[Spoiler alert for Batman #145.] To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” Chip Zdarsky’s three-part Joker Year One peered under the red hood toreveal the secret origins of the three Jokers: a psychologist trained the Joker to partition his mind into three personalities. The psychologist was Batman’s mentor, Dr. Daniel Captio, who taught Bruce Wayne how to reshape and control the mind. Captio pushed Bruce beyond his mental limitations… and birthed Batman and Joker in their purest forms.
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Batman #145 reveals that the Joker has always known about the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh: Bruce’s “backup” personality who is pure Batman. “You’ve only shown him to me twice before, but he was beautiful,” Joker tells Bruce. “The real you. Breaking you is easy. Breaking him… that would be a true triumph.”
Zur-En-Arrh uploaded himself into Failsafe, Batman’s rogue robot contingency plan, and imprisoned Bruce and Joker together in the lower level of Blackgate Penitentiary. Joker taunts Bruce that Zur’s robotic Batman 2.0 is “the true Batman, doing a better job than you ever could” as Zur/Failsafe strikes fear into Gotham City’s criminal underworld with a reign of terror the Joker calls “real justice.”
Bruce is visited by his old mentor, who informs him that his “other self, the better self” made him warden of Blackgate. Daniel then reveals that he helped create and partition the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh.
In a back up story, titled The Joker: Revelations, Daniel recounts to Bruce the night Joker met the Batman: “The real you.” Batman came close to killing the Joker, who was delighted by Batman’s violence and edge. It was at that moment the Joker saw Batman as a force of nature like himself.
“His existence changes things. The city spirals around The Batman, like a vortex,” the Joker tells an Arkham therapist in flashback. “He looks dangerous and dark, but inside he’s just a simple child’s idea of how the world should work. While I look like a child’s idea, but inside I’m complex. I see the order in chaos.” As Joker sees it, he and the Batman are two ancient sides of the same coin. Joker escapes and kills his therapist, because he already has one: Dr. Captio.
Joker takes Daniel captive and tells him of his encounter with Batman. He was more primal, more him, almost as if he’d had a new personality. Daniel explains that he trained Batman and Joker the same way: total control of the mind. But unlike the Joker, Batman was initiallyreluctant in one area: the partitioning of the mind to create analternate persona. “I told him how important it would be for his work,for his mission,” Daniel tells Joker. “To protect against doubt, againstoutside forces, he needed to create a pure Batman persona. Someone beyondreproach.”
But Bruce abandoned the procedure before itscompletion. Daniel realized that Bruce would only commit to a Batmanwithout Bruce once he saw the dangers he was facing as Batman. Dangerslike the Joker.
“Batman is about control. Order. This secondarypersonality — his backup — will only be used in emergencies. If you wantto see him again, you need to create emergencies,” Daniel explains.Bruce’s backup is pure Batman, meaning he’ll view the main personalityas deficient. But if the clown can bring that Batman out moreand more, Joker realizes: “It’ll just be him.”
Joker also figures out that Dr. Captio wants to witness what he’s unleashed: The Batman and the Joker. In the present, Daniel confesses to Bruce that the Joker was right. He’d grown bored observing the human mind. Between Batman and Joker, he could observe the superhuman mind. “I knew, given enough time, the Joker would bring out your otherself fully,” Daniel tells Bruce, thus creating a Batman who was “consumed, elevated.”
“What effect would that have on the world, Bruce? An unstoppable Batman,” Daniel says.”Even I didn’t know. And all I had to do was whisper and wait. Wait forthe Joker to keep evolving… and gain access to your life.”
The issue ends with another flashback: to moments before the final page of the Scott Snyder-penned Batman (Vol. 2) #13. A de-faced Joker stands at the grave stone of Thomas and Martha Wayne outside Wayne Manor, moments before he attacks Alfred Pennyworth with a hammer (in Batman: Death of the Family). It was the first of a series of attacks targeting the Bat-Family — Batgirl, Nightwing, Red Hood, Red Robin, and Batman’s son, Damian Wayne, a.k.a. Robin — to convince Batman that his real family… is the Joker.
Batman #145 is on sale now from DC Comics.
