solid attempt. the imagery of joker's new look is pretty horrifying, and i like the idea, though the execution was a bit flat for my liking (this was probably worsened by the need for every comic event to have tie ins that are simply not worth reading). this will not be remembered to me as one of the best batman or joker stories, but its a respectable finish for a great batman run overall (ignoring the stuff that happened after) ( )

The more Scott Snyder Batman books I read, the more I grow to hate Scott Snyder Batman books. I really need to stop punishing myself. ( )

So I get in my FLGS and I see this hardcover, Batman:Endgame, with a very, very nice discount. "Wow!" I tell myself, "I better grab this! Plus, I haven't read Batman in a while and I heard Snyder's run was pretty good!"

well, this is, without a doubt, one of the worst story I have ever read. Let's start explaining why that is:

So Wonder Woman crash through a window to takes Batman away and wants to kill him. Good thing Bruce managed to grab his Batman utility belt while getting his head crashed through the wall. Ugh. So he manage to use one of his gadget to escape Diana while in flight and crash. We then see Bruce, battered on the ground, trying to crawl away, asking for Alfred to release protocol XXXXXX(forgot the name and I'm not opening that awful book ever again, not even to check this info). Now, we know from the beginning that this protocol will create a huge gas cloud which sole purpose is to clear Gotham so Batman can fight the Justice League without endangering the population. The only thing is, Bruce was crawling, with Diana 3 steps behind him, Diana who has her sword drawn and is in easy range to impale him, but then the next panel Bruce somehow is in his full batllesuit taking on Diana. W-T-F? How did he managed to cross what must have been miles in the city to reach the armor when he was about to be on the receiving end of a sword the panel before?! That's impossible. Cheap storytelling right at the start. Not good.

Then it goes on. Suddenly Diana has this kind of lasso around her that make her hallucinate that she actually succeeded in impaling Batman. But never in the panels did we see Batman putting it around her, or even having it in his possession on the armor! Cheap storytelling again, and we're still in issue 1! Then Batman carries on to take down the Justice League, once more. Man, those guys are so easy to take down, how come villains have trouble with them at all???

It goes on and on like this: Batman reach patient zero in a room in the hospital, then the room magically transform itself in a copy of Crimes Alley. Yes, magically, I kid you not. One panel it's a normal room, the next one it's Crime Alley. Wonderful!

Later on, we get the Joker stealing the huge dinosaur from Batman cave. Alone. Without any help. Had I know it was this easy to bring back 30 foot high dinosaur home... it's a wonder our museum don't have theirs stolen all the time. Again, COME-ON! How the heck did he carry it? And how did he even get in the batcave so easilly? And he even managed to somehow carry it downtown in about 5 mins.

There is also this sequence in the batcave where Alfred is shooting Joker in the face at point blank with a shotgun, but stops after shooting once?(and let's not even linger on how Joker can still talk with a destroyed cheek...) And the next panel, Joker is somehow now hidden many steps away, and Alfred seems to have no idea where he is... He was right next to him and somehow he lost sight of him? ARGH, are you kidding me!! And I don't know about you, but if I was angry enough to shoot Joker in the face, I wouldn't suddenly stop after one shot.... Awfully bad storytelling!!!! Then the Joker chop Alfred hand, but we learn afterward that he somehow, again off-panels, made it to the armory without getting killed or suffering any more injuries or bleeding to death. *sigh* I'm about to puke so much it's bad.

Then, and oh is this precious... Batman gathers his allies and ennemies so they will fight for him the jokerized population so he can get to the Joker who is now sitting on top of the stolen dinosaur. Street fight.. to get to a guy sitting all by himself in the air on top of a huge dinosaur... You know, Batman, the guy who pass more time at the top of buildings then on the ground, suddenly thinks the ONLY way he will get from point A to B is by fighting through hundreds of innocents zombified humans. I guess using one of his thousands gliders(that he used earlier) or batrope, or any of his bazillions gadgets that allow him to fly, to get to the Joker through the air, suddenly made no sense to him, somehow... That's it, I puked. Snyder really takes us for idiots at this point, it's obvious.

And the ending... where Batman reached a hidden cave in 3 seconds after Dick learn of the existence of the cave, and fight the Joker there(who also reached that cave under a minute it seems) I litterally threw the book at that point. It took me 3 days to convince myself to pick it up and finish the story, and that was the most stupid decision I took that week.

So, the fight btw Joker and Batman: We all get it, Batman is though, he's almost a god. I mean, that was made clear at the beginning when he got his head slammed by Wonder Woman --through-- a wall and wasn't even dazed from it. So we knew already that Snyder considered him invulnerable, but this fight takes the cake of stupidity(aside from my decision to finish reading the story, that is) so, Joker stabs him with 2 knifes in the back. First thing I couldn't help noticing, the knifes that were about the lenght of a hand suddenly were long enough to be trust in the back shoulders and stick out in the front about 3 inches. Great, growing knives. Of course, having two blades stuck through his body from back to front doesn't seem to slow down Batman in the slightess. He can still lift his arms without trouble or visible pain, and he even stand proud and straight with them in at least 2 panels. Doesn't even try to remove them so much they are nothing to him. Then the Joker throws at him some ninja-stars style playing cards. One gets stuck in Batman eye deep enough to reach the brain, but does nothing to really slow him down either(my theory is that by now, Snyder is pretty sure anyone still reading his story are all brain dead anyway, so it's normal that a weapon reaching the brain wouldn't kill Batman, as it's now a given that we don't need a brain to live.) Another card is lodged deeply in Batman bicep, but again, being god, the bicep and ligaments in it are still fully functional like nothing happened. To any other human being, the arm would be limping helplessly on the side, what with the muscle, tendons and ligaments all cut so badly, but this doesn't apply to our hero, he clearly does not follow normal human physiology.

And it ends the only way it could end: TA-DA, Batman is implied to die again, and so is the Joker. Of course, we all know they aren't, but when you took the time to tell such a crappy, horrible story, the only ending you can then think of writing can only be the cheapest, cheezyest ending possible. So, let's "kill" them once more. Off-panel, of course.

This is not one star, it's ZERO star. How can people actually give this 4 or 5 stars? (well, many of those 4-5 stars I saw on goodreads seems to come from people who got a free digital version and who mostly copied the synopsis of the book as a "review", so my guess is that they didn't even read it and only wrote a "review" so they keep getting freebies) ( )

I received this from Edelweiss and DC Comics in exchange for an honest review.

This was probably the most intense Batman story since DC rebooted with The New 52!

The Joker is clearly the best bat-villain out there, bar none. Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo are clearly the best at writing and illustrating Batman, bar none. The intensity ramps up with each page, starting with a battle with the Justice League and ending with, well, I’m not spoiling it. But it’s surprising, it’s intense, and it’s the perfect Batman-vs-Joker plot.
( )

The Joker infects some of the Justice League with a new nasty Joker virus and comes out of hiding to take Batman down, infecting a whole town with the virus. Batman is not sure how much he can do, still dealing with a lot of crap.

Must admit to being a bit meh about it. ( )