Favourite Elseworlds novel?

[Paul (ral)]

Mine's Batman/Houdini - The Devil's Workshop. It's one of the first (if not the first) ones I ever bought.
Love the art work by Mark Chiarello - and was over the moon to tell him so in person a few months ago and have it signed.



What's your favourites?

[Silver Nemesis]

Mine is Batman/Dark Joker: The Wild, for purely nostalgic reasons.



I'd imagine Gotham by Gaslight or the Red Rain storyline to be the most popular Elseworld books.

[The Joker]

Dark Knight Returns

Gotham by Gaslight

Batman & Captain America (by John Byrne)

[Azrael]

Great stuff. I really like the horror or Sword & Sorcery takes on Batman mythos, for me, this is what elseworlds is all about.

My all time favourite is the Batman: Dracula trilogy by Doug Moench and Kelley Jones. I like associating images with music (and vice versa), and it was pretty evocative reading it while listening to the Elfman Batman scores, or Mask of the Phantasm, alongside some horror/vampire scores like Bram Stoker's Dracula (by Wojciech Kilar), Hellraiser (by Christopher Young), The Fly (by Howard Shore) or Interview With the Vampire (by Goldenthal). My love for this story is why I refuse to aknowledge that an (atrocious) animated adaptation even exists! :p

The first one I ever got was Batman: Manbat (by Jamie Delano and John Bolton). Batman's depiction looked a bit weird in places, but the artwork was simply brilliant, and the Batmobile was obviously inspired by Furst's design.

I also thought Batman: Masque was pretty interesting, it was more or less The Phantom of the Opera with Harvey Dent as Erik.

[The Dark Knight]

I've been meaning to pick up Batman Year 100.

Does anybody have it, or have anything to say about it?

[KeatonisBatman]

Just about everything is outside of continuity these days... so I'll just list some of my favourite Batman books: 

The Dark Knight Returns
Mad Love
The Killing Joke
Dark Victory
Kingdom Come (hey, Bats has a pivotal role!)
The Cult
Red Rain
A Lonely Place of Dying
Knightfall (the last time I bought Batman comics regularly was this storyline)

[Silver Nemesis]

I've been meaning to pick up Batman Year 100.

Does anybody have it, or have anything to say about it? 

I read Batman Year 100 a while back. I don't remember much about it, other than thinking it wasn't very good. I may have been a bit harsh on it though. I should probably give it another read.

If you do pick up a copy, I'd be interested to know what you think of it.

[The Dark Knight]

I read Batman Year 100 a while back. I don't remember much about it, other than thinking it wasn't very good. I may have been a bit harsh on it though. I should probably give it another read.

If you do pick up a copy, I'd be interested to know what you think of it.

Thanks for your response. The concept interests me. It surely cannot be the same Batman, Joker and other characters existing in this far flung future. But I like what I hear about that being ambiguous. To me, Bruce Wayne is the only Batman, and anyone else is a pretender. But I'm more than happy to let that slide if it's handled in this mysterious fashion, and it's a good story with a nice dose of grit. I hope to buy it tomorrow.

It's not an elseworlds tale, but I recently bought Batman Ego. I love it, it's one of my favourites. I'm sure you guys all know about it. It's a character piece, like Batman Returns. Bruce 'talks' to his alter ego and lots of excellent themes pop up. Batman is not a costume or a persona he can cast off. Keaton's Bruce conveyed this. The idea that "Batman", a separate entity inside him, existed in Bruce before the murder, accompanying him when he was alone. The murder just gave it an excuse to run wild. The Batman side of Bruce, a pure Batman with no trace of Wayne, is about enduring all obstacles and sharing his pain with criminals. That side, like Keaton's Batman, is willing to go all the way and questions why Bruce keeps the Joker alive.

[Silver Nemesis]

I liked Batman: Ego. There are quite a few similar stories – where Bruce Wayne is forced to confront his inner beast and reconcile his insecurities about being Batman – but I thought Cooke did a pretty good job of it. The way he presents the Batman persona as a splinter of Bruce's fractured psyche is remarkably similar to Harvey Dent's 'big bad Harv' persona in Batman: The Animated Series. In both cases we have an outwardly normal man whose inner monster, lurking beneath the surface, is suddenly given license to run wild following a traumatic incident in their life. It makes us realise that Batman isn't so different from the lunatics he fights, at least from a psychological perspective.


It's also interesting to note that the chemical plant where the Joker was 'born' is called Axis Chemicals in this story, as opposed to Ace Chemicals as it's usually referred to.

[KeatonisBatman]

It's not an elseworlds tale, but I recently bought Batman Ego. I love it, it's one of my favourites.

Is this the one?