Batman & The Joker: The Deadly Duo #7 is published by DC Comics with story and artwork by Marc Silvestri. Colours are by Arif Prianto and letters by Troy Peteri. The main cover art is by Silvestri and Prianto.
Batman & The Joker: The Deadly Duo #7 is available now in print and on digital where all good comics are sold.
Synopsis
Batman and the Joker have fought across streets, rooftops, railways and caverns, against horrors beyond of their wildest nightmares. Deep underground, witnesses to an undead wedding from Hell, they finally go up against their bitterest enemies: each other! Can the Dark Knight and the Clown Prince of Crime save Commissioner Gordon and Harley Quinn, or will the flames of their reignited rivalry consume all? Find out, detail by bloody detail, in the epic conclusion to Marc Silvestri’s dark and brutal Gotham opus. This oversized finale clocks in at 31 beautiful and horrifying story pages.
Review
It’s the end of the road for Batman & The Joker: The Deadly Duo this week. Marc Silvestri and Ari Prianto’s hauntingly beautiful series reaches a horrifying conclusion which is suitably packed with twists and turns.
I’ve commented in previous reviews that pulling this series from mainstream continuity has really benefitted its storytelling. That continues to be true right through the final panel as our gothic villainess makes way for something a little more classically Batman. After six issues of being forced together, finally Batman and Joker are at odds and it feels like the right way to bring The Deadly Duo to a close.
We left the titular duo locked in battle, deep under the streets of Gotham in a cavernous system once planned for a subway system. With a gun to Jim Gordon’s head and an army of Jokerised zombie-creatures nipping at their heals it seems like all hope is lost. Silvestri quite literally throws everything at The Dark Knight in an effort to make the conclusion feel suitably epic. For the most part it works but there are moments when the tension is broken for characters to do some extensive moustache twirling.
Ramping things up even further, as we hit the mid-way point there’s a one-two-punch of twists which hurtle Silvestri’s narrative over its final hurdle and towards the finish line. Everyone faces certain doom when Batman floods the underground tunnels. But more disturbingly it seems that the ghostly Amanda Simtek may well know Batman’s true identity. But here’s the twist. Silvestri knows exactly how both Bruce and Joker will react to this and so it plays perfectly in to his endgame.
Many have written about the cyclical relationship between Batman and Joker. Positing that one needs the other and that neither is prepared to really, truly remove the other from their path. Silvestri uses all of that psychological knowledge of the characters to construct a perfectly satisfying ending that will no doubt please long-time readers. The same can be said of the book’s de-facto prologue which catches up with Bruce Wayne doing some good for the city out of costume. Again Silvestri shows his commitment to keeping the character true to his history, rather than writing a new page in the Batman mythos.
I’ll be interested to see if Amanda Simtek shows up again in the future. In the end she feels almost like a version of Phantasm without the romantic connections to Bruce. There’s a symmetry to their mission which is only really defined by their methods. Something which the end of this issue really leans in to. There’s certainly mileage in seeing these two potentially go up against each other again in the future.
Prianto, of course, sees The Deadly Duo through to its conclusion beautifully. This book has looked great every single month. Gothic and somewhat dreamlike even during its biggest set pieces. This final issue lurches from the huge unground sequences to more traditional Batman-fare up on the streets of Gotham and Prianto ensures that regardless of the setting the world and its characters always look their best.
Verdict
A blockbuster finale to what has been an incredible run. In the vein of Batman: Noël or One Dark Knight, Silvestri and Prianto have created a standalone story for the ages.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
