The Batman Who Laughs’ breakout character Grim Knight gets his own spinoff

The Batman Who Laughs, the breakout character of DC Comics’ Dark Nights Metal event, is currently starring in his own miniseries. And now that comic has its own breakout character: The gun-wielding Grim Knight, who will soon have his own origin story issue.

Dark Nights Metal was all about the Batman Who Laughs assembling a strike force of evil alternate-timeline Batmans to wreak havoc in the main DC Universe. In the character’s new miniseries, The Batman Who Laughs, his creator Scott Snyder and the artist Jock bring him back to Gotham to wreak havoc for Batman specifically.

And, once again, the Batman Who Laughs isn’t coming alone. He’s got a new Nightmare Batman, loaded with guns, who was too scary to put in Dark Nights Metal.

“[The Grim Knight] is the idea of ‘What if Batman decided to start using lethal force, indiscriminately, to win?’” Snyder told Polygon in an interview on The Batman Who Laughs. “In this world, when Joe Chill shoots his parents, Joe Chill accidentally drops the gun in the alley, and young Bruce picks it up and kills him. And from that moment forward he has no barrier or restriction to using lethal force to get what he wants.”

But as a globe-trotting billionaire CEO of a tech and weapons company, with proprietary microchips in machines big and small, this Punisher-like Batman is that much more dangerous.

“The worry I had about bringing him in for Metal, honestly” Snyder told Polygon, “was that the other evil Batmen would pale in comparison to him.”

This March, The Batman Who Laughs miniseries will take a one-month break, as Snyder co-writes a one-shot issue digging into the Grim Knight’s backstory with James Tynion IV (Detective Comics). The issue will be drawn by Eduardo Risso (100 Bullets).

Here’s the official summary, from DC Comics’ March solicits:

Ripped from Batman’s greatest nightmares, the Grim Knight is his world’s most dangerous vigilante, unafraid to use any weapon and go to any lengths to stop those whom he deems worthy of death. Trained with the finest arsenal Wayne money can buy, learn the secret origin of the second-deadliest Batman, hand selected by the Batman Who Laughs to bring his dark plans to fruition.

The Batman Who Laughs: The Grim Knight #1 will hit shelves on March 13, 2019.