Embedded Files
BATMAN/DEADPOOL #1
The Cosmic Kiss Caper
Written by GRANT MORRISON; Art by DAN MORA; Main cover by DAN MORA
DC Comics, January 2026, Color, 64pgs, $7.99
THE MOMENT YOU'VE BEEN WAITING FOR! The Dark Knight and the Merc with a Mouth team up for an adventure so mind-bending you'll think you're in a dream! Brought to you by legendary creators Grant Morrison and Dan Mora!
Commentary
Announced by Entertainment Weekly in May 2025, DC's Batman/Deadpool #1 is the second of two 2025 Marvel/DC crossovers - the first since 2003's JLA/Avengers - featuring (arguably, in Marvel's case at least) the two companies' flagship characters. Published by DC on November 19th 2025, Batman/Deadpool #1 follows Zeb Wells and Greg Capullo's Deadpool/Batman #1, published by Marvel Comics back in September.
This issue also features five backup stories featuring team-ups between various DC and Marvel characters that I won't be covering here - Constantine/Doctor Strange by Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Joshua Williamson and Hayden Sherman; Nightwing/Laura Kinney Wolverine by Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo (I thought this one was really good); Harley Quinn/The Hulk by Mariko Tamaki and Amanda Conner; and Static/Ms. Marvel by G. Willow Wilson and Denys Cowan.
Unlettered previews of pages 7-9 went up on DC's website on October 23rd, followed on November 16th by fully lettered previews of pages 1-6 on Bleeding Cool and (I think?) a bunch of other sites, just before the issue hit the stands.
DC offered up 18 free to order variant covers for this issue, alongside the standard cover, a foil version of the same and a blank variant, for a total of 21 different versions of the book available to all stores through Lunar, DC's direct market distributor these days. Alongside these there were another 10 retailer-exclusive covers, with some of these also available in black and white/sketch or copy-free versions. I'd guess it'll take awhile for the dust to settle and all of these to get listed on the GCD, but you're probably looking at about 50 different variants, all in - a little short of Detective Comics #1027's 57, but not by much. Yikes.
Annotations
Annotations
Page 1 - Eternity and Kismet, physical embodiments of, respectively, the Marvel and DC universes. Eternity, on the left here. has been around for a long time, first appearing in the Doctor Strange strip in 1965's Strange Tales #138 by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Kismet, on the right, is a much newer and more obscure DC pick, here - I'd guess - by dint of her fulfilling the same role in Kurt Busiek and George Perez's JLA/Avengers. Kismet first appeared in 1992's Adventures of Superman #494 by Jerry Ordway and Tom Grummett.
While Eternity is really part of the furniture as far as Marvel's cosmic pantheon is concerned, Kismet has barely appeared outside a handful of Superman comics and the aforementioned JLA/Avengers. I'm still pretty glad Morrison went with her over, I dunno, Perpetua or something though.
"ONCE upon a wouldja just imagine" - 'Just Imagine...' was, maybe incidentally, the branding for a series of one shots where Stan Lee reimagined the major DC heroes from 2001-2002.
Anthropomorpho, alias the Prime Manifester, first appeared in Quasar #37 by Mark Gruenwald and Greg Capullo. They're a sort of diplomat slash spokesperson for the higher powers of the Marvel Universe, as far as I can tell? They're a real deep cut, only ever appearing in 4 issues of Gruewald's seminal 90's run on Quasar (a really excellent comic, highly recommended) and Avengers Infinity #4 by Roger Stern and Sean Chen in 2000, and that's it. Seems they've got into the hospitality game now, nice one.
Page 2 - It's a (non-denominational) holiday here in Gotham - New Year I'm guessing - hence the fireworks and Batman's "Happy Holidays" on page 27.
Victor Gover, alias the second Sportsmaster, first appeared in 1989's Manhunter #17 by Kim Yale, John Ostrander and Doug Rice. He's a gritty 80's reimagining of the OG Sportsmaster, aka Lawrence 'Crusher' Crock, a Golden Age Green Lantern villain created by John Broome and Irwin Hasen in 1947's All-American Comics #85.
Gover - another deep cut who's only ever appeared in four comics prior to this, two of which mis-raced him as a blonde white guy - was a former football player for the Gotham City Wildcats who was drummed out of the team for suspected steroid use after his metagene activated. There's a Wildcats penant on Gover's wall at top left of panel 2. There's also a photo of Gover's Sportsmaster helmet at top right of the same panel.
After being apprehended by Batman in his first appearance, Gover joined the Suicide Squad for one mission in 1991's Suicide Squad #58, also by Yale and Ostrander, alongside Geof Isherwood on art duties. There, Black Adam recruited the Squad to engage in a full frontal assault on the island hideout of Wonder Woman villain Circe, for reasons that would require me to re-read War of the Gods, and that's simply not happening. Victor Gover was part of the team alongside The Writer, a deathly pale guy with a magical laptop strapped to his chest that can control the story (dubbed the 'Quantum Keyboard' in this issue), and a faintly cruel dig at Grant Morrison's self-insert character from Animal Man #26. After the Squad landed on the island, The Writer was swiftly savaged by a werebeast after developing writer's block.
According to panel 5 - and his page on the DC Wiki - Gover has an eidetic (photographic) memory, but - per one throwaway line in his Suicide Squad appearance - it's really more of a Taskmaster-esque 'photographic reflexes' thing. Though Yale and Ostrander make a point of Gover having the metagene in his debut, they don't actually get around to saying what he can do, though given they also wrote the Suicide Squad book I'm guessing this was probably their intention all along.
'Waller', for any total noobs somehow still reading along, is Amanda Waller, head honcho of long standing of the Suicide Squad.
Page 3 - Aeaea was the sorceress Circe's island home in Homer's Odyssey. It would make a ton more sense for that to have been Circe's base of operations during the 1991 War of the Gods crossover rather than on an island in a lake in the Amazon rainforest, but unfortunately that's actually where it was during the 1991 War of the Gods crossover. Whoops.
Hey, I just had a thought here... Now hear me out on this...
WHAT IF...?™ In the revised post-Zero Hour, post-Infinite Crisis, post-New 52, post-Convergence, post-Rebirth, post-Dark Crisis DC Universe, Circe's hideout in War of the Gods *was* on Aeaeae - an island shrouded in myth that no-one knows the location of - and the only person that could lead Waller, Batman, whoever, to wherever The Writer's corpse and his magical Quantum Keyboard were was... *the guy with the eidetic memory* who served alongside The Writer in the same extra-judicial death squad? That would be kind of a neat plot right? RIGHT?
That's The Writer's corpse in panel 2. It made me smile that Mora has made sure to give the skeleton hair, as Morrison wasn't bald back then.
Checkmate is a shadowy government agency in the DC universe with close ties to the Suicide Squad. I'm not 100% clear on whether Batman's referring to the Suicide Squad team from issue #58 as 'Checkmate soldiers' or if some Checkmate soldiers have subsequently (recently?) visited the island, presumably in search of the Quantum Keyboard? Either way, it seems the Batman of Earth 7642 (we'll come back to him) has been here previously too - I'm pretty sure that's his batarang that's perplexing Batman.
That's Cassandra Nova's hand (we'll come back to her too) in panel 4.
Page 4-5 - The Batman and Deadpool logos at the head of the page are both from the 1990's. Per logo supremo Todd Klein (also the letterer of this very issue), the Batman logo was designed by Curtis King, based on the typeface created for the Batman Forever movie. The Deadpool logo was designed by Klein himself and has also been used for the Deadpool movies, which Todd seems very happy about.
Deadpool is pulling a comic book Pieta, as famously featured on the covers of Batman #156 ('Robin Dies at Dawn'), Uncanny X-Men #136 (the Death of Phoenix),Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 (the Death of Supergirl), and in Morrison's own Final Crisis #6, amongst many, many others.
I'm most familiar with '*choke*' as shorthand for a character crying from Silver Age Superboy and/or Legion of Super Heroes comics, but I don't know that it originated there.
'effendi', a term of respect roughly equivalent to 'mister' or 'sir' in some Middle Eastern cultures, was a regular bit of Stan Lee patter in his Stan's Soapbox columns for Marvel's Bullpen Bulletin page.
"Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the waters" is a royalty-dodging mash-up of the first two lines of Gene MacLellan's gospel pop song, 'Put Your Hand in the Hand' -
Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the waters
Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea
'Put Your Hand in the Hand' was a hit for Canadian band Ocean in 1971, which was sampled by the Beastie Boys on 'Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun' from their 1989 LP, Paul's Boutique. The song was also covered by Elvis, Sammy Davis Jr. and Joan Baez, amongst others.
"I'll show you how it all went down" is a line from Gram Parsons' 1974 song, 'Return of the Grievous Angel', released posthumously after Parsons' death in 1973. I'm not sure Grant is much of a country-rock music head so maybe this is just a coincidence.
"...and hope to die at dawn", as in 'Robin Dies at Dawn' from Batman #156, as mentioned above.
What are these gremlins Deadpool is fighting, look like Bendy and the Ink Machine ninjas. Pogo?
Page 6 - Heavy breathing
Fourth wall breaking. Graffiti is other characters who've done the same - Zatanna (in Seven Soldiers: Zatanna #4, 200?), U. Comics (Ultra Comics, in The Multiversity: Ultra Comics #1, 2015), B. Baker (Buddy Baker, Animal Man, in Animal Man #19, 1990), Ambush Bug (across various mini-series and specials by Keith Giffen and Robert Loren Fleming), Jen Walters (She-Hulk, in John Byrne's Sensational She Hulk #1-7 (1989) and #31-50 (1991-93)), Gwen (Gwenpool), Dan Mora (kind of right here), and Loki (?, Mr Rokej?). 'Rick was here' in the bottom right I thought might be a reference to Rick and Morty, but someone on Reddit thinks its Rick Jones (link), which makes more sense tbh.
Animal Man #19
Page 7 -
Page 8 - "I was designed to function without feet"
Play Attention - owl?
"Smile though your heart is breaking"
Deathstroke
Teen Titans Go: To The Movies previously did this whole Deathstroke/Deadpool bit, but the other way around.
You can see the piano in panel 5 at the owl's feet in panel 3. Why? I've no idea. "Key of C to key of D repeating" is (I think?) a reference to Neil Hefti's theme from the 1966 Batman TV show, which will pop up again on page 24. That's for sure the first two chords the theme circles around, but I probably would've put it the other way around (D to C)? Ah, what do I know.
"Hh" is a big Morrison Batman thing, going all the way back to their run on JLA.
Page 9 - Slade Wilson is Deathstroke's secret ID.
Great sound effects work from Mora here, very Frank Quitely Batman and Robin.
I'll leave the liminal spaces stuff to Grant Morrison and their Substack newsletter, as they (probably) have a little more insight into this stuff and how they're using it here than I do.
Page 10 - The Labyrinth of the Court of Owls was first featured in Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's Batman v2 #5 from 2012.
The Batgirl painting on the left hand wall references Roy Lichtenstein;s Crying Girl, possibly via Promethea's 'Weeping Gorilla'.
The neon 'Amalgam' sign references the Amalgam Comics crossovers between DC and Marvel in 1996 and 1997. More on them later.
The Spider-Man and Superman pic on the right hand wall looks to be inspired by the cover of Superman vs The Amazing Spider-Man: The Battle of the Century from 1976, DC and Marvel's first effort at combining their universes in pursuit of the almighty dollar.
'Noclipping' is when you fall through the map in a video game, right? I'm old man, give me a break.
"Somehow I do way more good than bad! You were fine with this before". Much of Deadpool's chat here is referencing the prior Wells/Capullo crossover from a couple of months back. Which implies that this is the same Deadpool from that issue, but not the same Batman. Now is as good a time as any to talk about Earth 7642 I guess, so here we go...
Most (but not all) of DC and Marvel's crossovers have taken place on the same parallel Earth - 'Crossover Earth' per the 1986 Official Crisis on Earths Index by Mark Waid (endorsed by DC but published by ICG), or Earth 7642 as named in the Alternate Earths Appendix in volume 3 of the hardcover Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A-Z series from 2007. The conceit of Earth 7642 in a nutshell is that all of the DC and Marvel characters live on the same Earth and always have, it's just that the Marvel characters don't go to Gotham or Metropolis very often. This oddball status quo was established in Superman vs The Amazing Spider-Man: The Battle of the Century in 1976, and has stuck through nearly all of the crossovers between the two companies since. Some big exceptions to this include the moribund DC vs Marvel/Marvel vs DC and it's follow up mini-series', All Access and Unlimited Access; JLA/Avengers; and this book, Batman/Deadpool, but not the prior crossover from September, Deadpool/Batman. Keeping up? Good.
In Deadpool/Batman, Deadpool was on a jaunt to Gotham City to kill Batman for the Joker. There's no dimension hopping, no cosmic romancing, it was just that Deadpool doesn't go to Gotham very often, natch. Ergo, both Deadpool and Batman in that book are their Earth 7642 counterparts and *not* the characters from each respective company's mainline continuity. The same Deadpool seems to have come straight out of that book and into this one (so Deadpool here is *also* the Deadpool of Earth 7642), but the Batman who appears in this book is indeed the mainline continuity Prime Earth Batman that appears in the Batman comic every month. This is something of a novelty for these sort of things. Earth 7642 Batman is in this story later on, just about, but the Batman running around doing stuff is the *real* Batman. That's why he doesn't know who Deadpool is, even though Deadpool knows him. Got it? Good, glad that's sorted.
Moon Knight you'll have probably seen on the telly - he was created by Doug Moench and Don Perlin in 1975's Werewolf by Night #32. Nighthawk is an ersatz Batman from the Squadron Supreme (a Marvel Universe analogue to the Justice League), created by Roy Thomas and Sal Buscema in 1969's Avengers #69. His backstory is insanely labyrinthine and far too complicated to go into here, go look it up!
Page 11 -
Page 12 - It's 'KEYBOARD' if you didn't work it out - piano keyboard, a board full of keys in the hotel reception, a map of the Florida Keys, I dunno, mounted on a board? I'm not sure where chess comes into it all, besides the 'board' bit obviously. Maybe the music they keep hearing is 'I Know Him So Well'?
Page 13 -
Page 14-15 -
Page 16 - 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother' is from the hit of the same name by The Hollies, released in 19??.
Around the Lazarus Pit in panel 4 are portraits of various personifications of Death from the DC and Marvel universes. On the left we've got DC's Black Flash, _, Next to him is Marvel's Archangel, _. At the back is Marvel's Death, in the costume she wore in 2016's Scarlet Spider _. On the right, down front is Marvel's Hela, the Asgadian goddess of Death who first appeared in _. Next to her is JG Jones' take on the Jack Kirby's Black Racer from Final Crisis. He _. And finally at the back is DC's Death of the Endless, from
Page 17 - This is Darkclaw, _.
Page 18 - As promised, there *is* a giant typewriter.
Deadpool is hoofing Batman up on to the 'W' key, nice touch.
Page 19 - Batman/Darkclaw is referencing his instruction to Robin back on page 3 -
Page 20 -Damian Wayne, son of Batman and the current Robin _
Mini-Me
Kawaii
Page 21 - The 'Beastiamorphs' are the werebeasts that gored The Writer back in Suicide Squad #58.
The TVA, or Time Variance Authority, were _
Lying on the steps there is the Batman of Earth 7642, who we covered earlier.
Page 22 - Grant Morrison
Page 23 - Never rewrite canon again
Check
Page 24 - Batman theme.
Deadbat.
Page 25 - 4th wall, little bit of politics
Souvenir
Burt Ward punch
Page 26 - Heads on the bed stands are the two brothers from Marvel vs DC
Page 27 - Echoes of Morrison bringing back Buddy's family at the end of Animal Man #26
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