Chapter 1775: Forking Out, Self-slander and Being Slandered
However, that wasn’t the only reason Eddie was so determined to join the PDD.
Eddie had paid close attention to the battle between the Dark Knight and the Joker, and to the death of Carlton, the villain.
When Black Cat came to recruit him, the Dark Knight had already gone to deal with Carlton Drake, and just happened to run into the Joker, who had his eye on Carlton as well.
What embarra.s.sed Eddie was that when he saw Knight throw the rope dart to save Carlton, he had actually been hoping that Knight would fail.
When the Joker successfully stopped Knight from rescuing Carlton, Eddie couldn’t help but heave a sigh of relief.
As a reporter, he knew too well how troublesome it was to deal with a rich and unscrupulous bigshot like this.
As long as Carlton was alive, Eddie had to worry about himself and even Anne.
The other party wouldn’t care that she was Eddie’s ex – Carlton might just capture her to see if that would work. In any case, it would be very easy to do so.
In fact, it wasn’t just Eddie; for the next few days, most of the attention was on this battle between good and evil that had happened at the research building.
Most people focused on the Joker.
The Dark Knight could be considered a familiar face; it wasn’t unusual for him to do good.
What was truly strange was this Joker who had suddenly appeared and could fight the Dark Knight one-on-one.
The public couldn’t be blamed for being too ignorant; they had seen too much in the past few years to make a fuss.
However, they had never seen a villain who could fight a major superhero without falling to a disadvantage.
For example, the Experimentals, the Chitauri, and the siblings in Grand Rapids had all been in large groups.
These were large-scale battles from the very beginning that were intense enough, but few battles left a deep impression.
There were no publicly available videos of Loki or Killian, so they naturally weren’t part of the discussion.
The sh*tty yellow giant that Blonsky had turned into was too ugly and too big. He had been beaten up the moment he appeared.
Ivan had tried twice, but had been defeated even faster than Blonsky.
Of all the villains that everyone had seen so far, only the Joker could fight a superhero on a level playing field and escape intact.
During the battle, the Joker spat out mouthful after mouthful of blood, and his arms were broken while his chest caved in. In the end, the image of him escaping was played in slow motion, and it could be seen that the rope dart had almost cut off his left hand.
But he had indeed escaped with an “intact” body.
Experts from various TV stations a.n.a.lyzed the Joker’s dialog during the 30-minute battle.
One of the accepted conclusions was that this wasn’t the first battle between the Dark Knight and the Joker, and the Joker had also escaped intact back then.
Everybody was shocked. Someone had actually escaped from the Dark Knight twice, and after a head-on battle.
Then… how strong was the Joker?
Because of a certain person’s perverse sense of fun and his habit of leaving behind eyewitness evidence, the San Francisco reporters had taken a lot of footage; in total, they could put together a 30-minute short film.
This allowed the public to see for themselves how strong the Joker was.
The fact that the two of them had been able to reduce the 12-story research building to 9 stories during the battle was proof of their destructive power.
Many buildings had fallen during the Battle of New York, but that had been caused by battles.h.i.+ps and weapons.
The battle between the Dark Knight and the Joker was basically close combat.
In other words, the two of them had destroyed three building levels with their bare hands.
And the Joker taking apart the armor was the icing on top
The appearance of the powerful Joker finally caused those who had suppressed their feelings about the Bat Squad to explode.
A few days later, people jumped out on TV, the Internet, and in print media to mock the Dark Knight and praise the Joker.
Of course, it was generally the regular media who ridiculed the Dark Knight for destroying buildings recklessly and not caring about casualties inside.
It was only on the Internet and in some so-called “reprints of online news” that the public loudly talked up the Joker.
There was a clear division between both camps, which had nothing to do with each other.
In the face of this situation, Selina, who was soaking in the jacuzzi in the backyard, simply asked lazily, “Are we just going to let them write nonsense?”
“Of course. I paid for it,” said Luke casually.
Selina: “What?”
Luke had never expected much of the media. From the day it appeared, its biggest use was to fool people.
Only by duping ordinary people would society be stable; no society needed too many smart people.
Too many smart people meant too many people wanting to climb the rungs of hierarchy.
If there were too many smart people on both sides, the ruling cla.s.s would be tearing out their hair.
The media was a tool that other people could use to conceal the majority of information and stifle knowledge.
Luke also used it, so he wasn’t delighted or sad about this fact.
As long as he wanted to, a bunch of articles about the Dark Knight would appear tomorrow — all he needed to do was fork out cash.
This time, he was paying others to badmouth the Dark Knight.
This was to give some people a chance to counterattack and also to lower the Dark Knight’s popularity.
Tall trees caught the wind.
If the Dark Knight was hailed as someone who loved the people now, what happened if the other party kidnapped two people next time, and wanted him to kill himself?
It would be hypocritical of the Dark Knight not to do so, and unworthy of his t.i.tle as someone who loved the people.
To do so… Only a lunatic would do that.
If something like this really happened, then both the Dark Knight and the enemy would die.
Batman died, so why not the Dark Knight?
Once public opinion died down, Luke’s “third generation Batman” would make a flashy appearance to carry on his predecessors’ will and continue catching bad guys.
Luke didn’t care about reputation when he did good deeds. Besides, he was now just a private detective with no business.
Just nice, the Joker officially entered the public eye. When Luke wanted the Dark Knight to die, the Joker would cooperate with him.
After that, the Joker would easily become the number one villain.
Given how tyrannical the Clown was, wouldn’t monsters full of experience and credit points flock to him?
And if such cannon fodder messed with the Bat Squad, the Joker would personally provide the latter detailed information to ensure that these monsters died justified deaths.
It didn’t matter if many of his subordinates died. The Joker himself was a supervillain. He wouldn’t die so easily.
When the popular villains in the movies died, most of them came back somehow.
Given the Joker’s looks and acting skills, it was only natural that he wouldn’t die.
In fact, apart from Luke’s self-slander, the Life Foundation’s backers also stirred up a storm of public opinion.
The foundation’s scandal which the Joker had exposed that night was too deadly.
Most of the time, the words of a big villain were more trustworthy than a police investigation.
That was because… bad guys knew bad guys the best.
The Joker had already killed Carlton on the spot; there was no need to waste time slandering a dead man.