the-bruce
Explanation
The Joke
The comic poses the question: "What if Bruce Wayne never invented Batman?" In this alternate reality, Bruce Wayne still experienced the trauma of his parents being murdered, but instead of channeling that trauma into becoming a masked vigilante, he simply named everything after himself. He drives the "Bruce-mobile," parks it in his "Bruce-cave," and wears a "Bruce-suit." He declares "everything is Bruce's and people can't take that away like they took my parents away."
The joke is that without the creative leap to a bat-themed alter ego, Bruce Wayne's response to trauma is just narcissistic branding -- the same obsessive personality, the same billions of dollars, but channeled into something completely pointless and sad rather than crime-fighting heroism.
The Humor
The comic is funny because it strips away the one element that makes Batman cool -- the bat motif -- and reveals that what's left is just a deeply traumatized billionaire with control issues. The humor lies in the recognition that Batman's entire persona is, at its core, a coping mechanism for childhood trauma, and without the specific bat-themed packaging, that coping mechanism looks a lot less noble and a lot more like a man desperately trying to assert ownership over a world that took everything from him. The panel showing a car with a big "B" on it parked in a cave is the perfect visual punchline: all the infrastructure of Batman, none of the purpose.