Written by Dough
Moench, art by Kelley Jones & Malcolm Jones, III, with colors by Les
Dorscheid and letters from Todd Klein
Another Batman
Elseworlds tale, but with his affinity for the night, Batman lends himself well
to these October Comics.
In an alternate
world, vampires are real, and Dracula has amassed a large enough horde of
vampires to his side that he is ready to take over the world, starting with
Gotham City. But Batman is on the
case. At first, he does not realize the
victims, whose throats have been slashed, were attacked by vampires. Digging deeper into the commonality behind
those left for dead on Gotham’s streets, he realizes they are all homeless,
leading him to the most destitute part of town where he intrudes on the latest attack. Hindering the attacker, he trails her through
the alleys, only to have her disappear without trace or explanation. When he returns to the victim, he finds her
dead, but with puncture wounds, and realizes what he’s up against.
The understanding
that vampires are real also leads to Bruce Wayne coming to grips with how he
has been changing. Concomitant with
dreams of a female astral body hovering above his bed, Wayne has become more
averse to the daytime while his strength has increased ten-fold. Eventually, the astral form reveals herself
as a vampire who has broken with Dracula, intending to stop his evil before it
can spread beyond Gotham, part of her plan being to enlist Batman as a
similarly infected “good” vampire, with the speed and strength to battle
Dracula on his own terms. And, in the
end, with wings sprouting from his back, Batman is able to do just that.
This was another
pairing that just made sense, and Doug Moench’s story works really well. He paces the comic nicely, revealing answers
to the mysteries surrounding Batman and Gotham at opportune moments that add
weight and drama to their revelations. And
the ending is quite satisfying, giving us a proper confrontation between these
two entities of the night, while never making the outcome seem
preordained.
Again, though, the
stars of this book are the artists. Kelley
Jones’s elongated, overmasculinized physiques defy reality, which creates a
skewed prism through which to view this story.
As insane as his drawings can be, I love, love, love them. Jones is unapologetic in his hypertrophied characters
as they battle in the sewers and the skies of Gotham. And that damn cape on Batman—it’s longer than
the one Berni Wrightson gave the Dark Knight when he visited Swamp Thing back
in the seventies, and it’s magnificent.
Great cartooning can infuse images with a story all their own, and when those
pictures are played against dialogue and captions, as with the medium of
comics, it can elevate a story to something beyond what either medium could
accomplish. Moench & Jones, et al.
all bring their A-game to this book, and it is another October Comic that is
eerie and creepy while also being fun and adventurous, a perfect alchemical
concoction of comic reading enjoyment.
Check it out!
chris
