Batman #36

History

Snyder disclosed in a contemporaneous CBR interview that he had weighed delaying the Joker's return by roughly six months before the dual 75th-anniversary milestone convinced him to accelerate the story. 'Endgame' was deliberately positioned after the concurrent weekly series Batman Eternal, and Snyder coordinated with the broader Bat-office — including collaborator James Tynion IV and the Eternal writers — so that the 'Eric Border' alias the Joker had quietly carried through earlier issues remained a secret known only to a tight circle of creators. Capullo contributed directly to plotting each issue's action beats in pre-script discussions with Snyder, and the entire arc was conceived with a darker color palette — handled by colorist FCO Plascencia — to tonally distinguish it from 'Death of the Family.' The issue was also selected by Loot Crate as the first DC comic ever included in one of the subscription service's monthly boxes, prompting Capullo to produce a distinct variant cover — a compositional homage to Pantera's album Vulgar Display of Power — distributed to over 200,000 subscribers in December 2014.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published November 12, 2014 (cover-dated January 2015); written by Scott Snyder with a backup by James Tynion IV; pencils by Greg Capullo; inks by Danny Miki; colors by FCO Plascencia; letters by Steve Wands; edited by Mark Doyle.
• The issue is 'Endgame, Part Two,' the second installment of the six-part arc spanning Batman (Vol. 2) #35–40, which Snyder publicly described as his concluding Joker story during his Batman tenure.
• Core story: Batman battles a Joker-venom-infected Superman — the sole remaining Jokerized Justice League member — using a specialized warsuit incorporating shrunken red-sun emitters (built with Ray Palmer's assistance) and ultimately neutralizes Superman with a Kryptonite-laced synthetic polymer ('Kryptonite gum').
• Batman's internal narration answers the perennial 'who wins in a fight?' question — Batman vs. Superman — with the answer: 'Neither of us,' framing the entire battle as a tragedy of collateral harm between friends rather than a heroic victory.
• The issue reveals how the Joker maintained his 'Eric Border' disguise at Arkham Asylum (introduced in Batman Annual #2): he used medication to suppress his involuntary rictus grin, a detail Snyder confirmed was planned from the character's very first appearance.
• A backup story written by Tynion IV begins a multi-part Canterbury Tales-style sequence in which Arkham patients recount competing origin stories for the Joker, each implying he may be an ageless, inhuman figure — a narrative thread woven through the entire arc.
• The Loot Crate exclusive variant — the first DC comic ever distributed through the Loot Crate subscription service — carries a Greg Capullo cover designed as an homage to the Pantera album Vulgar Display of Power and was shipped in the December 2014 box.
• The story has been collected in Batman Vol. 7: Endgame (trade paperback, March 2016), The Joker: Endgame (which also gathers the backup stories and tie-in one-shots), and Batman vs. Superman: The Greatest Battles (which reprints pages 1–9 of the main story).

Cast · 5 characters

Full credits

Key issues in Batman

#1★

#1 1st appearance — Court of Owls

★

#1 Key event — Batman

#50★

#50 Key event — Bruce Wayne

#50★

#50 Key event — Batman

★

#2 1st appearance — William Cobb

★

#21 1st appearance — Duke Thomas

Variants (5)