Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham
by Mike Mignola & Troy Nixey
DC Comics, 2015
176 Pages
Young Adult
It’s 1928. In the cold wastes of Antarctica, we join Bruce Wayne on an ocean adventure to find the lost Cobblepot expedition. Professor Cobblepot himself has “returned home” and gone native, joining the local penguins. The rest of his crew is found dead, except for August Grendon who is busy chipping away at the ice far below, trying to free some great tentacled entity (later named Yib-Nogeroth) who has been buried there for aeons. Bruce blows the thing up and returns to Gotham.
Him is He, who bays and slavers forever outside time and space, who shambled down out of the stars when Earth was new and spawned abominations in the seas and blights upon the land. Woe to man when He comes again.
Grendon is actually dead, too, or so it seems. He is put in the freezer unit because… well, he kind of smells.
Jason Todd guards the ship in Gotham Harbor while Alfred drives Bruce, Dick Grayson and Tim Drake back to stately Wayne Manor where they find a man tied up. “Langstrom.” He says. The demon Etrigan makes an appearance, (in the form of a visit from Jason Blood,) a harbinger of prophecy guiding Bruce in his quest with simple clues: The events about to unfold are his own father’s doing, Bruce Wayne will die, beware dust come alive once more, and that to save Gotham, he must cut out its heart.
We are introduced to an alternate reality Gotham City when big game hunter Oliver Queen invites Bruce to dinner. Jim Gordon has just become Chief of Police and coin-flipping Harvey Dent is running for Mayor. Oliver points the way to Kirk Langstrom, the scientist, whom he refers to as the “bat-man”.
The bats speak to me… They tell me of a growing horror, a thing crouching at the doorstep of our reality. It is hungry for us…
Yeah, the Lovecraft in-jokes come thick in this one.
Hot on the mystery of the dead guy found in his living room, a Batman in a costume well-designed in late 20s fashion, and without any costumed Robin, learns from Langstrom that the key to “opening the gate” is a book called The Testament of Ghul. Its current owner Professor Manfurd dies just as Batman arrives, and a woman named Talia takes it away. Batman can’t get the grimoire away from her because Talia’s companion is a very chthonic semblance of Killer Croc.
Meanwhile, the ship in the harbor is enveloped in ice, Jason is killed by Croc-thing, and the undead, frozen Grendon in its hold… leaves.
Talia uses the book to revive her dead father, Ras al Ghul, who in a former life (she tells the chained Batman,) went into the desert and defiled a lost city of pre-human serpent men. For this he was torn apart by invisible claws in a Damascus marketplace. (Thick, I tell you.) When Ras rises from his ashes, he looks an awful lot like Mignola’s Rasputin, and his appearance is the catalyst for a plague of frogs.
A million million years ago He came down from the stars and brought forth life here. For that offense the Elder Gods cast him out, imprisoned him in a cold, empty space… He longs for this planet so he howls and scrapes at a door he can never open. Iog-Sotha, it is for me to prepare his way.
Classic.
We learn about the vision Bruce had as a child: the ghost of a hanged man in a bat-infested bell tower and a great tentacled evil consuming the world. It shaped Bruce, made him what he is today.
Dent is infected by something that covers half his body, then Barbara Gordon appears as a kind of steam-punk Madame Web giving psychic advice. She channels Professor Manfurd, who reveals the story of the founding of Gotham and each of the roles played by the ancestors of Wayne, Queen, and Langstrom in forging a new frontier with the help of a stranger named Ludwig Prinn… Dark secrets and bad decisions all around.
This is truly the creepiest Batman I’ve seen yet. Mignola’s signature unrefined artistic style blends with a bleak story of insurmountable evil that tops even Gotham by Gaslight.
A final confrontation miles below the city, a gauntlet for the Batman to overcome or, in failing, he will allow Ras al Ghul to call forth the unspeakable. It doesn’t end clean the way you might expect of a Batman tale. Gotham keeps its crusader, but only in a grim twist you really don’t want to miss.
Note that although there are grotesque images and grisly murders here, this DC publication is not as intense as Mignola’s work in B.P.R.D. or Hellboy. This graphic novel, a nicely lengthy one, will appeal to fans of Lovecraft and Mignola as well as classic Batman. Everyone is there, but the fun is in the differences. I hope we will see a sequel including dark-insanity versions of Catwoman and Scarecrow soon!
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