Detective Comics #869

[superfangirl1]

Comments

[psychopathicus_rex]

Ohhhhhhh-hh. I get it. So the kid mistook the other guy in the costume for his brother, and paid the price?

[kamino_neko]

Eeh, possible, I suppose, but not likely.

A short rundown of what's going on in the arc to explain...

The Jokerz start as a relatively harmless mob - vandalism, and minor (non-injurious) assaults. They get hopped up on Joker Juice (a non-lethal variant on Joker Venom) and cause chaos, but generally nobody gets hurt. But one of them is killed by a cop who thinks he's attacking him after getting shot (by the Imposter Joker). That causes the Jokerz to escalate, and they kill a couple cops. The Joker Juice formula is changed at this point to increase aggression, making it pretty obvious that the supplier intended this.

In response, our child-killing friend up there - the Imposter Batman to go with the Imposter Joker* - enjoins the people of Gotham to rise up - to become the Guardian Bats. A lot of ordinary Gothamites - and more than a few cops, which seriously pisses of Bullock - take up arms, killing the Jokerz, which causes things to escalate again, into a fullscale gang war.

'Robin's brother is one of the Guardian Bats soldiers. The Imposter Batman operates publicly enough (recruiting on TV) that I doubt the kid thought his brother was the leader.

He presumably went to the Imposter Batman rather than his brother because his brother had already balked at taking him along, and he probably realized the Robin costume wouldn't make him more amenable to it. Since the Imposter Batman is pretending to be one of the good guys, 'Robin' probably assumed that the worst that would happen is he'd tell him to go home.

* I'm pretty sure at this point the Imposter Joker and Imposter Batman are the same guy - Heath, who we know is the Imposter Joker, because we see him talking to the guy who makes the Joker Juice.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Oh. OK. So it's more that the kid's naive than that he's a bad judge of costumes.

[kamino_neko]

Right. Or, at least that's my reading based on what else we know.