#tbwl

Something that bothers me about The Batman Who Laughs is that, at a high level, I think he’s actually a really good character concept in the context of the high-level metaphysical bullshit underpinning the DCU. He’s a refuge from a dimension composed entirely of the baseless fears of characters in the “real” DCU; he hails from the land of “ha, ha, would that be fucked up or what.” The Dark Multiverse is not so subtly the land of bad story ideas, the shit writers and fans come up with when they’re drunk, high or twelve years old. Everything there is a creature of momentum- every one of them is a conceit you can’t plausibly stretch out more than one issue without it falling apart, represented by the fact that everyone one of their universes disintegrates into nothing at the end of their spotlight issues under their own sheer implausibility. And when TBWL invades the “real” multiverse, his progress eventually implodes in the face of a universe where the writing has to pass some kind of sanity check, and he’s opposed by the Joker because of how aesthetically incoherent Joker considers TBWL’s concept to be. The Joker is an artist, and whoever came up with this is a hack.

jack: dean isn’t answering his phone