Mike Mignola had a long history with DC before he left to begin his decade spanning and critically lauded Hellboy franchise in 1994. As the artist for Gotham by Gaslight he can be partly credited for the entire Elseworlds imprint that was popularised during the 1990s. His covers for the outstanding Dark Night Dark City (1990) storyline by Peter Milligan and Kieron Dwyer and his own single issue collaboration with Dan Raspler and Mark Chiarello on Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #54 in 1993 proved to be a solid showcase for the skills he would take into his independent work.  Yet in 2000 he returned to pen his own Elseworlds miniseries of a Batman emerging in the 1920s to confront a great evil engulfing his home city.

Mignola handled the script for this project yet Troy Nixey and Dennis Janke handle the pencils and inks. Thanks to long-time Hellboy colourist Dave Stewart and the very clear, rectangular layouts it is always clearly a Mignola project. I’m not necessarily impressed with Nixey’s faces or his depiction of Batman but he draws a good depiction of everything else and nails the grotesque horror and supernatural components. Right from the beginning as Bruce Wayne investigates the lost expedition of Oswald Cobblepot things take a turn for the eerie and never lets go.

Core to the appeal of Elseworlds is to see familiar characters reimagined in different times and places. Alternative futures and pasts and histories divorced from our own.  Doom That Came To Gotham is not afraid to make huge swings.  It might feel over staffed at times, but it willingness to extend beyond the traditional Batman mythology to explore other characters is welcome. There is the occasional tacky wink to the audience but still several excellent and radical interpretations of these characters as figures within a Lovecraftian mystery.

The series is at its most interesting with Batman himself.  While a little spoken fellow with broadly uninteresting personality; this vision of Batman is noteworthy for being an inversion of the Caped Crusader’s classic purpose to feed into the existential terror of the story.  Traditionally – as depicted in works like Miller’s Year One – Batman represents a sea change within the seemingly doomed city of Gotham. He is a protector of the people who embodies forces bigger than himself and proves hope is lives. Here, The Batman is a sign Gotham is finished.  He feels like an unknowing catalyst for this upcoming destruction.  A product of past sins, at the very least he’s a symptom that the world has slipped so far out of control that he and his villainous counterparts are encroaching on the city. While he isn’t cruel it and as well-intentioned as always it feels as if Mignola’s interpretion cannot pull Gotham out of its death spiral because he entered the game far too late to make a real difference. He’s just another weird creature of the night who can put up a decent fight, but can’t control where the chips are falling. Yet the irony of the story in contrast to the mainland counterpart is that this Bruce Wayne has very clear goals and gradually reveals he’s far more prepared than you may initially suspect.  Batman’s war on crime is often derailed by evil, clowns, plant women, and other increasingly strange threats that pull him away from battling city corruption. He’ll fight valiantly for a better tomorrow but against impossible adversaries. This version has Batman opposing mad scientists and sorcerers and beings of naturally indescribable nature with a surprising clarity and workmanlike focus. His goal isn’t a Sisyphean task against an abstract enemy, he has a very attainable goal against an abstract yet beatable foe. It will make it interesting to be read through again once you fully understand, not just the mystery, but also Batman himself and how this story must end.

As a short and punchy adventure Doom That Came To Gotham satisfies despite some weaker characterisation. Partly because of the art team successfully realising an increasingly ghastly vision for the project, some satisfying revelations, and they successfully presenting a version of Batman that is sharply distinct from more mainstream counterparts instead of covering old ground. It’s exactly what you want from an alternate universe interpretation, marred but never undone by its flaws.