Barbatos had not exactly overlooked Laughing Man. After all, among the entire Dark Multiverse, his madness ranked among the very worst. But as the saying went, the past was the past, and the present was the present.
The comics did not say much about Barbatos's circumstances when he recruited Laughing Man, but judging from Barbatos's later campaigns, the Barbatos Group had always been rather short on personnel.
After reading the entire Barbatos storyline, many comic readers would struggle if asked to name a few of Barbatos's top generals. In the end, they would still say The Batman Who Laughs first, the Court of Owls second, and perhaps Perpetua as a collaborator. Beyond that, they could not think of much.
In other words, Barbatos ruled the entire Dark Multiverse and rummaged around for ages, only to finally dig up the so-called worst version of Batman, The Batman Who Laughs.
But that was hardly surprising. Based on how the comics portrayed the Dark Multiverse, nearly all the Batmen there were basically background props created for the whole Metal event. Their backstories pursued novelty for novelty's sake, most of them had neither beginnings nor endings, and many forcibly piggybacked on trendy concepts. It was already impressive to find even one general among such a sorry bunch.
So at that time, Laughing Man's importance to Barbatos went without saying. But ever since Schiller arrived, things had become completely different.
First came Bruce, a heaven-sent prodigy. Barbatos did not even need to seek him out. He had traveled countless miles from a distant universe straight into the heart of Barbatos's territory. And he had not come empty-handed, either. He had mastered the art of slaying dragons solely to sell it to Barbatos, the emperor.
The moment Bruce took office, he showed Barbatos what it meant