So, Damian heads into his final showdown with "Joker" and his merry band of talking animal men and random gangsters. Bruce is tied up and bloodied in the middle of the warehouse. Damian fights his way through the weird animal people, getting pummeled all the while, although he eventually wins - nearly beating Jackanapes to death with a crowbar until he's like "oh, I'm Batman, I shouldn't kill, I'll disappoint father." ...seemingly ignoring the fact that he already killed Batman's rogues gallery, beat the crap out of his dad which caused a heart attack and put him in a coma before this... oh, and that the butler died of a heart attack as well after dragging his sorry ass out of the sewer and operating on him in issue #3. Minor details.
The Joker impostor, who has been the enemy in the shadows this whole time, whose goal was apparently to kill Bruce Wayne and batman to earn street cred (from who, I don't know - he'd have to be at the top of the totem pole after Damian killed the other Batman villains, surely...) but just stands there with a gun to Bruce's head the whole time, just watching Damian tear through his cronies.
Damian beats him of course. Decides to take the noble path and let him live, finally living up to the legend of Batman... I guess. Then Not-Joker says "Good, keep me alive, I'll kill more people!" so Damian turns around and immediately disembowels not-Joker with his gauntlet spikes. He picks up his dad and drags him back to the mansion.
Except not-Joker survived! He's gonna get up! Except he doesn't, 'cause somebody shoots him in the head. It's the REAL Joker, who then makes some kind of remark about his impostor. He also looks like he has never aged a day for some reason. Don't know why.
Apparently we flash forward while Damian beats up some enemies and has a long monologue I can't remember at all. He goes back to the batcave where Alfred (who is now a cat) is sitting in a chair (human style) at the bat computer, monitoring security cam footage. Or maybe this scene happened earlier, I don't remember. Not like it matters. Alfred makes a speech like Alfred typically does. Series over.
I don't know what the
happened in this book, or what the point was. We know nothing about the primary enemy, and Damian himself makes a remark about wanting to know his story. Apparently he looked like Joker naturally, according to him, and that's all we know.
Alfred the talking cat... issue #3 hinted that Damian simply hallucinated it due to brain damage he received. That doesn't explain why he was sitting at the Bat computer to monitor the city - which he also did while Damian wasn't around, since the cat was (somehow) watching Damian's big fight while it was happening... actually looking depressed as Damian was getting the crap kicked out of him.
We never even solve the big mystery about who killed Batman/Dick. At the end of it, Damian says he isn't sure that the impostor Joker did it - but we have no real reason to think the REAL Joker did it either, so it's left up in the air.
Damian also never even rightly earned the cowl since he was still willing to kill Not-Joker - which he DID do, as far as he knows, despite him saying that Joker went public and took credit for it shortly after.
