Batman & Joker: The Deadly Duo

The Joker is running amok in Gotham and Batman is chasing after him.  Sounds like your average Tuesday night in the city, right?  Well, when the Caped Crusader catches up with him, he finds a feral, super-strong creature with sharp teeth that bears only a superficial resemblance to the Clown Prince of Crime.  What’s going on here?  Unfortunately for Batman, the real Joker has his own problem:  Someone has kidnapped Harley Quinn!  With no leads to go on, Joker has decided to corral his nemesis into helping him out – by kidnapping Jim Gordon and threatening to mail pieces of him to Gotham P.D. at regular intervals.  Outmaneuvered, Batman sees no other option than to make the Deadly Duo team-up between him and his greatest enemy a reality.

Written and illustrated by former Marvel superstar and Image Comics co-founder Marc Silvestri, “The Deadly Duo” was in the works for over seven years before it was finally published earlier this year.  Looking at it, it’s clear that Silvestri gave it his all while working on it.  There’s an incredible level of detail to every panel of every page as one of the 90’s great superhero artists finally gets the chance to cut loose on a “Batman” story.  Even minor moments, like Batman swooping down onto some snarky GCPD cops are staged for maximum spectacle and the action scenes have real excitement for them.

So what about the story?  While Silvestri has written more than a few comics before this, none of them have done anything to convince anyone that the man’s strengths lie in illustration rather than writing.  That remains true of “The Deadly Duo” as we get a story that would’ve likely read a lot better back during the artist’s heyday when the suspension of disbelief of the general comics audience was a lot lower.  By that I mean seeing the Batman and Joker team up for an extended period for any reason might’ve actually seemed plausible rather than a gimmick.  Or that the basically competent writing would’ve been more enjoyable to see there compared to what you’d expect to see in mainstream comics back then.

As it is, Silvestri’s efforts will likely only entertain those who like seeing the Dark Knight come off as being one step behind everyone else in the stories which bear his name.  Moreover, his efforts to set up a new villain for Batman fall flat here with the character coming off as a generic psychopath who doesn’t have the kind of personality to make them interesting enough to return, unless the creator is currently hard at work on a follow-up for this (which I’d expect to see in 2030 at the earliest).  So if you’ve been waiting to see a complete “Batman” story drawn by Marc Silvestri looks like, you won’t be disappointed.  Yet if you’ve been waiting to see what one written by him reads like… what have you been doing with your life?