Holy hot bananas, Batman! This Elseworlds, Batman/Houdini: The Devil's Workshop (1993) is fucking awesome! It's written by Howard Chaykin and John Francis Moore with beautiful painted art from Mark Chiarello whom I've only heard of thanks to this book and now want to read every story he wrote. This story puts Batman and his cast of characters into the early 19th century, where he teams up with Harry Houdini. There are a lot of neat touches here that make sense with when the story takes place, Alfred is a freed slave who works for Bruce Wayne as his butler (at least its hinted at), Vicki Vale is a suffragette working for the right for women to vote. Stuff like that. Makes the whole world feel more full and well researched. Anyway, Batman teams up with Harry Houdini and they fight VAMPIRES which is cool as hell, and yes of course a version of the Joker (called Jack Schadenfreude, naturally). If you have problem with some Jewish slurs being used I'd probably not read this one but if you can look past that this one comes Highly Recommended.
Our second Elseworlds for this week is, Batman: In Darkest Knight (1994), written by Mike W Barr and drawn by Jerry Bingham (probably known better for Batman: Son of the Demon) is a fun mashup of both Batman and Green Lantern. It starts with Batman doing the "HOW CAN I MAKE THEM FEAR ME!!!?" thing and BLAM Abin Sur just smashes down into Batman's backyard and he becomes the Green BatLantern and then the Green BatLantern just smashes the shit outta The Red Hood so that he never becomes The Joker! Then the Guardians of the Universe (those blue up their own ass motherfuckers) tell him he has to fight SINESTRO and he does beating his ass into jelly and taking away his dictatorship. Sinestro is then sent to the Anti Matter Universe Qward to stay FOREVER! Of course, forever is like 12 seconds, Sinestro is given his yellow ring and escapes! He turns Catwoman into Star Sapphire and Harvey Dent into Binary Star and fucking KILLS THE SHIT out of Gordon! He also takes Joe Chills mind into his but I'll get back to that. He tells the blue fuckers to eat shit and they freak the fuck out and send 4 Lanterns down to take him down WHILE giving Superman, Wonder Woman and Flash, Green Lantern rings because why the hell not and during the fight FUCKING ALFRED DIES. Holy shit, Mike W Barr just killin people left and right. The Guardians then decide to stay back. He has a back and forth with the Green Justice League and then goes into space to kick the shit outta Sinestro and his gang. Oh and Sinestro wears a purple jacket because the colorist was like Fuck it I'mma do this. This does have some problems. I thought the fact that Joe Chill and Sinestro are in the same mind kinda interesting and it doesnt do much with it and I think I would have liked to see a mini series of this instead, let some of the ideas breathe more. So I'll put this in the fun but flawed catergory and give it a Recommend. Oh and this gets big ups for giving Bill Finger a dedication at the end and being like "Fucking hell DC give the man credit for his part in Batman you shits" just a lot classier than that.
John Byrne is many things, a comics superstar turned angry old man. Yep. I'm not going to get into any of that stuff right now, but during the 1980s John Byrne was on the top of the comics world. X-Men, Fantastic Four, Superman. All really great stuff with great art. John Byrne kinda went off the rails during the 1990s and made some pretty bad stuff, but Batman/Captain America (1997) is totally not on the list of stuff he did that wasn't very good in the 1990s and in is in fact a lot of fun. You get to see the two heroes fight in the Second World War against Joker and the Red Skull (and when Joker finds out that he's working for a nazi a very funny scene happens. Even the Joker thinks nazis can go fuck themselves) The art is still pretty good but in one of the scenes Bucky looks like a dwarf and not a teenager. Still its fun to see all the random characters interact and even have Sgt Rock in it! I give this a Highly Recommended. Lots of fun.
Well, next time maybe I'll talk about some non Batman Elseworlds. Or Maybe I'll just stick with Batman. Who knows? I'll probably do this more than once a week as I'm not kept to a Wednesday schedule. I might even change that too. Who knows? THE SHADOW KNOWS. BUMBUMBUM... uh okay I'm out.
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