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Batman's "Endgame" story rocked the foundations of the Batman franchise today when, in a climactic bloody battle, Batman and Joker both died.This shocking development came at the end of a six-issue arc where Joker returned -- fully healed from having his face cut off -- with a plan to infect Gotham City with a deadly Joker-virus. He also tried to trick Batman into thinking he was an immortal "Pale Man" who had haunted Gotham since its founding lifetimes ago. But at the end of the story, Batman discovered a cave containing a pool of Dionesium -- a green liquid with healing powers. Joker showed up and detonated explosives so that the cave would collapse. Batman and Joker fought until they were both on the ground dying, and with Batman having found a cure for Gotham's infected, he resigned himself to his fate with the Joker as the cave-in buried them.

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We hopped on the phone with writer Scott Snyder and artist Greg Capullo to hear about this surprising conclusion to "Endgame." We asked how long this was in the works, if Batman and Joker are really dead, what the meaning of the cryptic final page means, and how this story leads into the new robot Batman in Saturday's Free Comic Book Day issue, Divergence #1.

I started talking to Greg about it back when we were doing Death of the Family. I knew that that one was based around this idea of comedy and a happy ending and love. This one would have to be the opposite. There needed to be another one that would conclude on a much bigger scale. So I started building it back then, and then we planted Joker in Arkham Asylum and all that fun stuff.For us, it was something that was a long time coming. I thought it would come later in our run than it did, but with DC's move to the West Coast and a lot of other things, it became something where I realized if we did it earlier it would fit really well with what we wanted.On top of that, it would lead us to a story that we wouldn't be able to get to otherwise. It would just be a tremendous amount of fun right afterwards.I like to leave the possibility open that what he's saying is true, but all signs point to he's lying, is the idea. Ultimately, the reason he starts clawing his way toward the Dionesium at the end is because clearly it seems he needs to get more to heal and get out of there.It's very delicious stuff![Laughs] Or it's that, and he is who he says he is. He just loves the taste of it. But yeah, for me, I wanted it to be pretty definitive that this has been a joke he's been playing, a torturous thing on Batman. So he isn't who he necessarily says he is, but, you know, leaving the tiniest bit of that possibility -- but to make it as definitive as possible without shutting the door entirely.

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Well, that was very cool -- and by the way, Scott came up with that great smile idea, cutting into the back. He was like, "Hey, I wrote this thing. What do you think?" I go, "That's going to be awesome!" So when he told me to step on the gas and to make this a real blood-fest, well, I love stepping on the gas.I worked with Robert Kirkman for a minute, and he's a real violent writer -- as you know, The Walking Dead, a lot of blood. So here, I got to draw a lot of blood, crazy fight, and we could do anything here, because this is the final battle, and it's got to be bigger and bloodier than anything before -- even worse than the Frank Miller Dark Knight thing.By the way, Dark Knight is one of my favorite Batman books on the planet, and that fight scene gives me chills. So when [Snyder] goes, "Worse than that!" I was like, "Oh my God!" So that was nothing but a good time. It was just about pulling all that anger and violence out of myself as though I was the characters.Yeah, thank you Scott for giving me that platform to go.[Laughs] Any time.Wasn't that awesome?Yeah, that was my favorite thing, too. Like, why doesn't he just hit him like a bull? Why hasn't anyone done that? I haven't seen it. I'm sure someone else did it, and I've never read it.That's something I've always said. To me, the wrinkly cowl never made much sense, like it's a thin material. I said to Scott early on, I see it as a helmet, a hard helmet, like in the movies. So Scott took that cowl and ran with it, to go, "How about the ears impale him?" I go, "That's perfect!" It was the only time I've been drawing Batman that I wished I'd started with longer ears. [Laughs]Yeah, that was the hardest, from the very first issue of the Endgame story.To me, it's essentially this piece of machinery that Bruce tells us was bought for this theater, in the aftermath of Zero Year, years ago when they were reconstructing Gotham. It was very, very expensive, and it was basically a costume part that would allow everybody in the theater to think that the person coming down from the ceiling in this play felt like a real god; it felt like Apollo and Orestes coming down.At the time, he almost couldn't resist paying for that, because he wanted everybody to feel saved. But I think for me what this story is about is that Batman isn't a god. Joker tempting him with immortality and saying, "You could have been," or, "If you come with me, you could be, and you'll escape the nightmare you have that one day you'll be too slow and too old to do what you do and you'll fail. So with come with me" -- and what Batman knows is that if he ever did that, if he ever took anything or made himself immortal, the whole purpose of Batman would be moot, because he is one of us, and by being one of us he says, "Don't try and wait for some magical being or happy ending to find you. Go out and make your own. Be brave in the face of your own fears. Don't wait for someone else to come make your life better or change your life. Do it yourself."And the whole time, Joker's been saying, "I'm God, I'm this immortal thing." It's a rebuke to that.To see the harness in the garbage at the end is a way of saying -- in my mind, it couples with what Batman says in his note at the very end of the story. It's saying, "Don't be afraid of life being meaningless. Don't look at the void and say to yourself, 'No, I can't do it.' Don't wait for some divine intervention or sign. Instead, go out and make your life matter."I'm gonna cry!Definitely, I hope. [Laughs] I see it as the big pay-per-view event from WrestleMania. You want to see the end, you know? The final showdown. These two have been dancing forever and ever and ever, and so many people have gone, "Why don't you kill this Joker guy?"So Scott made it a point to really give the people, I think, what they want. Scott actually had a note for me and goes, "We're going to give them what they think they want, and we'll show them, 'Wow, you really didn't want this.'"I think a lot of us, honestly, we always say, "We want to see them fight to the end," but then when you see the brutality of it, it's shocking. But they would go there, in my opinion. It would become that vicious between them, because they have danced around it a long time.But when Bruce has him trapped down there and knows -- because Joker brought all of it on himself -- he says, "Thank you for coming down here. Thank you for not leaving it alone." All of it, like, "Use the bombs to bring this place down. You had to come down and see me go down this way. Everything you've done, you've brought yourself here. All I have to do is say I believe you, and that's it."To me, it's almost like Joker really does himself in because he can't leave it well enough alone. That to me is how you get him, by his own hands.So I would say this: I think there are two answers to your question, of are they dead? They are dead, and certainly they went into it dying. Bruce doesn't have an escape plan from this one. That's not what happens. Joker doesn't have an escape plan from this. When those rocks come down, they both entirely think they're dead. That's it. And we think they're dead too.But as the writer, as the team -- me and Greg -- I was saying, talking to other writers I'm friends with who have done stories where the main character and the protagonist has gone down -- Dan Slott on [Superior Spider-Man], talking to Ed Brubaker about [Captain America] -- you wouldn't do it unless you had a way of bringing the character back, that gave you better story than you had before, for yourself.So what I'm saying is, yes, they're dead -- and they went into it ready to die; so there's no sort of trick to it.But, that said, if we didn't have a story that we really loved about where they're going to end up somehow, we wouldn't do it. You love the characters too much to do that to the fans. So yeah, just stay tuned.Continue reading for details on DC's Free Comic Book Day issue, Divergence #1.