Oh He Thinks He's So Funny

I had a Terry’s Chocolate Orange once in an airport 10 years ago (they’re very hard to come by in the US, I’ve never seen them sold anywhere else) and I think about it everyday.

Nightwing Vol. 4 #87 - “Get Grayson” (December 21, 2021)

Written by: Tom Taylor Artist [pencils & inks] by: Bruno Redondo Colorist by: Adriano Lucas Lettered by: Wes Abbott Edited by: Jessica Chen (editor), Jessica Berbey (assistant editor) and Ben Abernathy (group editor) Published by: DC Comics

Hi I’m back and here to talk about Issue 4 of World’s Finest:

Hal is being mind controlled and my god is it funny.

The light from the ring!!! Clark being pissed!! Just amazing!

And the Bruce gets grabbed and Nezha talks shit. Also Hal coming up with a mech is so good!!! The backgrounds are so beautiful!!!

And then Bruce pisses him off and he just throws Bruce?! He’s just tossed it’s so funny.

Supergirl and Robin find out how to defeat Nezha and I like how the artstyle feels a bit different in these scenes. Like softer almost.

Robin gets lost in time.

And the finally my favorite scene! Batman and Superman will Hal’s ring off his finger and FUSE?!

They do a full dragon ball fusion help!? It’s just so crazy I love this comic series. If you’re ever interested read them. My rants do not do them justice.

YES!! The more I read about home the more I want to put respect on his name!!!

The sheer amount of lunacy I have recently come to learn about this man. Chills.

Hey what if Bruce just has a pearl from his mother’s necklace that he’s never really been able to let go.

Like he just keeps it with him tied to a string. Just close by always.

What if he has one for his dad too, not a pearl but his watch. He always wears it to functions of meeting. It’s a solid presence that helps ground him when needs be.

You know that trope where individually characters are super competent and smart but when they get together the brain cell gets lost between them.

That’s the Trinity. They can do it sometimes but for the most part either one of them has the brain cell or none of them do.

I’m adding on to this cause I haven’t slept. These take place in various moments on the time line.

Dick “I grew up in two circuses, a real one and this one, the world is my stage” Grayson and Jason “I’m literally the most dramatic person in this family” Todd have the most fun with the pr move. They literally write scripts and choreograph fights in order to make the most dramatic scenes that would bring a tear to any bystander watching.

Roy and Kori are Dick’s friends. Roy and Kori are Jason’s friends. Roy and Kori are concerned about their fighting and the batfam’s relationship. Dick and Jason are trying to convince Bruce that they can trust Roy and Kori with the secret. Bruce allows them, only to get them to stop pestering him about it. Dick and Jason decide to do one last overly dramatic fight that would make it seem like they would never want to even look at each other again. Roy and Kori are horrified, shocked that either one could say such things to one another and are trying to figure out how they could continue their friendships with both brothers. Jason then invites them over to his place where they find him and Dick playing Mario Party. They tell them everything. Kori ends up laughing to tears. Roy ends up screaming.

Jason nearly killing Tim does happen (Jason now feels terrible, Tim is mostly annoyed rather than upset). Because is this the Titans HATE Red Hood. Conner wants to punch him to the moon. This may or may not cause issues for them when they try to do the pr move. Jason nearly did get punched to the moon. It’s gotten to the point where Tim tells them what is actually going on so he can finally enact his epic battle plans for his fight with Red Hood. The team doesn’t give a crap cause they’re still mad at Red Hood. Jason just wants to do his dramatic job.

A Stupid Batfam AU

Jason’s and Bruce’s rocky relationship is actually a pr move to make sure the rest of the batfam doesn’t get attacked by reporters and gcpd.

Essentially Red Hood, while liked by the Crime Alley citizens and other citizens as well, has a pretty bad reputation with a lot of the rest of the city. The GCPD hate him for his overt violence and the head incident. The Media hates him cause he’s what they all feared Batman would become and are constantly creating news stories on him. A lot of the other citizens are just scared of him cause sometimes his temper gets out of control. It’s not the best reputation.

Bruce and Jason have long since talked and settled their differences. Well, it’s more of a “I don’t approve of your methods but I will acknowledge you as a person who wants to help, but I will still dislike the guns. Also I missed you” from Bruce and “I’m not happy with a lot of your decisions but I also understand why you came to those decisions. I’m still mad but I now know that you missed me and I missed you too” from Jason. They’re better than they were originally and honestly that’s all they could hope for. Jason visits the manor more and is having fun being brothers to Dick and Tim.

Here’s the thing though… his reputation as Red Hood may have accidentally spread to the other Bats. A few team ups here and there (and the red bat on his chest) have made everyone assume that Batman is now working with Red Hood, a known crime lord. The media and GCPD were on them like flies on shit. Jim tries to calm down the gcpd with mixed results, but he can’t stop the media from blowing this out of proportion. It’s like the news channels from Dark Knight Returns, but worse.

Jason, who just got his family back, is fucking pissed. Jason is also dramatic as hell. Bruce was willing to just deal with this, but Tim is too new at this to be caught in the crossfire. Bruce was just gonna bench him out of fear until things calm down (he’s dealt with this before) but Jason brings up his plan to Bruce. Bruce isn’t as dramatic as Jason, however he is still absolutely dramatic. He agrees. So begins an epic fight between two ideals that ends two vigilantes at each other’s throats constantly.

Red Hood and Batman fight any time they are together, Red Hood is arrested by Batman on multiple occasions, and Red Hood always escapes leaving terrifying threats spray painted where the bat can see. (Jason and Bruce give each others shit for the pot shots they take and Bruce compliments Jason’s form when he gets a good hit in, Bruce gives Jason a heads up to the easier ways to get out of a police car and Jason ignores him going for the most dramatic ways, Bruce complains that the code Jason uses for his threats are obvious and he can just ask Alfred himself for cookies, why does Bruce have to be the middle man.)

The super hero community doesn’t really know this (cause they can be pretty bad actors at times, says Bruce) tis can cause problems. Superman and Green Arrow capturing Red Hood. Batman had to pull the “he’s Gotham’s problem give him to me,” which led to a hour of arguing to get Jason back. Tim’s friend have Red Hood on their hit list for what Hood did to Robin (Tim is over it but he does use this as a way to get back at his brother when he pisses him off) and Red Hood has to be on the Villain List to sell the act, so every hero ever knows the Red Hood is a villain. This leads to chaos.

There are still rough moments where Bruce and Jason still fight, but it’s better. Jason gets to hang out and play games with Tim. He plans overly dramatic fights with Dick (with full plot cause these two are so extra.) He helps Alfred in the kitchen again talking about books they’ve both read. He and Bruce talk again, they talk about their fears and what they’ve missed. It’s better, and that’s all that really matters.

Plot armor but it’s Bruce Wayne’s wealth.

Bruce is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce does not want to be one of the richest men in world.

He starts by implementing high starting salaries and full health care coverages for all levels at Wayne Enterprises. This in vastly improves retention and worker productivity, and WE profits soar. He increases PTO, grants generous parental and family leave, funds diversity initiatives, boosts salaries again. WE is ranked “#1 worker-friendly corporation”, and productively and profits soar again.

Ok, so clearly investing his workers isn’t the profit-destroying doomed strategy his peers claim it is. Bruce is going to keep doing it obviously (his next initiative is to ensure all part-time and contractors get the same benefits and pay as full time employees), but he is going to have to find a different way to dump his money.

But you know what else is supposed to be prohibitively expensive? Green and ethical initiatives. Yes, Bruce can do that. He creates and fund a 10 year plan to covert all Wayne facilities to renewable energy. He overhauls all factories to employ the best environmentally friendly practices and technologies. He cuts contracts with all suppliers that engage in unethical employment practices and pays for other to upgrade their equipment and facilities to meet WE’s new environmental and safety requirements. He spares no expense.

Yeah, Wayne Enterprises is so successful that they spin off an entire new business arm focused on helping other companies convert to environmentally friendly and safe practices like they did in an efficient, cost effective, successful way.

Admittedly, investing in his own company was probably never going to be the best way to get rid of his wealth. He slashes his own salary to a pittance (god knows he has more money than he could possibly know what to do with already) and keeps investing the profits back into the workers, and WE keeps responding with nearly terrifying success.

So WE is a no-go, and Bruce now has numerous angry billionaires on his back because they’ve been claiming all these measures he’s implementing are too expensive to justify for decades and they’re finding it a little hard to keep the wool over everyone’s eyes when Idiot Softheart Bruice Wayne has money spilling out his ears. BUT Bruce can invest in Gotham. That’ll go well, right?

Gotham’s infrastructure is the OSHA anti-Christ and even what little is up to code is constantly getting destroyed by Rogue attacks. Surely THAT will be a money sink.

Except the only non-corrupt employer in Gotham city is….Wayne Enterprises. Or contractors or companies or businesses that somehow, in some way or other, feed back to WE. Paying wholesale for improvement to Gotham’s infrastructure somehow increases WE’s profits.

Bruce funds a full system overhaul of Gotham hospital (it’s not his fault the best administrative system software is WE—he looked), he sets up foundations and trusts for shelters, free clinics, schools, meal plans, day care, literally anything he can think of.

Gotham continues to be a shithole. Bruce Wayne continues to be richer than god against his Batman-ingrained will.

Oh, and Bruice Wayne is no longer viewed as solely a spoiled idiot nepo baby. The public responds by investing in WE and anything else he owns, and stop doing this, please.

Bruce sets up a foundation to pay the college tuition of every Gotham citizen who applies. It’s so successful that within 10 years, donations from previous recipients more than cover incoming need, and Bruce can’t even donate to his own charity.

But by this time, Bruce has children. If he can’t get rid of his wealth, he can at least distribute it, right?

Except Dick Grayson absolutely refuses to receive any of his money, won’t touch his trust fund, and in fact has never been so successful and creative with his hacking skills as he is in dumping the money BACK on Bruce. Jason died and won’t legally resurrect to take his trust fund. Tim has his own inherited wealth, refuses to inherit more, and in fact happily joins forces with Dick to hack accounts and return whatever money he tries to give them. Cass has no concept of monetary wealth and gives him panicked, overwhelmed eyes whenever he so much as implies offering more than $100 at once. Damian is showing worrying signs of following in his precious Richard’s footsteps, and Babs barely allows him to fund tech for the Clocktower. At least Steph lets him pay for her tuition and uses his credit card to buy unholy amounts of Batburger. But that is hardly a drop in the ocean of Bruce’s wealth. And she won’t even accept a trust fund of only one million.

Jason wins for best-worst child though because he currently runs a very lucrative crime empire. And although he pours the vast, vast majority of his profits back into Crime Alley, whenever he gets a little too rich for his tastes, he dumps the money on Bruce. At this point, Bruce almost wishes he was being used for money laundering because then he’s at least not have the money.

So children—generous, kindhearted, stubborn till the day they die the little shits, children—are also out.

Bruce was funding the Justice League. But then finances were leaked, and the public had an outcry over one man holding so much sway over the world’s superheroes (nevermind Bruce is one of those superheroes—but the public can’t know that). So Bruce had to do some fancy PR trickery, concede to a policy of not receiving a majority of funds from one individual, and significantly decrease his contributions because no one could match his donations.

At his wits end, Bruce hires a team of accounts to search through every crinkle and crevice of tax law to find what loopholes or shortcuts can be avoided in order to pay his damn taxes to the MAX.

The results are horrifying. According to the strictest definition of the law, the government owes him money.

Bruce burns the report, buries any evidence as deeply as he can, and organizes a foundation to lobby for FAR higher taxation of the upper class.

All this, and Wayne Enterprises is happily chugging along, churning profit, expanding into new markets, growing in the stock market, and trying to force the credit and proportionate compensation on their increasingly horrified CEO.

Bruce Wayne is one of the richest men in the world. Bruce Wayne will never not be one of the richest men in the world.

But by GOD is he trying.

Well I suppose that’s true, my car got crushed by Clayface last week.

One time in Gotham there was this tiny coffee shop that was being investigated for embezzlement but it turns out that it was just Bruce Wayne tipping way more than necessary.

Along side playing Fallout New Vegas I will also be playing Fallout 4 because I have this immense urge to build settlements.

I’ve downloaded so many mods.