The Batman Who Laughs: Volume 1

I really wanted to love this. The high-level concept itself is cool: Different versions of Batman ending up profoundly different from one another and coming into conflict. The actual implementation... is, in plot and writing, unfortunately amateurish. Spoiler-free review summary: The idea has a lot of potential, and I usually love this sort of Elseworlds story. But so much of the childish dialog and, closer to the end, pathetically predictable plotting drops the ball on a promising idea. I'm sorry I paid for this, and I recommend you skip it in favor of a better Batman story. Spoilers follow. The high points are certainly the character design; The Batman who Laughs and, particularly, The Grim Knight are fun, interesting alternate reality Batmen, both as they're drawn and with their origin stories. But the writing leans too heavily into the multiverse angle without managing to make it anything more than awkward, then kind of backpeddles at the end, turning it into something much stranger and even less coherent. By the end, the whole thing devolves entirely into inane psychobabble and shallow reflection. Overall, the dialog is irritatingly repetitive, the plot is only superficially coherent, and in the end, it doesn't feel like the story has actually gone anywhere. Unfortunately, while a whole boatload of loose ends are left (some intentionally, most through poor writing), this is one comic I would not come back for more of.

The Batman Who Laughs is enacting a sinister plan across the Multiverse-something both terrifying and oddly familiar. When Bruce Wayne realizes the only way to stop this madman is to kill him, he must consider violating the very rule Batman can’t ever break.

First of all, who puts dark(ish) red text on black/gray dialogue bubbles? I know it's supposed to represent a partial/fully Joker-ized Batman, but it's near impossible to read at times (even zoomed in). Anyhow, while the Grim and TBWL (The Batman Who Laughs - yes, that's what he's called) versions of Batman are a nice change of pace; this story was kind of a mess. Without giving away too much, the TBWL and Grim Batman goes to the dimension of Batman that we're all familiar with (the version that goes out nightly to beat up criminals). Grim Batman comes along to help, but is really focused on getting his revenge with Jim Gordon (even if this isn't his Gordon). While TBWL is pulling other (happier) Bruce Wayne's into this dimension to extract their happiness into a serum that he'll use to infect all of Gotham with dark versions of themselves, IDK. The only interesting thing I found with this book was Batman trying to outwit his dark versions, but the rest I found kind of tiring.