#comic shots

[jokeralltheway]

i watch their surreal theatre of shadows. i watch them drawing blood and breaking bones... clawing and gnawing and tearing i watch the madness

[thebatbaes]

[ Dick Grayson as Agent 37, from Grayson #2 ]

[jokeralltheway]

[jokeralltheway]

finally show you, that you need me

//

to see your like this, all broken and vulnerable

[jokeralltheway]

batman: europa issue i: berlin

[jokeralltheway]

batman: death of the family

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Look into his eyes and tell yourself he's just a man. Tell yourself he can't know the things he says he does. He can't know your fears. But he has Alfred. He has a friend. And his eyes... 

you have studied the human eye. there are six eye movements that reveal motive, then fifteen variations of each one. One everyone else you face-- even the most hardened criminals--the pupils contract or expand depending on emotion. happiness, laughter, affection. the pupils open. fear, anger, hatred. the pupils close. 

but not his. his pupils stay fixed tiny points of blackness, the eyes of someone who hates everything, everyone. eyes that let in no light, that see through the darkness, stare into you, each pupil a tiny black pearl fixed in space. a bullet coming at you. eyes that say he's more than a man, eyes that say he knows you. no... you know what he is. tell yourself the truth. he's just a man who fell in a vat of chemical waste. he's just a man... like you., made of bone and tissue and blood.

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So now, Bruce… tell yourself he’s just a man. Like you. Tell yourself he has flesh which can be ripped, bones that can be shattered. That he needs to breathe, to sleep, to eat. Prove it to yourself. Stare back at him, into those damn eyes. Stare into them until he flinches. Until you see them work like human eyes. Until you see the pupils change.

It happens all of a sudden, just a tiny shift, but there it is. You stare back and you see it. The smallest flicker in the pupils, but still. And you say to yourself, see? Beneath it all he’s just what you thought he was. A man. 

And ignore the fact that what you saw those tiny pupils do was expand. Expand for you after you stared back long enough. Ignore the fact that what you saw those black points expand with…

…was love.

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Joker: it was you, bats. you wrote this little love letter, this backwards map, this hit list... and you write it again and again, every time you keep [me] alive, but let one of them fall. and they will fall.

...

that day when they're all dead and buried, in their cold bat-graves... and why? because it's what you want to happen. it's what you need. because you see, with [me] you're more. with [me], you transcend, with [me] you're always.

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batman(to joker): everything that happens to you tonight happens by my hand

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Batman: so how about it, joker? how about tonight i go farther than i've ever gone? how about tonight, i stop the game once and for all? 

now come a little closer, old friend... so I can whisper it into your ear.

Joker: in the end, the real end, the only ones left will be you and me

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he looked right at the card, and right at me... but... but he didn't see me. he didn't see me at all. it was then that i knew... knew that he didn't care who i was beneath the mask, and never would. knew that he was incapable of even broaching the subject of bruce wayne. it would ruin his fun.

[jokeralltheway]

Harleen