What Does That Final Page Of Batman #900 Mean? (Spoilers)

Batman #900, or Batman #135 if you prefer, by Chip Zdarsky, Mike Hawthorne, Jorge Jimenez and Adriano Di Benedetto is published today by DC Comics. And it gets to answer something asked quite some time ago in the Death Of The Family arc by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo.

That if the Batman killed the Joker, he would get someone worse in his place. And that’s what Bruce Wayne has had to be dealing with recently, a Gotham with a Red Mask instead of a Joker.

and sees Batman plunging through the Multiverse, across Elseworlds, movies, TV and cartoon versions of his life, in pursuit of The Red Mask, a sane version of the Joker, trying to find a way to turn himself into the Joker of legend – and failing. Ish. Because while the Red Mask fails to turn himself into the Joker…

…he does manage to trigger other Jokers to emerge when no-one existed, to turn existing Jokers far, far worse, or bring dead Jokers back to life.

Even if he needs an older Bruce Wayne to explain it all to him.

And at the conclusion, the defeat of the Red Mask, the rescue of Batman, and the departure back to the Gotham he knows and loves, it looks like he might have left something behind. The Red Mask was making Jokers across all of multiversal reality, with the Batman in hot pursuit, But might Batman have also been creating something?

Has he left a whole bunch of Batmen of Zur-En-Arrh behind him? The artificial sub-personality created by Batman to deal with situations if he was ever incapacitated? One in every reality, as a defense mechanism against the Jokers that the Red Mask has left behind him?

Deadly Batmen, Batmen who kill, Batmen who kill Jokers – and then who knows what else?

Is that what all Jokers are? Including his own?

Is Bruce Wayne going to have to go back to every reality he has travelled through to mop this all up? I think Dark Knight Batman got it right…

… always hates the Multiverse.

BATMAN #135/#900
Written by CHIP ZDARSKY
Art by JORGE JIMENEZ, MIKE HAWTHORNE, and ADRIANO DI BENEDETTO
Cover by JORGE JIMENEZ
$6.99 US | 56 pages | Variant $7.99 US (card stock)
ON SALE 5/2/23
It’s Batman versus Red Mask in a brutal Gotham that’s never known hope! Can the Dark Knight overcome the terrifying infection that Red Mask has unleashed? Only one thing is certain: he won’t be able to do it alone. The conclusion to the bestselling “The Bat-Man of Gotham” is so big it could only be contained in an oversize #900 anniversary issue featuring the return of fan-favorite artist Jorge Jiménez and a wild collection of guest stars! Full of wild revelations and a new path for Batman, this is one issue you won’t want to miss!