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.
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