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in depth analysis of the (beginning of the) final confrontation of batman: under the hood

batman goes in with the mindset of trying to appeal to jason and get his son back and/or with the motivation to save the joker. is batman trying to save the joker out of his belief in the sanctity of life or to stop jason from murder, saving him from himself?

jason is taunting batman with memories of who they once were, drawing on how poetic it would be for that bond to become severed in the very same place. it has the effect of making batman more emotionally fragile and reminding him that the person he sees before him is still the same boy. it confronts him with the care he tries to hide and the effect of his actions on the innocent kid jason once was. however batman still tries to hide under his cowl and his mission, not indulging in jason’s taunts and shortly as possible asking ‘where is he?’ knowing that the ‘he’ would be correctly interpreted as the joker.

jason continues to assert his knowledge and control of the situation using his prolonged speech whilst further flaunting his suffering as a way to hurt bruce and make him vulnerable. batman hides once again and tries to combat jason’s control by being to the point and focused on the joker, not even using the jokers name or recognising any familiarity with his son. then both of them give up on communicating verbally and resort to the language they’re used to- violence.

jason puts a face of apathy over the death of a whole city, presumed to include his adopted brother. instead of horror he opts to rub in the grief that batman has now been confronted by the past and present failure of his mentees. but the ellipsis may show his true vulnerability or may be a way to further make his mocking dramatic. whilst the blowing of bludhaven was not intentional on jason’s part, this works in jason’s favour the most in terms of making batman hurt and vulnerable.

batman tries to save his son in vain, mostly because of his ill timing once again. jason sees his own confrontation between him and batman as taking priority, using cold rationale that there’s no saving ‘Dickie’ and taunting of batman’s moral code to ensure batman stays in the most effective way. batman has now lost his cold demeanour in desperate heartbreak, fatherhood prevailing as he pleads ‘Jason please, I-‘ in an extremely uncharacteristic manner. he finally acknowledges his son by using his name, says ‘please’, putting himself as inferior, and finally doesn’t even finish his sentence as he’s completely lost his composure. it’s extremely cruel but jason’s response is his own way of showing his desperation to keep his father in his place and maintain his control over the situation. jason isn’t denying that batman cares for nightwing, just as he wouldn’t refute that batman cares for him, in fact he weaponises that care to show that it’s futile; no matter how hard he tries to save them, they still end up dead because he won’t remove the problem at the source and continues to risk them for his moral code and idealistic hope.

jason continues being talkative as a way to maintain control, to distract, and show how vindictive he is now that’s he’s changed from the innocent robin. he brags about his underhanded techniques that are far from the technical greatness that his opponent taught him and begins to patronise in a way to undermine him and further prove how he is the ‘better batman’ in his mostly un-theatrical and practical costume. he also recognises and mocks batman having to improve after jason revealed a weakness of his previously. batman finally gives into the fight talking and takes the upper hand once again by revealing jason’s hypocrisy in his critique of batman’s reliance on weapons by burning his jacket. this serves as an act of showing that he’s not holding back, no matter how much he may care for jason.

batman knows that he failed his son but he incorrectly presumes the failure that jason is caught up on. he presumes jason’s issue with him is more unsalvageable, that being the fact that he wasn’t saved from being murdered. batman projects his own guilt of not being enough to save jason on him and can’t imagine any other reason, namely the way jason’s whole existence was erased as if he never existed, and most importantly that the joker has had countless more victims since. the ellipsis shows his hesitance and attempt to be gentle with his appeal to his son, perhaps being unsure how to ever ‘fix’ jason’s hurt over being murdered. ‘I tried to save you’ implies that batman thinks jason believes he wasn’t cared about enough in life for his father to stop his murder or he’s trying to make jason see the logic that it wasn’t batman’s fault- here he names jason to show that he’s attempting to talk to him as ‘bruce’ to ‘jason’ with a sense of familiarity. the ‘I’m…I’m’ when talking about ‘trying to save you now’ shows his struggle with emotional vulnerability and an awareness of how cruel it is to claim that he’s trying to ‘save’ his son by looming over his crumpled body after beating him to a pulp. batman had never tried to truly talk to jason other than when it seemed he was physically and dynamically in control and this is only after resorting to violence first (although he was goaded into it), the exception to this being when nightwing was at stake. jason only responds to this meagre justification with desperate anger, pointing a gun pathetically at him and responding incredulously with the rhetorical questions ‘this what you think this is about? you letting me die?’ at every point previously jason had seemed to perfectly predict batman’s intelligent yet emotionally stunted thought processes however he is truly caught off guard at batman’s lack of deduction. he then goes on to question which side of the man has failed his ‘judgement’- the guilty father/hero or the narrow and single minded man on a mission. he criticises his ‘antiquated sense of morality’ that being a reference to his repellant to death at all costs, both jason’s and the joker’s equally as suggested by the past and present ways of trying to save jason from death and murdering. for the first time it jason addresses bruce without a hint of mocking behind the name and tells him earnestly that ‘i forgive you for not saving me.’ this carries the implication that jason knows that bruce is at fault for his death in some ways but that his main concern wasn’t with the things that bruce couldn’t control about his death, perhaps seeing a grudge as useless or genuinely forgiving even without a direct apology. jason forgave bruce and sheila in his final moments, knowing that the circumstances of his death of a fatal combination of fear, helplessness, and coincidences. he died a hero, he just wished he was remembered as one by being worthy enough to make batman stop the joker for good, not a victim who projected his hurt over dying on the one who failed to save him.

jason gets up from his position on the floor and aggressively and indignantly gets to the point of his confrontation- why is the joker alive? the repetition of ‘why’, use of ellipsis, the exclamation of ‘on god’s earth’, and excessive use of punctuation all express how unthinkable and rage inducing it is for the joker to live, adding to how baffling it is to jason that batman thought his problem was not being saved. it implies that jason had the full assumption that batman would kill the joker- it was not a special demand but an expectation- so the fact that the minimum for being cared for after his death wasn’t fulfilled or even understood further hurts and enrages him.

here jason truly tries to be persuasive by being as open as possible in his criticism, a change from his previous snarky comments, insults, and arrogance. by beginning the speech with what he is supposedly ‘ignoring’ various points before listing them out furthers how valid his point is, showing his empathy and desires are rooted not only in himself- perhaps implying that bruce’s are- but also the wider suffering caused by one man. the list begins with the more distant, more inconceivable picture of ‘entire graveyards’ and ends with a reference to barbara, going from a more logical quantity of suffering to the more personal pain and responsibility over a loved one. there’s an appeal to ‘the past’, showing his expectation of killing is not based on character or the supposed worth of the joker but as vengeance and prevention of suffering in the future as implied by the phrasing of jason being ‘the last person you’d ever let him hurt’; this both could mean the joker should have died after ‘killing’ jason or that he never should have lived long enough to ‘hurt’ jason at all. through the phrasing of ‘let him’, jason makes it so that batman is responsible for the jokers actions through his own inaction in killing him or preventing his atrocities. the repetition of ‘i thought’ before revealing how mistaken he was in having faith in bruce shows his vulnerability and hurt, maybe seeing now how futile his arguments are against the cold expression of batman’s cowl as suggested by his hesitance to declare his own care. the emphasis on ‘me’ is both a way to convince bruce to see what he should have been valued as a son and a plea to be affirmed that he was enough of a son at all. jason then goes on the express his own care through the conditional of ‘if it had been you’ and how unexpected it was that the same was not done for him in reality. the violent imagery and blunt language of a ‘bloody mass’ is a reminder of the suffering that jason went through other than the bomb and his actual death- this is a more vulnerable and vivid imagining compared the unrealistic references to your own death. this comparison also seems more cruel on the part of bruce because whilst jason’s unreciprocated feelings of care in vengeance can be seen from the lens of batman and robin as a partnership, it’s also on the level of a parent and child with the scenario of a child going after his fathers murderer compared with a father not being willing to do the same for the other. there is the emphasised ‘you’ which contrasts to the previous ‘me’, which shows that despite how much reasoning jason may give, his issues are about bruce not valuing jason as much as he thought he did. the hyperbolic language of ‘search the planet’ and excessive pejoratives of ‘pathetic pile of evil, death-worshipping garbage’ ends his argument with a tone of anger, reflecting his conviction in his hypothetical actions if bruce were to be the one to be murdered. the whole time jason is kneeled over the joker whilst pointing a gun at a hunched over batman. this reflects the levels of power of each of the people in the room through the visible heights, along with their attitudes, with batman being closed off and shameful, jason being aggressive in his attempt to have power over batman through weaponising his words, and the joker just gleefully observing. the bottom left panel has batman coldly looking at jason, with his cowl acting as a facade to his emotions, contrasted to jason who is angry almost to the point of tears and splattered with his own blood. the backgrounds mirror all of this with batman having a white background, not restricted to a panel and holding the most power, emotional composure, and moral superiority, this juxtaposed with jason only having a fraction of his face showing on the bottom right. jason looks straight forward whereas batman looks at jason, maybe implying that jason’s message is just as much for the reader as it is for batman or just representing how open he is with his emotions.

batman now faces forward (now in the position of giving his view to the reader), bares his teeth, and gives a short vague reply telling jason that he doesn’t ‘understand’, either implying jason never saw the true purpose behind the dedication to never kill, bruce himself, or the idea of batman and it’s incompatibility with killing. jason once again starts asking rhetorical questions, both showing he is more open to understanding bruce and that he still does not ‘understand’ by assuming what bruce is talking about at all despite bruce implying that he can’t have thought of it. jason thinks it’s a matter of ‘moral code’ and it’s harsh limits, maybe mocking his deontological views on the lack of reasoning behind not killing other than not being allowed by an abstract ‘line.’ bruce, with a downturned head, mournfully replies ‘no’, emphasised by the repetition, ellipsis and phrase ‘god almighty’ showing his true vulnerability for a moment. then batman shockingly says that killing the joker would be ‘too damned easy’, revealing his innermost temptations as a figure defined by his closed off stoicism that threat to completely destroy his control over his mission if he even gives in once. the use of black, white, and the walls of the building are symbolic of the emotions of the moment. in the 1st panel, batman has one black eye and one white showing through his cowl, in the 3rd it is completely black but concealed through the shadow created by his downturned head, and by the 4th, both of his eyes are shadowed over. the 2nd and 3rd panel looks as though batman is projecting darkness over the scene and almost reaching jason with it (with jason’s outstretched arm reaching back), contrasting to the white background he inhabited in the previous page and perhaps representing his darkness, shame, sadness, or emotional vulnerability. the 1st panel and 5th mirror each other through the use of a dark and light eye and flip the dynamics of their positions in the previous page, with jason now looking coldly to the side. the broken mask shows jason’s conflict residing both in vigilantism and personal relationship, his facade of cruelty and his authentic tears, his role as an antagonist and his position as a sympathetic son.