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03/15/2004: Batman Elseworlds
Recently I commented in lcsbanana's LJ and shared a couple of pictures from Elseworlds, some wackier than others, and some rather freaky, and I thought I might as well turn it into an entry in my own blog, because some of those images you really shouldn't miss...
There is a rather freaky Elseworld comic from 1998 called "Batman: I, Joker" (written and illustrated by Bob Hall), about a future Gotham ruled by a Batman cult, in which we see CultLeader!Batman fight a weird bondage gear Batman (and anybody who thought the regular Batman outfit couldn't possible get any more fetish-like is proven wrong). In case you're interested in some context, and some more disturbing pictures: The cult ruling Gotham has a ritual once a year where others can challenge The Batman (who is thought of as a god) to become the next one, and to win that right to fight, first they have to bring down one of the supervillains who are resurrected and let loose in the city for that ritual. Actually they are not so much resurrected, as that they take normal people, erase their memories, disfigure them and implant them with wrong memories of the supervillain they are to represent. You can see this exposition with the cult in action on the pages 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12. The weird Batman in that SM outfit is a challenger who managed to kill the Riddler, and actually in that story the guy they chose to play the Joker happens to have been a member of some underground guerrilla, and managed to beat the false memories and challenge the Batman, and it ends with Joker (well someone who had his mind wiped, Joker's personality implanted, and been given the face of Joker) as the next Batman though he's a good guy and determined to end the cult in what I guess counts as a wacky (and somewhat disturbing) happy ending.
I also pointed out some of the cliche and/or genre Elseworlds (because I love Elsewords, just like I love AUs, so I read them quite a lot, though honestly those below are not my favorites, just evidence that there is probably nothing these poor characters didn't have to go through):
- Cave!Batman (from Legends of the Dark Knight #35, and okay, that is actually, in the story, supposed to be a Viking!Batman, but does that look like a viking to you?!)
- Pirate!Batman (from Batman Chronicles #11)
- Vampire!Batman (there's a series, but this image is from Batman: Bloodstorm)
- Batman as a were-bat because of some gypsy curse (also from Batman Chronicles #11)
- Batman in the wild west (cover of Batman: The Blue, the Grey, and the Bat)
- as King Arthur's knight (cover of Batman: Dark Knight of the Round Table #1)
- Samurai Batman and Robin in medieval Japan (from Robin Annual #3) which by the way ends with Robin comitting ritual suicide, because he broke his word to Batman and avenged his death when he swore he would not.
- Batman as Egyptian Bat-God (which I haven't read because it sounded like a bad SG-1 x-over)
- Bruce Wayne as gay artist in the 1930s in Berlin (from Batman Chronicles #11, which features an amazing amount of bad writing for just one comic). Personally, I think neither the pink house coat nor the lipstick (well it *looks* like lipstick anyway) suits him, though it makes sense in a weird way, that in this universe Robin is female, just like in the regular comics with the heterosexual (officially anyway) Batman Robin is a boy...
Finally, not (quite) an Elseworld but a really good (and creepy) story, Mask by Bryan Talbot in LotDK #39/40, where Bruce Wayne is in a mental hospital, and only imagines running around as "Batman" in his fantasy world, in reality his costume is a ridiculous outfit made from junk and he's institutionalized. Of course in the end it turns out a supervillain plot after all, but that really isn't the point of the story. I mean it could've been an Elseworld if it hadn't turned out to be a supervillain scheme.
