The Killing Joke Vs Watchmen!
Intro[]
Wiz: Batman, the vigilante with the sisyphean struggle against the Killing Joke.
Boomstick: Rorschach, the uncompromising outlaw and the Watchman who must be watched.
Wiz: Author Alan Moore challenged the status quo of comic book heroes when he dropped these two crime busters in the late eighties. How far is too far? How soft is too soft?
Boomstick: One man can take a stand, but actions have consequences. It's time for us to see which paranoid powerless hero has greater limits to push.
Wiz: A special note for those of you who are already crying "stomp", we are restricting the framework of these characters to the previously-mentioned Alan Moore titles, and their movie adaptations.
Boomstick: He means we're nerfing Batman. He's Wiz, and I'm Boomstick.
Wiz: And it's our job to analyze their weapons, armour, and skills, in order to find out who would win... a Death Battle!
Batman[]
Wiz: Normally, we start off a character’s analysis with their backstory. We will not be doing that here. Not in the traditional sense, at least.
Boomstick: Yeah, because everyone and their mother knows all about how Bruce Wayne went from being a child billionaire to a bat-themed asskicker orphan…and still a billionaire.
Wiz: Not that this particular one bad day of his has no bearing on who he is today, far from it. But in the world of Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, there’s little room for this story to be told once more when we instead get a glimpse into what created his most dangerous nemesis: the Joker. Once a failed stand-up comedian who lost his wife and unborn child, the John Deer was coerced into participating in a midnight robbery gone wrong. The intervention of Batman himself caused him to collapse into a vat of chemicals, permanently disfiguring his appearance and driving him insane.
Boomstick: To what extent was Batman himself the cause of this psycho pierrot? Was it his intimidating presence that caused the Red Hood to make his fatal fall? Or was this destined to happen in a corrupt city filled with gangs and goons? We’ll never really know, because surprise surprise, the Joker might have just made the whole origin story up.
Wiz: Batman and the Joker feuded for years; it was the Caped Crusader’s determination never to kill against the Clown Prince of Crime’s need to keep Batman alive for fun, a twisted symbiotic relationship. Every failed attempt at locking him up meant more death when he would return. Yet even after all this time, Bruce felt he didn’t truly know who the Joker was. What he did know, was that all stories must come to an end. The Killing Joke begins when Batman finally tried to talk the Joker over, to see who’s death would come first, if the survival of both wasn’t meant to be.
Boomstick: But instead, he got the ordeal of a lifetime when the Joker busted loose from Arkham Asylum and set in motion his most deranged scheme yet. He kidnapped Police Commissioner Gordon, and shot, paralyzed, and undressed his daughter Barbara for some sick fun; by shoving the results into Gordon’s face, he sent the commissioner on a literal roller coaster of emotions to drive him mad. And the Gordons weren’t even the true targets!
Wiz: Indeed; his endgame was to prove a point to his nemesis: that insanity was a perfectly viable way out for anyone tortured by the real world’s injustice. All it would take was one bad day to see it. Furthermore, to the Joker, Batman was already just as insane as he was. After all, he was a man who put on tights and scampered around the town using gadgets to beat up the mentally ill. So when Bruce finally came storming into the Joker’s new playground, with the last of his strength, Gordon pleaded to him to bring the clown in… by the book.
Boomstick: No smoke bombs. No batarangs. No night-vision goggles, freeze grenades, kryptonite spears or shark repellent. All Batman had here was a glorified car, a 20-foot grapple hook, and his own grit.
Wiz: After all, this wasn’t a story about Batman being overly prepared, overly intelligent, or overly rich. It was a story about his mental fortitude, and how ultimately, despite everything the Joker did, he could prove a point right back: not everyone could be so easily broken.
Boomstick: Batman may be lacking almost all of his gadgets in this story, but he’s still one tough son of a bitch. A blow from a 2 x 4 to the head is easily enough to knock out the average man, even to the point where they may never wake up. And that wasn’t even the only head wound he took!
Wiz: Because Batman is far from average. After triggering a trap door, he was able to reflexively turn and grab the floor with only his four fingertips, halting the fall of his 250 pound body with just a fraction of his hand. He also smashed through a glass mirror, and a wooden wall right after, without suffering any visible damage. And while we could possibly write this durability off to possible body armour, there’s little to suggest that Wayne isn’t wearing anything other than the usual spandex.
Boomstick: Which we can see when a shot of Joker acid burns straight through it, down to his arm. So even if it was a tough Kevlar alloy, congratulations Batman, now your feat is being able to take the pain of a chemical that dissolved that in a second! Any way you slice it, Batman isn’t going down easy.
Wiz: He didn’t. Joker held the original advantage with his traps and dirty fighting, but after dominating the clown in hand to hand and knocking him fifteen feet with a single blow, Batman was victorious over his arch-nemesis once more. Once more. They had done this dance before. When would it end?
Boomstick: Eh, when they stop being marketable.
Wiz: Even now, the caped crusader believed that mercy was always an option. Batman offered the Joker one last chance to change his ways, to stop the suicidal collision course they were both on. Otherwise, one or both of them would die. But the Joker refused, believing he was too far gone. Instead, he told a joke. A joke that got the deadly serious Batman… to laugh.
Boomstick: Was this the Killing Joke that sent Batman past his no-kill rule? Or was it his acceptance to continue the fight until the bitter end? Did Batman doom himself, or all of the Joker’s future victims? Did it stop with Batgirl, or is this canon to Robin’s death less than one year later?
Wiz: Batman never doubted that the world was a terrible place. But whether or not you believe that Batman killed the Joker that night, one thing is for certain. It may be a mad world out there, but it can’t break everyone. For both themselves, and for the safety of others, someone will rise to weather the storm.
Boomstick: And that someone is the god damn Batman.
Joker: It’s all a monstrous, demented gag! So why can’t you see the funny side? Why aren’t you laughing?!
Batman: Because I’ve heard it before… and it wasn’t funny the first time.
Rorschach[]
Wiz: Are “good” and “evil” absolute terms, or can there be nuance? Can bad things be done for a good reason? Can there be shades of grey? When you look at the world, what do you see?
Boomstick: Well, if you lay eyes on that shifting black and white mask, instead of seeing a butterfly or your parents arguing, you’re probably about to see your afterlife.
Wiz: That special mask belongs to Walter Kovacs, a former garments worker who chanced upon a unique fabric that could trap ink blots within its layers. But that’s an irrelevant detail; what’s more important was when he read the news one morning and discovered that one of his former customers had been murdered, while surrounded by bystanders who had done nothing to help. Enraged at the world’s indifference to the less fortunate, Walter decided to take a stand.
Boomstick: He donned some drip and took to the streets as Rorschach, vigilante warrior. Armed with no super powers, no advanced training, nothing except an axe to grind, he was still one of the number one block busters out there; costumed crime busters were a dime a dozen, but Rorschach’s reputation was something else, probably because he was genuinely in the superhero business as a means to justice and not for publicity. But one bad day would end up sending Kovacs over the edge for good. After tracking down a 3-PDO murderer and discovering that the S.O.B. had fed his victim to his dogs, he decided, no more leaving the bad guys alive.
Wiz: Kovacs entered that shack, but Rorschach came out. His cloth mask was now his new face, isolating him from the rest of humanity and the shame of being one of them. Instead of aiding justice, he became justice. And when the United States government outlawed vigilantism, he made his side on the issue quite clear.
Boomstick: Oh hey, like the Incredibles!
Wiz: Uh, superficially. Rorschach is no family friendly hero with powers that cause collateral damage. He is a violent man who believes that all evil deeds must go punished. Maybe it would be better if he had superpowers, because then his victims might die more painlessly.
Boomstick: The ONE tool this guy has is a grappling gun capable of reaching a penthouse apartment at least 17 stories up. It was designed by his former partner Nite Owl, definitely not a ripoff of another night flying tech genius, and it isn’t just god for climbing things. "It is a violation of Federal Law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling”? Well fuck off, Rorschach never listened to law anyway. That thing is getting aimed straight at your chest in melee.
Wiz: With enough force to shatter your sternum, according to his arrest report. He usually operates unarmed, though he is quick to use nearby objects as improvised weapons.
Boomstick: Like Final Fight!
Wiz: This doesn’t just mean swinging bats and boards as bludgeons. He’ll blind foes by throwing pepper in the eyes…
Boomstick: Like King of the Hill!
Wiz: Or by combining a match and a spray can to create a makeshift flamethrower.
Boomstick: Like Dead Rising!
Wiz: … Boomstick, what exactly are you seeing when you look at Rorschach’s mask?
Boomstick: Two dweebs who have made a career out of analyzing the abilities of fictional characters before sentencing them to death.
Wiz: Uh… hmm..,
Boomstick: Hah, just kidding, I see Chun-Li’s legs.
Wiz: Ugh…
Boomstick: Even with just his bare fists, Rorschach is a madman. He’s skilled in boxing and street fighting, and has no problems with fighting greasy; sometimes literally. He can even hold his own against multiple foes at once, effortlessly break bones, and can pierce flesh with his bare hands. Even the police knew him to be a borderline animal when cornered.
Wiz: Seemingly fuelled by his anger, he’s remarkably tough for a man with no known workout routine, comfortable lifestyle or healthy diet. He can leap through glass windows, took a kick that knocked him fifteen feet, and can break through reinforced wooden doorframes. Repeatedly. Second only to Rorschach’s war on evil is his war on doorknobs.
Boomstick: He’s taken extreme cold and extreme heat, a bullet to the shoulder, and multiple stab wounds, and kept on truckin’. Seriously, what is this guy’s deal? Why is he giving so much to such an uncaring world?
Wiz: Except, he isn’t. The world that “created” Rorschach is beneath him, drowning in its own filth, and by his own admission, he is no longer there to save it. Kovacs does not wear the mask to invite interpretation of his actions, or for people to see something from a different view. The mask is him, and represents the abyss that shaped him. All of humanity’s violence, all its lust, all its hypocrisy. The symmetry of his face is himself coming forth to give the world what it deserves. Why does he fight so hard against evil? Because he sees evil.
Boomstick: Oh… I thought he was just cool like that.
Wiz: This morality was put to the ultimate test when he confronted his former friend Ozymandias, a billionaire mastermind who set out to save the world, by killing millions of innocent people. The earth was on the brink of nuclear war, and had been so for decades; Ozymandias wanted to bring the world’s people together against a common threat, a threat he declared and faked to be the one man in the world who DID have superpowers: Doctor Manhattan, living god.
Boomstick: The plan went off without a hitch, and global unity was achieved, but everything about it was based on a lie, a lie that an innocent man was a mass murderer with loose screws. Did the ends justify the means? Even if the blue man groupie himself seemed to agree to the result, Rorschach knew he couldn’t live and let it slide.
Wiz: And thus, he legitimately justified Doctor Manhattan as a murderer.
Rorschach: Do it!
Boomstick: And just like that, world piece was achieved and that was the end of Walter Kovacs… but not his ideals. Always leave a paper trail.
Rorschach: None of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with YOU. You're locked up in here with ME.
Interlude[]
Wiz: All right, the combatants are set, and we've run the data through all possibilities.
Boomstick: IT'S TIME FOR A DEATH BATTLE!!!
DEATH BATTLE[]
It’s late at night, and the moon is high in the sky, but it can barely be seen behind the thick clouds cast over the distant Gotham City. Rain pours down, transforming the rural surroundings into a muggy wasteland of drenched grass and puddle-driven gravel roads, hardly weather for anyone to be out driving in. Yet, bright headlights pierce the black like hot knives through butter; they belong to a sleek armoured black car that rips through the puddles as if they weren’t there. Its destination lies ahead: behind a wrought-iron security fence stands a decrepit stone building: Arkham Asylum, according to the gate the car passes under.
Inside the darkened halls of the Asylum, a security guard seems caught off guard when a free-standing shadow appears in the doorway behind him. He turns, Billy club raised, but is immediately overpowered when the shadow’s hand comes to his face with a quick punch. Non-lethal, but violent and enough to leave the guard out cold, slumped against the cold concrete walls of the living Hell on Earth. A gloved hand reaches down into the guard’s shirt pocket and pulls out a small ID card, along with a ring of keys.
Back outside, the Batmobile is parked, and a tall man wearing a billowing black cape is stomping towards the doors of the Asylum. His shadow, accompanied with a small pair of horns, passes over a secretary at her desk, who sweats buckets in his presence as she slowly lifts a hand to gesture directions to her visitor. The comfort of the building’s entrance, its warm colours, its carpet, its coffee machine, all immediately fades away when the black boots round the first corner, and walk down a stone hallway interspaced with thick metal doors. A man with half of his face badly burnt glares out from behind the bars as his captor walks past, as does a man wearing a burlap sack over his face from a door across the hall. When the Gotham vigilante passes, the two inmates look at each other, raising eyebrows as if they know something the other man doesn’t, and Two-Face raises his hand to flip a coin, placing a bet.
Room 0801, Name Unknown. This is what the card on one final door reads, but the shadow that reaches it isn’t the horned shadow that scared the secretary, but the fedora-wearing shadow of the original intruder. A bent paperclip is inserted into the cell’s lock, and it only takes a few jiggles to get the desired result before a clicking sound is heard. Inside the darkened cell, pale white hands place down playing cards on a desk, a solo game of solitaire, but the game stops when the door is suddenly kicked open with a heavy metal lurch. The arms of the inmate shake inside their purple sleeves, trying their best to remain calm while continuing the game. Something isn’t going according to plan…
Not too far off, the sanctioned visitor kneels down to the body of the unconscious guard, scanning his neck for a satisfactory pulse, and then moving a gloved hand to the guard’s pocket. Feeling it and finding it to be empty raises a serious alarm, and the man bolts off down the hallway, heading to room 0801 as fast as he can. Just as he rounds the final corner, he stops.
At the far end of the hall, blood is seeping into the floor from a room on the left, and a man in a brown trenchcoat casually steps out into it, cricking his shoulders in a relaxed manner. A white fabric mask, covered with shifting black blotches of ink, turns to look at the deadly serious Batman who stands opposed to him, struggling to contain his anger behind his gritted teeth.
Batman: What have you DONE?!
Rorschach: Came to do job for you. You’re too soft. Strike one. Man in the cell wasn’t even him. You’re wrong. Strike two.
Batman: WHERE IS HE?!
Rorschach: I’m going to go find that out. His buddy wouldn’t talk. Out of my way.
Batman doesn’t get out of Rorschach’s way. His fists clench, and his eyes narrow under his mask as he watches the Crime Buster step out to tap his shoes against the hallway walls, knocking a few loose drops of blood off of them. Sensing the tension in the air, Rorschach pulls his arms from his pockets, clenching his own fists as he stares the Batman down; the ink on his mask briefly forms into what one could interpret as a flying bat, its wings outstretched, before it shifts again to tear the animal apart. Repeating himself, Kovacs issues the warning once more.
Rorschach: Out of my way.
Batman: This ends NOW.
Rorschach: Strike three.
There were these two guys in a lunatic asylum…
FIGHT!!![]
Both vigilantes charge each other at the same time, full-on barreling down the hallway as the space between them rapidly decreases. When they reach melee range, Bruce and Walter begin the fight with a hard right punch, swinging their torsos and pushing with their legs to give maximum force to the blow; the impact of fist on fist gives an unrealistic echo through the stone hallway as they meet with enough force to repel each other back a few feet. Rorschach immediately goes back on the offensive, stomping forward while jabbing lefts and rights like a dirty boxer. Batman is far from on the ropes, but steps backwards while holding his forearms up to deflect the attacks, keenly watching as Rorschach advances behind his ever-shifting mask. To try to switch things up, Kovacs sticks his foot out to try and sneak it behind Batman’s heel, but the Dark Knight shifts his body weight to put more force on the leg, halting his foe’s attempt to trip him up. Instead, it’s Rorschach who loses balance, faltering only briefly.
Batman: (Internally) His movements… there’s lifts in his shoes… he’s shorter and lighter than he looks.
Reaching up with both hands, Batman swats both of Rorschach’s arms away as they come up to reflexively defend himself. Reaching the inked foe’s shoulders, Bruce shoves him into stumbling backwards, then flips around into a spinning kick, driving his heel deep into the Watchman’s chest and knocking him flat to the ground. The impact splatters the thick blotches of black ink in Walter’s mask into tiny droplets across his face like shattered glass; a growl of pain escapes from his lips as he lays flat, while the ink slowly converges back together. With his signature cold stare, Batman approaches, his patience tested with the Joker’s escape and the loose cannon in front of him making things worse.
Batman: Stay down, Rorschach. This time, you’re in over your head.
Rorschach: I’m doing… what you won’t. Not what you can’t. What you won’t. Clown wouldn’t escape. Not if justice took him.
Batman: If you kill a killer, the number of killers in the world remains the same.
Rorschach: Genius detective, doesn’t know math. If you kill a hundred killers, there’s ninety-nine less killers.
Batman’s eyes dart to the side when they notice Rorschach’s arm coming out of his pocket, clenched into a fist. A handful of black powder is thrown upwards, and in the moment Batman flinches, Rorschach leaps up to his feet. One arm clutches Batman across the shoulder while the other rears back, before the Watchman drives a heavy punch directly into the detective’s face with enough force to drive him into a wall. Stepping forward, Rorschach grips his foe by the shoulder again, but this time spins him around with a tug to face him the opposite way and grab his cowl from behind. He pulls back, while reaching out with his free hand to grip the iron bars of a vacant cell door, and with a pull from one arm and a push from the other, he drives Batman’s face into the bricks of the asylum wall, leaving behind a splotch of blood that escapes the Caped Crusader’s nose. Growling, Batman elbows his attacker in the stomach, and swings his arm up to knock away Kovacs’ punch, buying himself an instant to face him head-on. Both vigilantes raise their arms and lock hands, pushing against each other like rugby players for a brief moment, but it is Batman who eventually comes out top, with his superior weight starting to push Rorschach backwards. And when Rorschach lets go to save himself, Bruce is quick to move in with two quick left jabs and a right uppercut to send him reeling.
Batman doesn’t let up, and advances with an overhead swing to the Watchman’s face, immediately converting right up into a backhand slap across the face. As Rorschach spins, Bruce quickly kneels down and grips his foe by the ankle before yanking upwards, sending him into an unwanted backflip before leaping up himself and driving his knee into his opponent’s sternum mid-air. Rorschach is knocked several feet down the hallway, landing on one knee and sliding to a stop while looking up in anger. Before he can act, Kovacs watches as a grappling wire shoots by, not striking him, but passing on his right and latching at the far end of the hallway; he looks back up and sees Batman sliding in along the ground, pulling himself forward as the wire retracts and driving his thigh across his chest. The two slide all the way to the end of the hallway, where the kick drives Rorschach into the brick wall. As he growls, Walter retaliates with a headbutt, the best move at his disposal, and earns a blot of red nose blood onto his mask for his troubles, but Bruce quickly re-establishes his momentum with three close-range palm strikes to his ribs.
Rorschach: No pain! GRAAAH!
Stiffening his fingers on his right hand, Rorschach swings out; Batman’s eyes go wide under his cowl and he only barely retreats in time, and Rorschach’s fingertips only slash across his chest instead of his jugular. Still, the slice rips through the fabric of the Dark Knight’s suit, and a splash of blood escapes. Kneeling down, Rorschach charges forward, ramming his head into Batman’s stomach while clutching his ribs with his arms, football-tackling him into the Asylum wall once again. This time, when he stands up and grabs Batman’s cowl, he holds him in place against the bricks as he runs along the hallway, grinding Wayne’s head against the bricks with interspaced heavy hits on the occasional metal cell door. Soon, they reach a four-way intersection, where Rorschach throws Batman into the corner of the opposite walls; as the latter collapses forward, a swift side kick stands him up straight, and lets the Inked Avenger plug him with two more punches. Next, Kovacs reaches up to the Batman’s face, but only to grab his cowl and pull down, temporarily blinding him; when Batman throws a retaliatory punch, it’s easy enough for Rorschach to somersault to the side and weave his way around to his enemy’s side. He grips Batman’s upper arm, shoves it down low and steps over it, trapping it between his thighs before moving his grip up to Bruce’s wrist. An audible CRACK echoes through the hallways as he yanks upwards, dislocating the arm and eliciting a more than just a grunt of pain from Batman, and as he steps off, he swiftly drives his shoe up into Batman’s face to kick him into sitting against the wall. Batman looks up, and spots Rorschach rearing back and preparing to literally curbstomp his face in with the sole of his shoe. A quick roll to the side lets him escape the blow, and after Kovacs scuffs the empty floor, he turns to walk after Wayne, still on the ground. Huffing underneath his mask, he vents his shirt collar to let off a bit of steam, but gets surprised when Batman has much more fight left in him than anticipated; the latter leaps up with both feet from the ground, driving them into Rorschach’s chest and sending him stumbling backwards, not into a wall, but into a double swinging door. He falls down behind it, and the doors close back on him, but when they swing back open, there is no body on the floor. Just as well. Batman stands up, and grips his limp arm; gritting his teeth, he pops it back into place, and then pats his hand against his chest to check his bleeding. Satisfied, he watches the double doors, and kicks his way inside.
The asylum kitchen is empty, which comes as no surprise given the hour of day. But Rorschach is nowhere in sight among the tables, stainless steel counters, carts, and ovens lining the tiled floors. Slowly, the detective walks inside, eyes darting back and forth among the deadly silent battlefield. The only sound is a small hiss, which Batman quickly pinpoints as belonging to a gas stove; a large saucepan sits on one of the elements, the blue flames licking underneath it. But it would have taken next to no effort to turn it on and move elsewhere; Rorschach’s most likely hiding place would be somewhere he could access…
Indeed, the Watchman busts his way out from inside a meat locker, kicking the doorknob off with the force of his blow. Frost falls off his coat as he descends towards Batman with two large butcher knives, but having anticipated the hiding spot, Batman avoids the swipes as the silver flashes in front of him. Still, it’s two sharp weapons against none. Rorschach swings wildly, establishing a deadly range in front of him and forcing Batman to keep stepping backwards, not daring to risk losing a hand in an attempt to counterattack. His defense comes when he passes by a wheeled metal cart, which he quickly grabs and yanks forward. It doesn’t have enough speed to seriously injure Rorschach, but it puts an obstacle between the two, and Kovacs growls as he takes the larger of his knives and hurls it past Batman and onto the floor. With expert accuracy, it pierces and pins Batman’s cape to the ground, preventing him from running away as the Watchman climbs over the cart, still with one chef’s knife to work with. By the time Batman rips his cape out, Rorschach is back in action, and he stabs downwards with the knife; Batman holds both of his hands up to stop the blow, keeping the blade away from his face. By twisting his torso, Batman drives Rorschach’s momentum into stabbing the knife on the counter, making an ear-piercing screech as the metal scrapes on metal, and he tucks his free arm underneath Kovacs’ shoulder before hurling him to the side over top of a prepping counter.
Rorschach gets up just in time to see Batman practically flying at him, cape spread wide as he glides overtop of the counter with a roundhouse kick that lands against the side of his face. As soon as he touches down with one foot, he leaps back into action with another such kick, and blocks Rorschach’s attempted punch by catching it in his hand and then stomping down across the latter’s shin. Then, he moves in close. One, two, threefourfivesixseveneightnine, ten jabs are delivered to the masked man’s chest in increasing speed until the last one sends him stumbling back towards the wall of the kitchen. When Kovacs’ head hits the bricks, the ink splotches across his face splay apart, briefly forming a resemblance to thick eyeliner and a wide cheeky grin, eerily close to the Joker himself. Gritting his teeth, Batman rushes in and grabs Rorschach by the scarf, pulls him down to bash his face into his knee, and grips the fabric of the mask.
Rorschach: No! NOO!!! My face!
Shrugging off an uppercut to the chin, Batman pulls the cloth off of Walter’s face and hurls the man to the floor, holding up the ink-stained fabric in his free hand. Like a frantic madman, Walter turns to rush back at him, though in his haste his attack is unrefined, and a Sparta-style kick flattens him back to the ground. Breathing heavily, Rorschach puts his hands up to the stove behind him, using it to pull himself to his feet as he glares at the Dark Knight with decades of pent-up rage.
Rorschach: GIVE ME BACK MY FACE!!!
Batman: It’s over, Kovacs. Time to see reality for what it is.
Rorschach: YOU’RE the one living in a dream!
Figuring the stove flames have been on long enough, Rorschach slams his hand down across the handle of the saucepan, sending it flying Batman’s way. The hot metal lands on Wayne’s shoulder, and though the pan quickly falls to the ground with a clatter, Batman groans in pain as steam escapes the now-seared fabric on his burn wound. He looks up as Rorschach sticks a gun-like device into the blue flames of the stove, before he turns around and lunges at Batman close-quarters. The two vigilantes exchange four punches, getting in two attacks and two blocks each, and when Batman tries a kick, Rorschach is quick to shove it down with both hands. As Batman’s cape comes up, Rorschach snags it out of the air, and a single jump brings him up on top of a counter; as he hops back down behind Batman, he pulls the Justice Leaguer’s cape across his face, blinding him and pulling him down to the ground. Bruce hits the kitchen floor hard, and he looses his grip on Rorschach’s mask as the latter’s knee comes across his throat. It takes little time for Rorschach to put his face back on, and after he does, he flies into a frenzy, slamming his right fist across Batman’s chest multiple while yelling out. Four blows strike, but Batman presses his leg against his attacker’s stomach and forces him away, buying time for him to stand up and get his cape across his face. And when he looks for Rorschach, he spots him back by the stove.
Holding his now-flaming grappling hook.
The gun fires, sending its flaming head towards Batman.
And just in time, Batman weaves his torso around, dodging the improvised weapon. The hook flies behind him, and the wire dangles in front of him to grab. He does so, and with a tug, he pulls Rorschach into stumbling forward; by stepping in front of him, Batman grabs the Watchman’s shoulders and violently hurls him back against the kitchen doors. Then, with a rush, the Gotham Guardian clenches his fist and swings with all his might, landing a close-range blow that sends Rorschach flying not just through the double doors, but across the hallway and into the metal cell door beyond. With heavy breathing, Bruce reaches a hand to his belt, undoing a flap and drawing a small salve of cream that he spreads across his shoulder, soothing the burns as he steps forward. When he walks out into the hallway, however, his eyes go narrow when he spots that the cell door across from him has been forced open, its doorknob collapsed.
Quickly deducing Rorschach’s actions, Batman rushes forward and dives into the cell, tackling the Watchman to the ground on the cell floor. Huddled against the wall ahead of him, is a young man in a prison jumpsuit, tucked into the fetal position and watching the fight in front of him with horrified wide eyes. Rorschach, pinned on the floor, struggles against Batman’s full Nelson hold as he tries to crawl forward, his eyes on a metal prison shiv laying on the cell floor. Both night watchmen are putting all they have into the struggle, but lacking in proper leverage, Batman is slowly losing his grip.
Rorschach: You can’t keep getting away with it!
Batman: We do things by the book, Rorschach!
Rorschach: Their blood is on your hands! Every criminal you fail to stop! All of the Joker’s victims!
Elsewhere across the city, Barbara Gordon opens her front door, where the Joker stands grinning wildly, pistol in hand…
Batman: I… am… not… a murderer!
Rorschach: Yes… you… are! You want to save this city? If you don’t kill me, I’m killing the kid! You can be what the world needs!
The inmate’s eyes grow wider as he backs up as much as he can, practically flattening himself to his cell corner. Rorschach’s grip nearly reaches the shiv as he scrapes forward along the ground, Batman failing to stop him.
Batman: Rorschach!!!
Kovacs touches the shiv… it wouldn’t take much for him to hurl it into the inmate’s throat…
Rorschach: Do it!!! DO IT!!!
With a yell, Batman moves his hands off of Rorschach’s back. In a split second, Rorschach moves to grab the knife, but Batman’s grip is faster, re-gripping him around the head. A head which he snaps to the side.
All goes silent, except for the heavy breathing of two individuals. One being the terrified inmate who quickly passes out from shock. And the other being Batman, survivor of the Asylum battle, who kneels over Rorschach’s corpse. All this time, he thought it would be the Joker who would test his one rule.
Batman: NNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Conclusion[]
K.O!!!
Boomstick: Well… he did it.
Wiz: It’s difficult to justify this as a “close match” given that we intentionally struck Batman down to an absolute minimum, but even then, the Dark Knight just barely managed to eke by the Inked Avenger.
Boomstick: Yeah, don’t go walking away from this thinking that Rorschach was a pushover. His physical prowess was nothing to scoff at, and within our research boundaries, he could even be considered a match for Bruce in martial arts skill. Both are able to take on multiple goons solo, and let’s keep in mind that Rorschach going down to the cops was because he did literally just land out of a second story window.
Wiz: Both had decades of experience. Both could crash through glass, both could power through skin burns, and both could bust down doors. Batman sent a man flying fifteen feet in one blow, Rorschach took a blow that sent him back fifteen feet.
Boomstick: Batman may have tangoed with dirty fighters, but the Joker was still able to land some unpredictable hits against him; it’s reasonable that Rorschach could do the same. But this is where the scale starts to tip in Batman’s favour: Rorschach didn’t have the means to make sure his hits counted.
Wiz: Even without the Kevlar or god forbid the Hellbat, Batman’s pain tolerance exceeded what Rorschach could dish out, being able to take head wounds and still keep fighting. One could start to argue the same in reverse, but while Batman could recover instantly, whenever Rorschach took a big hit, he tended to be left limping and needed anywhere from a minute to a couple days to be back in peak condition. With no gadgets, smarts, or opportunity to sneak away for prep time, Batman would simply outlast Rorschach in a war of attrition.
Boomstick: Rewind to the fifteen foot attack; Rorschach was on the floor struggling to get up, just like the Joker was. Batman’s hits would be doing more damage, plain and simple.
Wiz: And Batman would be landing more of them. While a close-range grappling hook would do some serious damage to the Dark Knight, one great feat that he had that Rorschach didn’t was reaction time. Specifically, when he dropped into a trap door and managed to catch himself with one hand. Based on Batman’s measurements, this is a reaction time of, at most, a third of a second to catch himself. That may not seem impressive from the number alone, but in this time, Batman was sprinting forward, stepped over a door which collapsed underneath him, recognized the situation, twisted his body backwards and moved his hand, the complete package. He’d have no trouble aim-dodging Rorschach’s blows.
Boomstick: Rorschach might have been able to turn the tables with some prep time and access to improvised weaponry, but because he doesn’t conventionally carry anything other than a tool Batman is more than familiar with, being reliant on the environment is just too much of a wildcard. And it’s not like anything Rorschach had could get past the Batmobile.
Wiz: Walter Kovacs would never go down easy, but too much of the Dark Knight’s decades of reputation leaked into the Killing Joke, and his superior endurance and speed were the edges he needed to put an end to the violent vigilante.
Boomstick: Even when he wasn’t going Al-an, Batman had Moore than enough to take the win.
Wiz: The winner is Batman.
Rundown[]
Batman:
- + Reaction time
- + Endurance
- + A few superior tools from the movie adaptation
- - Was hit by the Joker's dirty moves
Rorschach:
- + A few more years of crime-fighting experience
- + More experienced with lethal takedowns
- + More powerful grappling hook
- - Got winded much faster
- - Less mentally stable
Next Time[]
Boomstick: NEXT TIME, ON DEATH BATTLE!!!
