Scott Snyder’s next Dark Knight supervillain isn’t just a nightmare for Bruce Wayne or a subtle mash-up. The new foe arriving in he and Jock’s The Batman Who Laughs series is also the next step in the super story Snyder began in Dark Nights: Metal alongside another frequent artistic collaborator, Greg Capullo.

“It stands on its own the way that Metal did and that Justice League might arc-by-arc, but it still will build to what we’re going to be doing in Justice League Dark and Justice League Odyssey,” the writer explained to CBR. The November-launching six-issue series will not only follow up on last year’s mega-event, but it will also introduce the latest Dark Knight from the so-called Dark Multiverse: a Batman who is more than ready to kill.

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“It’s about The Batman Who Laughs still being here and deciding he’s going after something in Gotham,” Snyder said. “He’s brought a new Dark Knight with him, which is one of the ones I’ve wanted to use for a long time. These characters are all Batman’s worst nightmares about himself. I believe very strongly in his code of non-lethal force. We’ve never broken that with our version of him, and I think one of his worst nightmares would be, ‘What happens when I go down that path?’

“This Batman is sort of like the Punisher Batman,” the writer said with a laugh. “He comes in with this huge arsenal and is the deadliest shot in the world. He’s like the Deadly Dark Knight. The Punisher is awesome, but the Punisher is also kind of broke a lot of the time. He’s always driving around in a van.

However, The Batman Who Laughs will be on hand to bankroll this new threat as well as twist him to his own ends. “The Batman Who Laughs is Bruce Wayne, and he has billions of dollars,” Snyder said. “He doesn’t even need a gun to kill you. He might have joints in the pipes of your walls of an apartment building made by Wayne Enterprises, and he just pushes a button, and you’ll die without even knowing what happened.”

“[The new Dark Knight] literally the deadliest man alive, and he’s being brought here as the henchman of the Batman Who Laughs. But it’s a really dark and fun series where Bruce Waynes of different ages start popping up dead, and [our] Bruce Wayne has to autopsy himself and figure out what happened. I’m really excited. Joker’s in it. Arkham’s in it. I’m really going back to my horror roots to do something with Jock who I did Black Mirror and Witches with that goes back to our horror roots with something that is easily the darkest investigation of Batman that I’ve been able to do.”

Jock and Snyder first teamed for The Black Mirror – a yearlong story in Detective Comics that set the stage for practically the writer’s entire run in the DC Universe but particularly the Court of Owls. And Snyder has been waiting to get back into that world with the graphically-inclined artist. “We did a couple of issues in All-Star, which I love [and] we’ve been working on Witches and have a big 70-page story called ‘The Bad Egg’ coming out at Halloween from that. But this is something we’ve been working on for a while because I didn’t get to use The Batman Who Laughs much in Metal. And the character – thanks to everybody out there – has become a bit of a breakout hit. There’s the cosplay out there and everything. So DC said, ‘If you want to do something with this, do it.'”

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And just as Jock seeded hidden owls all throughout their first collaboration, Snyder promised the artist is working at setting up the next major DC event in his own way. “Jock is so great about having a design element that ends up coming back. He has an idea for something like that. I won’t give it away. It’s a sort of Easter egg that grows as a tonal thing.”

But overall, The Batman Who Laughs will continue to be tied to the broader DC plans for the writer – even starting his next journey outside the Batbooks. “For me, this story we’re building on Justice League…the beginning of The Batman Who Laughs’ story actually beings – spoiler! – in Justice League. You’ll see the beginning of that story,” Snyder promised. “And then the story itself will be relatively standalone, but it’s in continuity. And what it sets up rolls forward in the DCU in a really evil way.”