As Batman/Catwoman presents a possible future for Catwoman after Bruce Wayne’s death, an iconic DC villain endures a bloody death
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Batman/Catwoman #2, by Tom King, Clay Mann, Tomeu Morey and Clayton Cowles, on sale now.
With its narrative spread across three different time periods, Batman/Catwoman has revealed the past, present and possible future of Gotham City as its eponymous couple deals with the Joker’s murderous legacy in relation to Andrea Beaumont. In addition to menacing the Phantasm and her family, the Clown Prince of Crime is revealed to have a secret history with Selina Kyle before she embarked on her whirlwind romance with the Dark Knight.
And decades into the future, Selina decides to cut ties with the Joker for good, literally, resulting in the cackling villain taking his last laugh as he dies at her hands in Batman/Catwoman #2.
Sometime after Bruce Wayne succumbed to a terminal cancer diagnosis as an old man with Selina at his side, the former Catwoman traveled to a retirement community to visit an unassuming elderly figure. Revealed to be a retired Joker, Selina told the aging but still-terrifying supervillain that her house call was to kill him to finally avenge for a currently unseen tragedy that befell Andrea, likely in the maxiseries’ present-day sequences. Unimpressed with Selina’s promise to kill him in his own home, the Joker reveals that he has not let retirement or old age make him any less lethal, retrieving a revolver stashed away in his freezer for just such an occasion.
While the Joker may not have slowed down, Catwoman hasn’t either, and she anticipates the villain not going down quietly and deftly outmaneuvers him in the blink of an eye. Slitting his throat with a single fingernail and watching him helplessly bleed out in the middle of his own living room, Selina calmly reveals the biggest promise she made to Bruce during their marriage: That she would never cross the line and kill the Joker in revenge for what he did to Andrea. While what exactly transpired to Andrea herself is still a mystery, the Joker was revealed to be responsible for luring her son to Gotham under the pretenses that he could reunite him with his long-lost father. Searching for the boy on Andrea’s behalf, Batman and Catwoman discovered his body in the sewers beneath Gotham, the latest murder victim of the Joker, driving a vengeful Andrea back to her Phantasm alter ego.
Fate hasn’t been particularly kind for older iterations of the Joker. The Dark Knight Returns had Batman break the villain’s neck during a murderous showdown at a local amusement park, with the Joker maniacally finishing himself off so his lifelong nemesis would be wanted by the authorities. The Joker of Earth-2 menaced Bruce and Selina’s daughter Helena, her world’s Huntress, only for a lethal joy buzzer to backfire and electrocute him to death when it was blocked by Power Girl.
After years of terrorizing Gotham and the Bat-Family, the Joker has finally faced capital punishment at the literal hands of an elderly Selina Kyle. The Joker has tormented the Beaumont family for years, first murdering Andrea’s father while working for the mob, as seen in Mask of the Phantasm, before murdering her son years later. And in revenge for all the Clown Prince of Crime has done to Andrea, Selina has murdered the Joker after maintaining her promise to her husband as long as he was alive, waiting until he had dearly departed to exact her bloody vengeance in full.
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