DC Officially Brings Back One of the Most Hated Modern Villains (For a Perfect Pay-Off)

A DC Comics character many fans would have preferred staying in the past has come back, but not everything is what it appears to be with him. Whether a Wednesday warrior or a casual fan, everyone has heard of the Batman Who Laughs, the twisted variant of Batman from the Dark Multiverse. Once a man much like the Prime Bruce Wayne, his life was transformed forever after killing the Joker, who unleashed a potent form of Joker Venom as his last laugh. That moment ended up creating one of the biggest threats in the DC Universe in recent years.

While the Batman Who Laughs made for an interesting villain and he certainly had his fans, many fans grew tired of the character. After Dark Nights: Metal, the twisted Caped Crusader became a driving force in DC Comics, even serving as the focal point of its Year of the Villain initiative. But his tendency to always win and escape any situation wore a lot of fans down, and they weren’t exactly sad to see him go when he was defeated in Dark Nights: Death Metal. However, the Batman Who Laughs has returned, but not for the reason fans think.

Joker Brings the Batman Who Laughs Back to Pull a Prank on All of Us

In DC K.O. #3 by Scott Snyder, Joshua Williamson, Xermánico, and Javier Fernández, the remaining fighters have made it to the final round of the tournament. This round is a tag-team match, and everyone is allowed to pick a partner from a previous round. Except for the Joker, who has accumulated more Omega Energy in the competition than anyone else and, as a reward, gets to choose a partner from anywhere across “all realms of reality”. The Joker makes his pick, which isn’t revealed to us in the initial lineup, and the fighters head to their respective rings.

Zatanna has picked the equally magical John Constantine to assist her in her fight, so the Joker picks someone who complements him just as well, revealing his choice is the Batman Who Laughs. It’s a wild moment, but Constantine immediately picks up that something is off about Joker’s partner. As it turns out, this isn’t the real Batman Who Laughs, and Joker just wanted to have a laugh. In actuality, his partner is Mr. Mxyzptlk, Superman’s fifth-dimensional nuisance, who endows Joker with enough god-level reality-warping power to defeat Zatanna and Constantine to sail through to the fourth round.

Scott Snyder Pulls Off One of DC Comics’ Best Meta Trolls

It should be noted that the DC K.O. event is written by Scott Snyder, the same person who wrote Dark Nights: Metal and co-created the Batman Who Laughs. Snyder is the reason we saw so much of the Batman Who Laughs in the late 2010s, and if anyone knows how much of a divisive figure he is, it’s Snyder. However, what he did here was actually really smart as he knew the kind of reaction fans would have to seeing the Batman Who Laughs again and used it to Snyder’s advantage to pull a, frankly, really funny joke on us.

DC K.O. #3 intentionally hides Joker’s pick from the initial lineup of fighters at the beginning, and when the Batman Who Laughs actually appears, it’s only for one page, just enough to get fans riled up at Snyder bringing back a character they thought they had seen the last of. But Snyder masterfully reveals that it’s all just a gag the Joker cooked up with Mr. Mxyzptlk in the name of humor. And while the Joker and Mxyzptlk were playing a prank on Zatanna and Constantine, Scott Snyder was playing a prank on us. And it’s a damn good one.

I’ll admit that the Batman Who Laughs isn’t my favorite character, and I wasn’t happy to see him here. But when I saw Mxyzptlk and realized Snyder had anticipated that reaction and used it to make a joke, I laughed. A lesser writer would have just brought the Batman Who Laughs and had him actually participate in the fight. But Snyder took the more creative and self-aware route, using people’s dislike of the villain to pull an incredibly hilarious joke. The Joker’s rarely as funny as he thinks he is, but Snyder used him to deliver his best gag yet.

What did you think about the fakeout return of the Batman Who Laughs in DC K.O. #3? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts on the ComicBook Forum!

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