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00:00Hey everyone, it's PermaEggJewels here and we are delighted to say that today's video
00:04is brought to you in partnership with Manscaped, but you know what, we're gonna have more
00:08about that later in the video.
00:09So, if it looks like a superhero, acts like a superhero, and is resistant to death as
00:14a superhero, it's probably a superhero, and you don't get much more super than when
00:19it comes to Batman, because seriously, this guy has seen it all and done it all, and then
00:24beaten it all into the ground and then said, I don't kill anyone, dude.
00:28Or some such other gritty line.
00:29But here's the thing, as much as Batman has his code about not killing criminals, he himself
00:34hasn't received the same blessing, and has actually died in comics quite a fair few times.
00:38Although, maybe died should have quotation marks around it, because remember, this is
00:42comics and no one stays dead forever.
00:44So let's take a look at them as arm jewels, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10
00:47times that Batman has, air quotes, died.
00:5010.
00:51Bleeding out in a cave with the Joker
00:52Now one of the more recent examples of the demise of the Dark Knight came in the pages
00:56of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's Endgame.
00:59The storyline in this Batman title saw the hero facing off against his arch-nemesis for
01:03what seemed like the final time.
01:05Riffing on their brutal confrontation in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, which
01:08turned fatal for one of them, the climax of Endgame saw the Clown Prince of Crime and
01:13the Caped Crusader fighting in a series of underground caves, which housed a hidden pool
01:17of life elixir, gubbins, that previously brought the Joker back to life.
01:20Not particularly wanting the most dangerous man in Gotham to be essentially immortal,
01:24Batman pulled out all the stops to first cease a city-wide dosing of Joker venom, and
01:29then to off the bad guy himself, once and for all.
01:32There was eye-gouging, backstabbing, and finally the two of them collapsed in a heap of limbs
01:36and blood, with the area then caving in on them both.
01:39Woof.
01:409.
01:41He exploded in a helicopter crash
01:43Sir Grant Morrison had some grand ideas when he took over writing the main Batman title.
01:47Now the Scottish writer is adept in folding in his own interests in occult mysticism,
01:51weird sex stuff, and the grand history of superhero comics into his work, and managed
01:55to do all of that in the Batman R.I.P. storyline, which sought to square the varied history
02:00of the Dark Knight into one concise character.
02:03That meant returning to concepts and characters that had been long since forgotten by multiple
02:07DC Universal reboots, with a Batwoman that hadn't appeared since the 50s, and other
02:11themes that hadn't been touched upon by Batman writers in decades.
02:14Of course, he also had to go one step further and kill the Caped Crusader off whilst revitalizing
02:19him.
02:20That storyline came to an end with a criminal organization called the Black Glove gaining
02:24access to the Batcave, incapacitating all of the Bat Family, and smearing the Wayne
02:28Family name.
02:29The fact that the group were apparently led by Bruce's long-dead father, Thomas, didn't
02:33help matters, but their final move was to have Batman die in a helicopter crash.
02:37Or so it seemed.
02:388.
02:39Shot by the Electrocutioner
02:41Go ahead, try and guess what the Electrocutioner's power set involves.
02:44Go on, I dare you, guess.
02:46And no, it's not the power to be knocked out in one punch in the Batman games.
02:49For a supervillain so lacking in subtlety or invention, the title of the Electrocutioner
02:53has somehow been passed down to three separate people.
02:56But it was the second, the brother of the original, that came the closest to besting
03:00his rival.
03:01Lester Paczynski was introduced by Chuck Dixon in Detective Comics number 644, which kicked
03:06off the Electric City arc where he adopted the guise of the Electrocutioner and headed
03:10out on Batman's trail, blasting electricity from his gloves and able to draw power from
03:14other energy sources that he happened upon along the way.
03:17Eventually, he did manage to catch up with the Dark Knight, and, well, there's only
03:20so much electricity that a man can actually take.
03:22Even when Batman has got a lot of special training and wears a funky rodent suit, Batman's
03:27heart actually stopped, and he was only saved by Robin resuscitating him before refusing
03:31his sidekicks' pleas that he rest and heal with the all-time classic line,
03:34I was technically dead, not clinically.
03:36Oh, Batman, you absolute joker, you.
03:397.
03:40He stopped his heart on purpose
03:42If the likes of Endgame and Batman R.I.P. seemed a little out there to modern tastes,
03:46the early days were surely beyond the pale.
03:48The Golden Age and Silver Age adventures of Batman were so utterly bonkers that it made
03:52the Adam West TV show look like the gritty Christian Bale films by comparison, with the
03:57Caped Crusader fighting enemies like gorillas with bombs on them.
04:00Yes, that actually happened.
04:01Still, they found moments of grim fatalism in places, like the story where Robin kept
04:06dying in rather hilarious ways, kinda like Kenny from South Park.
04:09All the time that Batman finally met his maker, but it all turned out to be an elaborate ploy
04:13so that he could go undercover in an exclusive criminal organisation.
04:17What is going on here?
04:18Yet, in the Death Cheaters of Gotham City, he had his heart artificially stopped and
04:22was technically dead for several minutes, before Robin then had to revive him.
04:26Nothing like faking your own death to freak out your already orphaned surrogate son, eh?
04:30The whole thing was a ruse so that he could join the Death Cheaters Club, with having
04:33been dead for a bit being the main entry criteria.
04:36Yes, it's actually just much funnier if you do it in a shirt and a funny voice- oh wait,
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06:256. He Was Killed Three Times in Countdown Arena
06:29Countdown was one of the lesser crossover events that DC has published in their history,
06:33supposedly building up, or is that down, to an even bigger event called Final Crisis.
06:38It was also supposed to function as a sequel to the incredibly successful and really damn
06:42good Series 52, a weekly book that preceded it and explored stories with a lot of B-list
06:46characters, and it was a lot of fun.
06:48Not only was Countdown a semi-lead-in to Final Crisis, but it got its own spin-offs as well,
06:52and one of which was the very odd Countdown Arena, wherein the supervillain monarch orchestrates
06:57a Roman-style gladiatorial battle between heroes from loads of different universes,
07:02in order to build an army that will fight the multiverse-destroying monitors.
07:05It was a goofy concept from the start, and it ended up being as needlessly bloodthirsty,
07:10vicious and inhumane as the gladiatorial arenas that inspired it.
07:13But we're all here to focus on Batman, and there was a single issue that killed off multiple
07:17versions of him, with the Gotham-by-gaslight Batman being knocked out, and the World War
07:21II hero, the Bat, being killed by a vampire Batman, the latter of whom is summarily obliterated.
07:26Number 5.
07:27Being zapped with a time bullet by Darkseid
07:30Final Crisis is even more difficult to describe than the Grant Morrison epic that led into
07:35it, the aforementioned Batman R.I.P.
07:37When that title turned out to be something of a misnomer, the Scottish writer nevertheless
07:40orchestrated a demise for the Dark Knight.
07:43It was so hard to describe because, whilst the former series involved the Bat family,
07:46Final Crisis starred the entire DC Universe.
07:49That's not an exaggeration, either.
07:51This was a crossover event that literally involved the whole universe, as cosmic villain
07:55Darkseid unleashed his anti-life equation, which tipped the scale so evil would finally
07:59win in a comic book where good was always supposed to triumph.
08:02It was pretty meta, as was the death that Batman faced right at the end.
08:06Having broken his one rule and smuggled a gun into Darkseid's lair, Batman gets the
08:10drop on the big bad and shoots him with a cosmic bullet that travels through time.
08:14It does the deed, but the phenomenally powerful Darkseid makes sure that it bounces back and
08:19removes the Dark Knight from the equation.
08:20Well, actually, it just sent him back to the Stone Age, but still, it's as good as dead.
08:244.
08:25He Blew Himself Up Before Communist Superman Got To Him
08:28Red Son is a weird story.
08:30Part of DC's Elseworlds' line of alternate reality storylines that don't have any bearing
08:34on the mainstream continuity, writer Mark Miller took that as a carte blanche excuse
08:38to come up with the most high-concept alternate history he could, namely one where Kal-El
08:42landed in the USSR and was raised as a well-mannered communist superhero.
08:47Instead of becoming the defender of truth, justice, and the American way, he's the
08:50champion of the common worker who fights a never-ending battle for Stalin, socialism,
08:55and the international expansion of the Warsaw Pact.
08:57A weapon for the communist state, the United States are eager to topple their enemy's
09:01secret weapon.
09:02And here, the Cold War goes a little differently, with Batman being a kid whose dissident parents
09:07were shot by a member of the KGB, who then dedicates his life to stopping Superman with
09:11the help of Lex Luthor.
09:12He's just like regular Batman, only now he wears a furry hat.
09:15Oh, and also he doesn't stand a chance against Superman, so he blows himself up before
09:19the Man of Steel can actually get to him.
09:213.
09:22He Was Stabbed In The Chest With A Shovel
09:23Exploring the origins of the immortal, quite literally and figuratively, Batman villain
09:27Ra's Al Ghul, the birth of the demon flits back and forth between a modern-day duel between
09:32the bad guy and the Dark Knight, and the early days of the man who would turn out to be Ra's.
09:36Turns out that a man who has been alive for 600 years has some pretty good stories to
09:39tell, go figure.
09:40Birth of the Demon mainly exists to show the differences and similarities between Batman
09:44and Ra's.
09:45Both are equally driven, blessed with divine purpose, but Ra's doesn't have the whole
09:48moral crusade thing that the Caped Crusader does.
09:51He's just kind of a bit of a madman, but one who's really committed to killing absolutely
09:55everyone.
09:56In pursuit of that goal, he goes toe-to-toe with Batman, who has bested him a few times
09:59prior to this battle.
10:01Unwilling to accept another defeat, he gets especially brutal, and once he has the upper
10:05hand on his opponent, grabs a shovel and stabs it right into Batman's chest.
10:09Yeah, actually stabs him with it.
10:11Now Bruce technically dies here, using his last bit of strength to drag him and Ra's
10:15into the Lazarus Pit.
10:17He was electrocuted, and then used as a puppet by the Atom.
10:20The Corpse That Wouldn't Die is straight up one of the strangest stories ever told
10:24in comic book history.
10:25Not just Batman comics or superhero comics, but all comics ever published.
10:30After all, what other story have you read, in any medium come to think of it, that involves
10:33somebody dying only to be brought back to life by a tiny person jumping around inside
10:37their brain?
10:38To give you a little backstory, not that it'll make it sound any more sane, Brave
10:41and the Bold number 115 opens with Batman being shocked as he enters an electrified
10:46window, the voltage being enough to stop his heart.
10:48And this time around, there's no Robin around to resuscitate him.
10:51Instead, the Atom, who can shrink himself down to miniscule sizes, is on hand to watch
10:55Batman's demise.
10:56And instead of getting a doctor or something like that, Ray Palmer instead makes himself
10:59small enough so that he can enter the Dark Knight's cerebral cortex and control him
11:03like a puppet, in order to track down the killer.
11:06And somehow, Batman's organs just start working again at the end.
11:09Yay.
11:101.
11:11He Was Tortured For Eternity By The Joker
11:12So, Emperor Joker is the first time the Clown Prince of Crime has ever really gotten one
11:16up on his archenemy.
11:17The mostly forgotten crossover event saw the Joker steal a reality-altering power from
11:21Superman villain Mr. Mixelplick, which allows him to literally change the world as he sees
11:26fit.
11:27Which, it turns out, mainly involves him just basically torturing everyone.
11:30Technically a Superman crossover event rather than a Batman one, Emperor Joker saw the bad
11:34guy rewriting reality so that the Man of Steel was in Arkham Asylum for killing Lex Luthor,
11:38the Justice League was led by his evil doppelganger Bizarro, and Huntress, Nightwing, and Robin
11:43are dead.
11:44Oh, and Aquaman has an actual fish head.
11:46And the Joker's sense of humor really comes to a head in the fate that he commits Batman
11:50to, where he tortures him to death, day in, day out, before resurrecting him the next
11:54morning and starting it all over again.
11:56In fact, that's the way this story would have ended were it not for the Joker himself
11:59realizing the error of his ways, as despite all of his attempts, Superman doesn't save
12:03the day.
12:04It's Emperor Joker realizing his sense of self was so tied up with Batman that if the
12:08Dark Knight were to die for good, he wouldn't have a reason to live either.
12:11So it kinda makes sense how Endgame ended as well.
12:13Full circle.
12:14And there we go, my friends, those were 10 times that Batman has air quotes died.
12:17I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down in
12:20the comments section below.
12:22As always, I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Twitter at RetroJ with a zero,
12:25or you can swing by Liv and Let's Dice, where I do all of my streaming outside of work,
12:29and it'd be great to see you over there, my friends.
12:30But before I go, I just want to say one thing.
12:33I hope you're treating yourself well, with love and respect, my friend, like the superhero
12:36I know you are.
12:37Because you deserve love, happiness, and respect.
12:39We all do as human beings, and I want you to go out there and absolutely smash your
12:42life goals today.
12:43I believe in you, you massive ledge.
12:45As always, I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak
12:48to you soon.
12:49Bye.
13:03Bye.
13:33Bye.
14:03Bye.
14:33Bye.