Beware spoilers for Batman: Endgame!

The Joker is back. After his disappearance at the end of 2012's The Death of the Family arc, the whereabouts of Batman's arch-nemesis have been unknown. As revealed in Batman #36, it turns out that he was hiding in plain sight as an orderly at Arkham Asylum named Eric Morder, first introduced in Batman Annual #2 from back in July 2013. Now, the Joker has revealed his identity to Batman along with his new frightening visage.

We touched base with Batman writer Scott Snyder to hear his thoughts on Batman fighting Superman, how he crafted the Joker's new look with artist Greg Capullo, and how he managed to keep the Joker's identity a secret for so long.

I wanted it to be fun, first of all, and I wanted it to be that kind of thing where it is that fanboy moment and you crack your knuckles and you're like, "Alright, here we go. This is going to be a fun one. Partly the story is a celebration of Batman's 75th anniversary, and I wanted as many elements in there that really affirm him as this incredibly fun superhero that we all love. So putting him against the Justice League makes sense. On the other hand, it's a story that really turns into the Joker saying, "Your party's over. It's my party now. My 75th anniversary starts once this year ends." And it is. He appears in Batman #1 in 1940, so by December, it's really now his party starting.So for me my thinking was that you show a really fun way that Batman can win, but you remind people that deep down, even though it's hard for us to be like, "Who would win in a fight?" it's terrifying for him. Superman is one of his best friends. He has a special bond with Clark. To have that person try and kill him at the Joker's hands, there's almost nothing more nightmarish in some ways. So to bring it back to Earth and say, "This is pretty scary," we start to get into that mode.Because he dropped a building on him. [Laughs] So the idea is that when he drops the building on him, it damages the suit. It's meant to be like the system of the suit is now pretty badly dented. So in that way he's not capable of making a shield around the knuckles anymore.Thank you, thank you. I love my Bat-pseudo science. My wife is a doctor, and I love going to doctor functions and you're talking to physicists. It's all like, "Well, sir, when it comes to red sun technology in your gauntlet..." [Laughs] I am an expert in comic book science. I don't know real science whatsoever.That's the thing. I think it's going to come out, not in Batman itself but in -- I can't say where, because as with most Joker things, those things usually bleed into other Bat-books and you get to see some stuff in other books once things get really crazy in Batman. So without giving too much away, it'll be something I'm pretty sure will be addressed elsewhere.Thank you. I like his hair too, right? For me, the idea was to try and make him, first of all, really scary. Nothing is comical, as he is classically, but a little more shaved down at the chin and the nose, but still very clearly the Joker -- and a grin a little bit wider rather than longer; more gum showing, bloodshot eyes, wrinkles around the eyes and stuff like that to give him a little depth. We're really trying to spook you out when you see him coming out of the shadows.We thought about a purple suit, but honestly it's just very hard to make that scary. We tried a couple designs, but if you're not going to have it be rotted -- and everything about him was kind of rotted in Death of the Family -- here, we really wanted him to step out almost reborn and say, "I'm starting over. I'm done with you. Everything between us is over. You and I played this game for awhile and then you showed me you're too boring to play with, so we're just finished." So I wanted to have kind of a slick look, so we decided to make the suit black, with a purple handkerchief to give it a little bit of color. Then everything he uses is black. So the flag that says "BANG!" instead of it being a red flag with an explosion it's a black flag, you know, skull and bones. You'll see the boxing glove too, and the flower; they're all black.There's a sense of him saying, "Time to say goodbye." To me, there's something spooky about him. Especially when he's in the shadows and wearing black, all you see is his face and hands. There's something really creepy about that to me -- like he's under your bed or hiding upstairs, and then you see him coming out of the shadows; all you see is that face coming at you.Yeah, like, a thousand-percent yes. I was hoping it would be really clear just from his name and everything, but yeah. Marguerite [Bennett] will tell you, when we started talking about the annual, his purpose was always to be the Joker. His name was designed that way. She actually helped me come up with it. Having him interrupt whenever anyone says "Joker," we were trying to have things you could go back and see and say, "Oh, I see this."Similarly, in the issue she wrote with Joker's daughter, he's in it, and it's the first time you ever see any sign that the Joker might be around -- at least in our 52 continuity -- since Death of the Family when Joker's daughter gets a note from the Joker essentially saying at the end that he's around. Eric's in that issue. So the fun was supposed to be if you look back you go, "Oh, I see. That was him, and he sent her the note."So to me I was really paranoid, honestly. To be embarrassingly truthful, I was worried that people would guess he'd the Joker. So I really didn't want people using him as much. Everyone wanted to use him once they knew he was the Joker, and they wanted to do things where they'd make a pun about the Joker, that kind of stuff. I was just worried it would be given away, so I tried to play it a little closer to the vest. But I can guarantee you that he was designed to be the Joker all the way back then.Maybe when we get a trade, I'll push DC to publish Marguerite's notes and my notes on the script, because it was a lot of fun. She was much more risky about it than I was. I don't know why I was so scared. I just thought everyone would start looking for the Joker in Death of the Family, but she was more gung-ho about it. But I'm going to ask them if maybe we can try and do that, because it was a fun exchange where she was like, "Don't worry so much!" I'm like, "I'm worried."To get them excited I would just say, honestly, it's pretty much the last time we intend to use the Joker. So for us this is everything we could do with the character. For me, this is really the conclusion to the story that started in Zero Year with that character, if you believe that's him as the Red Hood. You don't have to if you don't want to, but if you make it one big psychology -- and it's up to decide -- that psychology really begins there and ends here. So for me it's one giant arc that's been going through our run. It's a story that's probably had the most lead time out of anything we've done, where we thought about it way in advance. So it's been a lot of fun to get to do. We're going to go as big as we can for it. I hope people enjoy it.Above all of that, in terms of hyping it, I would say to people at IGN and the readers just thank you. I'll speak for myself, because I don't want to put words in Greg's mouth, but for me I never expected there to still be such support for the book this far in. I started writing Batman in Detective in 2010, so I'm going into my fifth year really on Batman. I never thought that it would be as popular as it was when we began. I never expected it to be doing as well as it did then. To have it doing that well now, I just have to say thank you. All I can tell you is that I promise we will try and treat each arc as though its Batman #1 and challenge ourselves to surprise you each time.From this point forward, it's really the bonus round, where I didn't think I'd get to be on the book this long. So I'm just trying to do stuff to challenge myself and challenge you guys and have fun on the book and say thank you, honestly. We're both really, really grateful. I'm really overwhelmed by the support. It means a lot.

Joshua is IGN’s Comics Editor. If Game of Thrones, Spider-Man, or Super Smash Bros. are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter and IGN