeing him here in another costume, with a goofy death train with mismatched eyes just like his, it feels like a signal that he actually is Joker and Waffles is either lying or mistaken somehow. Like compared to the other Joker, who we haven't seen in a costume? Who left Gotham for weird reasons? I really thought there was going to be a reverse reveal.

And since it doesn't come, I guess it's a good time to mention that! There is no reverse reveal of who the real Joker is. Things get a little muddy later, but…. hrm. HRM.

That said, the other Joker does something pretty dang Jokery: he shows up in a dirigible with his face on it.

Killer Moth and a bunch of clown goons (that aren't supposed to be available because of Gotham War but WHATEVER) attach the dirigible to the train and it's pretty chaotic!

I love when villains are like, "Look I may kill people, but an endangered gorilla?! Get outta here!" 😂

Jason also arrives in style.

I guess he was observing Ravager's distraction?? Which feels like it defeats part of the purpose of having her do the distraction. But then he couldn't have this cool entrance in which he bludgeons people with a motorcycle. Trade offs!

Meanwhile, Real Joker makes it to the front of the train to confront Keyser Joker. One of Real's goons offers to shoot Keyser, but Real Joker wants to make this personal and kills the poor hench so he can do it himself.

Jason coming in like YEEEEEAAAAHHHHH 😎

Then he gets the bad news.

Keyser is as casually suicidal as your average Joker! Also "Real" Joker never acknowledges Red Hood's identity, afaik. It's always Keyser Joker. Details like this got me thinking that reverse reveal was coming, AND YET.

That aside, next comes a fun comedy beat.

Real Joker going right for the hair!

Jason isn't going to let this be the end of it, of course, and once again Killer Moth must suffer at his hands.

Jason shoots so many clowns. Just never the one he wants. 😞

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaait wait wait. You're telling me that Bruce knew about the imminent TWO JOKERS situation. But he decided to prioritize a report of Red Hood dragging a clown through the streets. When in the same breath he's saying there are other people coming to the scene with him, so he obviously could've sent someone else? On the same day Batman #139 is like "oooh Bruce is totally onto Joker now"? This is what you're telling me?? Augh.

Well, we can't rely on Batman right now, clearly, so it's up to Jason.

Meanwhile, Keyser Joker has told the other one that he actually does have a secret way off the runaway train safely. After they fight some more, the tune starts to change.

Alright so, this "deal," which would sort of start them back at square one, doesn't bother me because obviously it's on shaky-ass ground and one of them is definitely killing the other before this issue is over. What does bug me is the "franchising" line, for two reasons:

1) Is this supposed to imply that Real Joker is the one who was behind Joker Incorporated in the Batman Incorporated issues, not a third one?

2) I was just SO SURE it was another indication we were getting a reverse reveal. Joker absolutely does not love the franchising idea. That's kind of been the point of this whole series. The genuine Joker in Keyser Joker's hallucination/memory said that having two Jokers around is stupid. HRRRRMMM.

Anyhow, they leave the train together, though the escape plan is literally just jumping off, which has more issues than they bargained for.

So do you think, assuming the Gotham War writers actually communicated at least a little, that Zdarsky asked Rosenberg what he needed Jason for at the end of TMWSL, and Rosenberg was like, "oh I need him to heroically crash a toxic blimp and almost die?" And then Zdarsky was like, "er, I need him to heroically fly a plane into a magic meteor and almost die?" And then they just shrugged and closed the Zoom?

But yeah, the blimp crashes, and I'm sort of confused because I thought that earlier Bruce was saying that even if the toxin gets into the water, it'll still make it's way to the city. So for one thing, it's still exploding in the air and it's still gonna drift. And the parts that dissolve in water are still gonna drift. There's a part to the equation missing here.

But these two are just thrilled at the excitement.

Until the sudden yet inevitable betrayal.

BUT WHO WAS JOKE

Shortly after this, Ravager shows up with Manhunter, who also survived last issue's explosion. (It just doesn't come up at all. Like it doesn't have to, I guess, but it's just weird that there's not a word or wound about it.) Ravager dives into the water looking for Jason, because she instinctually knows he did something grand and dumb. She finds him among the clown bodies and brings him to shore.

Nothing can kill this man! He came back from the dead with nine lives! And also maybe that Lazarus resin from TFZ is still helping, I dunno.

Elsewhere along the shore, what's left of both Jokers' crews find themselves waiting in the same spot for the Joker they expect to be triumphant.

You know what. I'm soured on Waffles now. Leave him.

And then, from the water…

And that's it. That's how it ends. With a sort of snide cop-out?

Like, it's Joker's POV, so yeah, you could say the dickish tone is just him. But following this story for a year, and then seeing it end with simply the old "you'll never know which Joker prevailed," it doesn't feel clever or whatever this is going for. It just feels obnoxious.

Honestly, it feels like the same takeaway as freaking Three Jokers. 😐 That it doesn't matter who Joker is. All the lead-up to this, where maybe we get a tiny bit of depth and development, even if just in this story, eh. Doesn't matter! We're ending this with blah payoff.

On the other hand, the part of about about there being more questions, about this ending not being tidy, makes me think that this is leaving open the possibility that Keyser Joker actually was the real one. After all, we don't get a flashback to the actual events. The events we see are part of a hallucination, and Keyser never said he had clear memories of being the real or the fake one. He just went from assuming he was the real one to taking Waffles' word for it that he was the henchman.

Also, Keyser Joker was always the Joker giving narration. And the narration boxes for the Final Joker at the end remain in his style. So it seems like we actually have a huge indication of which Joker prevailed-- unless we're meant to assume that if the other Joker prevailed, he merely took over the narration.

I mean, this is what we have. So if I can just choose what I want to believe, I'm going to believe both that Keyser was actually the real guy and that he won. But it puts a real sour taste in my mouth to be super engaged with a story and wanting an ending that says something about Joker's character… and the ending is just that one murders the other and you don't know who, neener neener. It's anticlimactic. It's a predictable direction that I thought SURELY Rosenberg wouldn't go in. It feels like a dick move.

And... what else is there to say? So ends my year of consistently buying a comic, I guess. Nothing else has really grabbed me like TMWSL did, though City of Madness looks promising. After the multiverse and Gotham War stuff, I'm not about to start picking up Zdarsky's Batman. #139 had plenty I should enjoy, but it's soured by Zdarsky deciding to bring a canonical take to the three Jokers concept for some ungodly reason.

A new three Jokers take feels extra stupid after a year of a story about two Jokers. And the second Joker in TMWSL isn't even taken into account in Zdarsky's story. Based off that #135 scene, it really looks like he's going to say that Darwin Halliday accidentally copied TKJ Joker somehow. lmao Why. Why do we have to do this. Why can't this just be one of the things that gets retconned away. I just want my murderclown to be fun.