Batman: The Dawnbreaker Most Broken, Damaging Batman Yet

Your name is Bruce Wayne. You're just a kid. And you're kneeling over the broken, bleeding bodies of your parents as their murderer runs away down the alley.

At that particular moment, something happens. Something formative.

A ring appears floating in the air, green, glowing. And it selects you as the next Green Lantern, just as your body is coursing with rage and a desire for vengeance. You catch the criminal, and you exact your will upon him -- a will so strong it overloads every safety protocol built into the Green Lantern ring, allowing it to employ lethal force.

That's the Green Lantern of Earth -32, a world that should never have existed during  the ongoing DARK NIGHTS: METAL event series. This Bruce Wayne is severely damaged (okay, I know, I know, but this one's even more damaged than that), and doesn't believe that anybody should deserve any happiness because he doesn't get to have any. He punishes the innocent and the guilty alike, without remorse or pity. And his will is so strong, he actually can stand up against the entirety of the Green Lantern Corps. So when his Earth falls apart, and the Batman Who Laughs recruits him for service under Barbatos, what kind of a chance does our own Earth, Earth-0, have against him?

I'd put my money on either Fat or Slim, and Slim just left town.

While the motivations of this Batman may be shallow, and we don't know what happened in the intervening years from his parents' death to the current time of the story where he's an adult, Sam Humphries does a fantastic job of building the horror and showing just how ruthless and powerful this particular Batman is. Pulled to our Earth, his immediate confrontation with Hal Jordan makes that even more clear, calling for the emergency intervention of Dr. Fate (who's been pulling all the heroes' fat from the fire at the end of each of these one-shots).  The pencil lines of Ethan Van Sciver are so tight their damn near hemmorhoidal (okay, that's really supposed to be a compliment) and when paired with Jason Wright's colors make this issue wall-to-wall eye candy.