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00:00 Hey everyone, it's PermaEggJewels here, and we are delighted to say that today's
00:03 video is brought to you in partnership with Manscaped.
00:06 But you know what, we're gonna have more about that later in the video.
00:09 So, if it looks like a superhero, acts like a superhero, and is resistant to death as
00:14 a superhero, it's probably a superhero.
00:17 And you don't get much more super than when it comes to Batman.
00:20 Because seriously, this guy has seen it all, and done it all, and then beaten it all into
00:24 the ground and then said "I don't kill anyone, dude!"
00:27 Or some such other gritty line.
00:29 But here's the thing, as much as Batman has his code about not killing criminals,
00:33 he himself hasn't received the same blessing, and has actually died in comics quite a fair
00:37 few times.
00:38 Although, maybe died should have quotation marks around it, because remember, this is
00:41 comics, and no one stays dead forever.
00:43 So let's take a look at them as I'm Jewels, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10
00:47 Times That Batman Has "Died".
00:49 10.
00:50 Bleeding Out In A Cave With The Joker
00:52 Now one of the more recent examples of the demise of the Dark Knight came in the pages
00:56 of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's Endgame.
00:59 The storyline in this Batman title saw the hero facing off against his arch-nemesis for
01:03 what seemed like the final time.
01:05 Riffing on their brutal confrontation in Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, which
01:08 turned fatal for one of them, the climax of Endgame saw the Clown Prince of Crime and
01:12 the Caped Crusader fighting in a series of underground caves which housed a hidden pool
01:16 of life elixir, Gubbins, that previously brought the Joker back to life.
01:20 Not particularly wanting the most dangerous man in Gotham to be essentially immortal,
01:24 Batman pulled out all the stops to first cease a city-wide dosing of Joker venom, and then
01:29 to off the bad guy himself once and for all.
01:32 There was eye-gouging, backstabbing, and finally the two of them collapsed in a heap of limbs
01:36 and blood, with the area then caving in on them both.
01:39 Woof.
01:40 9.
01:41 He Exploded In A Helicopter Crash
01:42 Sir Grant Morrison had some grand ideas when he took over writing the main Batman title.
01:46 Now the Scottish writer is adept in folding in his own interests in occult mysticism,
01:51 weird sex stuff, and the grand history of superhero comics into his work, and managed
01:55 to do all of that in the Batman RIP storyline, which sought to square the varied history
02:00 of the Dark Knight into one concise character.
02:02 That meant returning to concepts and characters that had been long since forgotten by multiple
02:06 DC Universal reboots, with a Batwoman that hadn't appeared since the '50s, and other
02:10 themes that hadn't been touched upon by Batman writers in decades.
02:14 Of course, he also had to go one step further and kill the Caped Crusader off whilst revitalizing
02:19 him.
02:20 The RIP storyline came to an end with a criminal organization called the Black Glove gaining
02:23 access to the Batcave, incapacitating all of the Bat-family, and smearing the Wayne
02:28 family name.
02:29 The fact that the group were apparently led by Bruce's long-dead father Thomas didn't
02:32 help matters, but their final move was to have Batman die in a helicopter crash.
02:36 Or so it seemed.
02:38 8.
02:39 Shot By The Electrocutioner
02:41 Go ahead, try and guess what The Electrocutioner's power set involves.
02:44 Go on, I dare you, guess.
02:46 And no, it's not the power to be knocked out in one punch in the Batman games.
02:49 For a supervillain so lacking in subtlety or invention, the title of The Electrocutioner
02:53 has somehow been passed down to three separate people.
02:56 But it was the second, the brother of the original, that came the closest to besting
02:59 his rival.
03:00 Lester Puchinski was introduced by Chuck Dixon in Detective Comics #644, which kicked off
03:05 the Electric City arc where he adopted the guise of The Electrocutioner and headed out
03:10 on Batman's trail, blasting electricity from his gloves and able to draw power from
03:14 other energy sources that he happened upon along the way.
03:17 Eventually, he did manage to catch up with the Dark Knight, and, well, there's only
03:19 so much electricity that a man can actually take.
03:22 Even when Batman has got a lot of special training and wears a funky rodent suit, Batman's
03:26 heart actually stopped, and he was only saved by Robin resuscitating him before refusing
03:30 his sidekicks' pleas that he rest and heal with the all-time classic line, "I was technically
03:35 dead, not clinically."
03:36 Oh, Batman, you absolute joker, you.
03:39 #7.
03:40 He Stopped His Heart On Purpose
03:41 If the likes of Endgame and Batman R.I.P. seemed a little out there to modern tastes,
03:46 the early days were surely beyond the pale.
03:48 The Golden Age and Silver Age adventures of Batman were so utterly bonkers that it made
03:52 the Adam West TV show look like the gritty Christian Bale films by comparison, with the
03:56 Caped Crusader fighting enemies like "guerrillas with bombs on them."
03:59 Yes, that actually happened.
04:01 Still, they found moments of grim fatalism in places, like the story where Robin kept
04:05 dying in rather hilarious ways, kinda like Kenny from South Park.
04:09 Or the time that Batman finally met his maker, but it all turned out to be an elaborate ploy
04:13 so that he could go undercover in an exclusive criminal organization.
04:17 What is going on here?
04:18 Yet, in the Death Cheaters of Gotham City, he had his heart artificially stopped and
04:22 was technically dead for several minutes, before Robin then had to revive him.
04:26 Nothing like faking your own death to freak out your already orphaned surrogate son, eh?
04:30 The whole thing was a ruse so that he could join the Death Cheaters Club, with having
04:33 been dead for a bit being the main entry criteria.
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06:25 6.
06:26 He was killed three times in Countdown Arena
06:28 Countdown was one of the lesser crossover events that DC has published in their history,
06:33 supposedly building up - or is that down? - to an even bigger event called Final Crisis.
06:37 It was also supposed to function as a sequel to the incredibly successful and really damn
06:42 good Series 52, a weekly book that preceded it and explored stories with a lot of B-list
06:46 characters, and it was a lot of fun.
06:48 Not only was Countdown a semi-lead-in to Final Crisis, but it got its own spin-offs as well.
06:52 And one of which was the very odd Countdown Arena, wherein the supervillain monarch orchestrates
06:57 a Roman-style gladiatorial battle between heroes from loads of different universes,
07:02 in order to build an army that will fight the multiverse-destroying monitors.
07:05 It was a goofy concept from the start, and it ended up being as needlessly bloodthirsty,
07:09 vicious, and inhumane as the gladiatorial arenas that inspired it.
07:13 But we're all here to focus on Batman, and there was a single issue that killed off multiple
07:16 versions of him, with the Gotham-by-gaslight Batman being knocked out, and the World War
07:21 II hero, the Bat, being killed by a vampire Batman, the latter of whom is summarily obliterated.
07:26 5.
07:27 Being zapped with a time bullet by Darkseid
07:29 Final Crisis is even more difficult to describe than the Grant Morrison epic that led into
07:34 it, the aforementioned Batman R.I.P.
07:37 When that title turned out to be something of a misnomer, the Scottish writer nevertheless
07:40 orchestrated a demise for the Dark Knight.
07:42 It was so hard to describe because whilst the former series involved the Bat family,
07:46 Final Crisis starred the entire DC Universe.
07:49 That's not an exaggeration, either.
07:50 This was a crossover event that literally involved the whole universe, as cosmic villain
07:55 Darkseid unleashed his anti-life equation, which tipped the scale so evil would finally
07:59 win in a comic book where good was always supposed to triumph.
08:02 It was pretty meta, as was the death that Batman faced right at the end.
08:06 Having broken his one rule and smuggled a gun into Darkseid's lair, Batman gets the
08:10 drop on the big bad and shoots him with a cosmic bullet that travels through time.
08:14 It does the deed, but the phenomenally powerful Darkseid makes sure that it bounces back and
08:18 removes the Dark Knight from the equation.
08:20 Well, actually, it just sent him back to the Stone Age, but still, it's as good as dead.
08:24 4.
08:25 He blew himself up before Communist Superman got to him
08:28 Bread Son is a weird story.
08:30 Part of DC's Elseworlds, a line of alternate reality storylines that don't have any bearing
08:34 on the mainstream continuity, writer Mark Miller took that as a carte blanche excuse
08:38 to come up with the most high-concept alternate history he could, namely one where Kal-El
08:42 landed in the USSR and was raised as a well-mannered communist superhero.
08:47 Instead of becoming the defender of truth, justice, and the American way, he's the
08:50 champion of the common worker who fights a never-ending battle for Stalin, socialism,
08:54 and the international expansion of the Warsaw Pact.
08:57 A weapon for the communist state, the United States are eager to topple their enemy's
09:01 secret weapon.
09:02 Here, the Cold War goes a little differently, with Batman being a kid whose dissident parents
09:06 were shot by a member of the KGB, who then dedicates his life to stopping Superman with
09:10 the help of Lex Luthor.
09:12 He's just like regular Batman, only now he wears a furry hat.
09:15 Oh, and also, he doesn't stand a chance against Superman, so he blows himself up before
09:18 the Man of Steel can actually get to him.
09:20 3.
09:21 He was stabbed in the chest with a shovel
09:23 Exploring the origins of the immortal, quite literally and figuratively, Batman villain
09:27 Ra's al Ghul, the birth of the demon flits back and forth between a modern-day duel between
09:32 the bad guy and the Dark Knight, and the early days of the man who would turn out to be Ra's.
09:36 Turns out that a man who's been alive for 600 years has some pretty good stories to
09:39 tell.
09:40 Go figure.
09:41 Birth of the Demon mainly exists to show the differences and similarities between Batman
09:44 and Ra's.
09:45 Both are equally driven, blessed with divine purpose, but Ra's doesn't have the whole
09:48 moral crusade thing that the Caped Crusader does.
09:50 He's just kind of a bit of a madman, but one who's really committed to killing absolutely
09:54 everyone.
09:55 In pursuit of that goal, he goes toe-to-toe with Batman, who has bested him a few times
09:59 prior to this battle.
10:01 Unwilling to accept another defeat, he gets especially brutal, and once he has the upper
10:05 hand on his opponent, grabs a shovel and stabs it right into Batman's chest.
10:09 Yeah, actually stabs him with it.
10:10 Now Bruce technically dies here, using his last bit of strength to drag him and Ra's
10:14 into the Lazarus Pit.
10:16 Number 2.
10:17 He was electrocuted and then used as a puppet by the Atom
10:19 The Corpse That Wouldn't Die is straight up one of the strangest stories ever told
10:24 in comic book history.
10:25 Not just Batman comics or superhero comics, but all comics ever published.
10:29 After all, what other story have you read, in any medium come to think of it, that involves
10:33 somebody dying only to be brought back to life by a tiny person jumping around inside
10:37 their brain?
10:38 Now, a little backstory, not that it'll make it sound any more sane.
10:41 Brave and the Bold #115 opens with Batman being shocked as he enters an electrified
10:45 window, the voltage being enough to stop his heart.
10:48 And this time around, there's no Robin around to resuscitate him.
10:51 Instead, the Atom, who can shrink himself down to miniscule sizes, is on hand to watch
10:54 Batman's demise.
10:55 And instead of getting a doctor or something like that, Ray Palmer instead makes himself
10:59 small enough so that he can enter the Dark Knight's cerebral cortex and control him
11:03 like a puppet, in order to track down the killer.
11:05 And somehow, Batman's organs just start working again at the end.
11:09 Yay!
11:10 And Number 1.
11:11 He was tortured for eternity by the Joker
11:12 So Emperor Joker is the first time the Clown Prince of Crime has ever really gotten one
11:16 up on his archenemy.
11:17 The mostly forgotten crossover event saw the Joker steal a reality-altering power from
11:21 Superman villain Mr. Mixelplic, which allows him to literally change the world as he sees
11:25 fit.
11:26 Which, it turns out, mainly involves him just basically torturing everyone.
11:29 Technically a Superman crossover event rather than a Batman one, Emperor Joker saw the bad
11:34 guy rewriting reality so that the Man of Steel was in Arkham Asylum for killing Lex Luthor,
11:38 the Justice League was led by his evil doppelganger Bizarro, and Huntress, Nightwing, and Robin
11:43 are dead.
11:44 Oh, and Aquaman has an actual fish head.
11:46 And the Joker's sense of humor really comes to a head in the fate that he commits Batman
11:50 to, where he tortures him to death, day in, day out, before resurrecting him the next
11:54 morning and starting it all over again.
11:56 In fact, that's the way this story would have ended were it not for the Joker himself
11:59 realizing the error of his ways, as despite all of his attempts, Superman doesn't save
12:03 the day.
12:04 It was the Emperor Joker realizing his sense of self was so tied up with Batman that if
12:07 the Dark Knight were to die for good, he wouldn't have a reason to live either.
12:11 So it kinda makes sense how Endgame ended as well.
12:13 Full circle!
12:14 And there we go, my friends.
12:15 Those were 10 times that Batman has air quotes "died".
12:17 I hope that you enjoyed that, and please let me know what you thought about it down in
12:20 the comments section below.
12:21 As always, I've been Jules, you can go follow me over on Twitter @RetroJWithA0, or
12:25 you can swing by Liv and Let's Dice, where I do all of my streaming outside of work,
12:28 and it'd be great to see you over there, my friends.
12:30 But before I go, I just want to say one thing.
12:32 Hope you're treating yourself well, with love and respect, my friend, like the superhero
12:35 I know you are.
12:37 Because you deserve love, happiness, and respect.
12:39 We all do as human beings, and I want you to go out there and absolutely smash your
12:42 life goals today.
12:43 I believe in you, you massive ledge.
12:45 As always, I've been Jules, you have been awesome, never forget that, and I'll speak
12:48 to you soon.
12:49 Bye.
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