New Batman/Superman Series Coming Out Of Batman Who Laughs Mini-Series
The project from David Marquez and Josh Williamson sees six heroes turning bad, but not all of them even know it's happening to them.
The Batman Who Laughs isn’t finished playing with DC’s superheroes yet.
This alternate reality version of Batman was first introduced in the successful comic book miniseries Dark Nights: Metal as a Batman who has become transformed into an immoral villain through exposure to Joker toxin. Not only will this version of Bruce Wayne continue to terrorize the DC Universe with a previously unannounced extension to his current miniseries, but he’ll also be the threat at the center of an all-new Batman and Superman team-up comic book series launching in August.
Scott Snyder and Jock’s The Batman Who Laughs series will now run seven issues instead of six, leading into the new Batman/Superman title created by Josh Williamson (The Flash, Justice League/Suicide Squad) and David Marquez (Marvel’s Civil War II, Avengers), with the latter making his DC debut on the title.
“We discover, through the Batman Who Laughs series that the Batman Who Laughs have been working on this massive plan since Metal. What it is is, he has sleeper agents throughout the [DC Universe]. They’ve been infected, and they’re slowly turning into the worst versions of themselves,” Williamson teased. “Some of them know they're changing, some don't. Some aren't aware it's kind of like a Jekyll and Hyde situation where they're not aware of [what] the other side is doing.
“This is happening to six people — we’ve been calling them the new Secret Six — who have been turned. But who could be turned? Who are they? [Batman and Superman] have to go out and figure it out. But that means spying on other heroes, friends, allies. We talked about the end of The Thing, where it’s the two of them and they’re like, ‘It could be you, it could be me, but now we have to work together.’”
The identity of the Secret Six — a name with some history in DC mythology, having first been used in 1968 for a comic book series of the same name — will be one of the core elements of the new series, and also an important part of DC’s superhero continuity as a whole across the next year of storytelling.
“It becomes this mystery across not just this book but really the line,” Williamson said, suggesting that fans reading other series might have the chance to work out identities before the heroes do. “It's a thing where it's not just going to be focused on this one book; it starts here, but you're going to get a situation where, if you are reading the line, you might start piecing some stuff together before like bigger reveals happen. You might be like, 'Oh this weird thing's happening over here, I wonder if that's connected to the story here,' and that's cause, yeah. It is.”
'Batman/Superman' Comic Series Will Infect the DC Universe
I was not a big fan of the Metal event series and I absolutely hate the Batman Who Laughs character so I am not all that hyped for this series to continue "Metal-ing" up other characters in the DCU.
David Marquez's art looks amazing though.