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mygif

Just finished giving this a read. Great writing, excellent artwork. I think I’m going to have to join you in the “one of the best Batman books” camp.

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mygif

Superfluous?

I was an Elseworlds junkie, but this is one of the few that I do not own.

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Superfluous?

God DAMMIT

fixed.

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mygif

I’m surprised there’s no mention of Kingdom Come or New Frontier. Where do you place those two?

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Cookie McCool said on February 1st, 2011 at 12:11 pm

Oh man. Not hung. Poor Ollie, used as really morbid curtains.

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mygif

Hasn’t Alan Brennert written like four Batman stories total, and isn’t each one one of the best Batman stories ever written?

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William O'Brien said on February 1st, 2011 at 12:45 pm

For some reason, I was unaware Brennert wrote this. He really is one of the unknown great Batman writers. “To Kill a Legend” might be my favorite ever Bat-story. That last page is a killer.

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Sean D. Martin said on February 1st, 2011 at 2:24 pm

That last page is a killer.

“But of awe… and mystery… and gratitude…”

Any other stories that ended up showing how Bruce of Earth-5 turned out? Always wondered if he’d be something other than Batman since he have the awe/mystery inspiration instead of the grief/vengeance one.

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mygif

Good post. This is the one that I tell everyone about who is interested in Elseworld stories. Very few have ever heard of it. It’s a complex take with real sadness. The power of the state to justify evil is something right out of 1984.

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Beagle Boy said on February 1st, 2011 at 2:40 pm

Norm Breyfogle should be our generation’s Jim Aparo, drawing Batman monthly for decades until he’s called to his reward.
PS This might be the best use of Zatanna ever.
PPS I can picture the “Green Man” sequence in my head right now. Close to perfect comics. Alan Brennert, where have you gone?

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mygif

Breyfogle is so awesome that he can even make Life With Archie enjoyable.

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mygif

… come to think of it, Life with Archie is something of an Elseworld itself. Or two of them.

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Matthew Johnson said on February 1st, 2011 at 4:29 pm

I’m a huge Brennert fan — his prose as well as his comics — but I haven’t read this. I must rectify that.

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mygif

Re: Grazzt

New Frontier was not released under the Elseworlds banner.

And Kingdom Come is not very good once you get past the novelty of the art.

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mygif

Brennert has written exactly nine DC stories since the late 70’s. Ten, if you count an essay he did in an anniversary issue of “Detective Comics.” And they’re all fantastic. All of them. There isn’t a dud in the bunch.

In a better world, he’d be a big enough name to warrant the Alan Moore treatment and get a “Collected DC Comics Stories” trade paperback.

I’m glad you posted this, MGK. But I must ask, were you already planning on doing so, or is it just sheer neat-o coincidence that you did just a couple weeks after I posted about this very story at scans_daily? Either way, I’m happy for anything that can give Brennert more attention.

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mygif

I’m surprised there’s no mention of Kingdom Come or New Frontier. Where do you place those two?

New Frontier, although technically not an Elseworld since it’s just an out-of-continuity “primary universe” story, would be a straight-up superhero epic where any alternate-reality-ness is basically besides the point.

Kingdom Come is what we call a “shitburger.”

But I must ask, were you already planning on doing so, or is it just sheer neat-o coincidence that you did just a couple weeks after I posted about this very story at scans_daily?

The second one.

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mygif

Wait, where’s all the hatred for Kingdom Come coming from? I might be biased on account of it came out around the time my college got the Internet, and I wound up befriending people on Jonah Weiland’s message boards (which eventually became Comic Book Resources) that I still keep up with. I found the book to be a great mix of Biblical imagery and the state of comics in the mid-90s.

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mygif

I’m surprised there’s no mention of Superman: Secret Identity.

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Sean D. Martin said on February 1st, 2011 at 7:39 pm

Wait, where’s all the hatred for Kingdom Come coming from?

Yeah, what he said. Anyone care to elaborate

Kingdom Come is what we call a “shitburger.”

Not familiar with the term, although it doesn’t sound tasty. Does sound like your take on it is more negative that just “Eh, not so much.”

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mygif

Batman: Leatherwing is pretty nifty. I know I’ve read Batman: Holy Terror, but it never really made much of an impression.

So do we only count the stuff that has the Elseworlds logo? I thought some of the Armageddon 2001 tie-ins were pretty interesting. All three Superman annuals are entertaining (although the action one mostly for the artwork).

The generational Flash story from A-2001 is pretty good too.

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Fred Davis said on February 1st, 2011 at 8:48 pm

MGK lost a leg and one of his penises in the Louis/Clark vs. diana/supes shipwars of the 90’s, so Kingdom Come is something of a saw spot.

Why is Marvel so much better at doing alternate universe stuff than DC?

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mygif

Holy Terror is indeed just about the best elseworlds story to come out of DC. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s also the one that takes the most risks.

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mygif

I saw this on scans_daily last week and freaked out, because I’d never heard of it before… but I wrote a Batman-vs-Theocracy fanfic a few years ago which functioned in a similar way. Oops!

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mygif

Liberty Files & Unholy 3 are pretty fun and good art, but I agree that Holy Terror is very very good.

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Dave Ziegler said on February 2nd, 2011 at 1:47 am

Holy Terror is one of my all-time favorite books. In a just world, Brennert and Breyfogle would both still be making Batman comics. And a HUGE 2nd to Beagle Boy’s comment re: Breyfogle being this generation’s Jim Aparo. Breyfogle still drawing Batman would go a loooong way towards getting me to buy Batman comics again…

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mygif

For some reason I thought ‘Batman: Year 100’ was tagged as an Elseworlds, but it turns out it isn’t.

‘The Golden Age’ was supposed to be in-continuity, but there were some canonical issues that caused it to be filed as an Elseworlds upon publication. I know James Robinson has said that he treats the story as in-continuity whenever he writes something Golden age-related.

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equinox216 said on February 2nd, 2011 at 7:48 am

@Fred Davis:
“Why is Marvel so much better at doing alternate universe stuff than DC?”

If I were going to give a one-sentence answer, I’d say: “Because the cultural space the major DC heroes have come to occupy is far more closely related to a thematic iconography than Marvel’s, making them MUCH harder to dissociate from central character traits and therefore much harder to write ‘alternate’ versions of.”

I mean, plenty of people KNOW who Wolverine is, and his salient characteristics, but ‘troubled violent loner who posits that he is, in fact, the best at what he does (which is also not very nice)’ doesn’t fill the same shape in space as “Superman” or “the goddamned Batman”. To write an alternate Superman, you have to more closely cleave to a much harder, definitive ORIGINAL ‘Superman’ concept for him to still be recognizable, whereas if you want to put the X-Men and other Marvelites in, say, the 17th century, you can more easily transfer them because they’re looser groupings of personality traits with mostly definite power sets.

(Relatedly, I think one of the multiplex causes of Wonder Woman’s lesser popularity/reknown compared to the other two DC lights is that she LACKS that hard imprint, but that’s a mess and a half to go into.)

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mygif

Good choice. I loved the alternate takes on DC characters, loved the art, and I loved this alternate world where Cromwell’s legacy still holds sway.

And I am wondering about the Kingdom Come hate, too. I thought it was an enjoyable series.

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mygif

I don’t think Marvel IS better at doing alternate universe stuff. I mean, What If? was one of my favorite books of all time, and I own a complete run of Volume 2 and most of Volume 1 – but the premises were often pretty thin and most of the time ended with “everyone’s dead” or “and things were pretty much the same.”

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mygif

Batman: Year 100 is an Elseworlds, if it didn’t have the logo it’s cause it came out in a time when DC wasn’t using it for some reason.

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mygif

Great. Now I need to remember where my copy is. I do recall enjoying this book quite a bit.

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Scott Rowland said on February 2nd, 2011 at 11:04 pm

Well put, MGK! And add me to the lists of fans of both Brennert and Breyfogle. Brennert’s stories consistently remind readers that Batman is a hero trying to protect others, not just someone out for revenge (See his Detective 500 story, where an alternate earth Bruce becomes Batman because his parents are saved).

Unfortunately for the Elseworlds brand, none of the subsequent ones even came close to this one for me. Unfortunately for me, I kept buying them for quite a while before I realized I wasn’t going to get another gem like this one.

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mygif

This is one of the few comics I keep store din a plastic bag, as opposed to just piled on my bookshelves for whenever the urrge to reread something hits. Great stuff.

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mygif

I liked Holy Terror, but I have problems with the underlying premise: If X didn’t happen, Europe would have remained as theocratic as it was a thousand years ago. X in different takes being the Protestant Reformation, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, etc.
Given the fractures in Christianity in the past 500 years, the assumption that one turning point would shut any future enlightenment out is one I can’t swallow.
That doesn’t change the fact Brennert is awesome.

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mygif

Interesting assessment, MGK. I think you forgot one essential Elseworlds tale though: Superman Red Son.

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mygif

Interesting assessment, MGK. I think you forgot one essential Elseworlds tale though: Superman Red Son.

Go back and read the first couple of paragraphs again.

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mygif

I first read this 2 or so years ago, and, God yes, it’s an amazing book.

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mygif

I have flipped through Red Son, but I suppose my total bias against all things Millar makes it difficult for me to give the man a fair shake. I quit reading his stuff after Ultimates 5 (the one where Hank Pym uses Raid on his wife and siccs ants on her) and was only reinforced by Civil War. I realize that he has written good stuff in the past (i.e. Aztek…although that might be more to Grant Morrison’s influence rather than any inherent talent) but nothing can get me to invest any time in giving the guy a second chance.

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mygif

I think the reason why Marvel does better Alt world stuff* is that they just do it, rather than needing to justify it.

To explain…Marvel does What Ifs? Technically they take place somewhere in the Marvel Mutltiverse, but really where they do, doesn’t matter until someone like Gruenwald want’s to do a big cosmic story.

DC, when Elseworlds started, was just doing that…they just did a story. But then, someone said “Wait, how does this all happen, since we got rid of the multiverse!” so they created Hypertime…which no one but Kessel used because Morrison went off on a snit fit and Waid quit…so then the brought back the Multiverse because John’s needed the comics he read as a kid to be valid or something, and no one does anything with it because Morrison has a plan…..they keep trying to justify the existence of the stories in some grand “it all makes sense” way, rather then just telling them.

Case in point…Avengers EMH is a cartoon about the Avengers. Young Justice is telling the story of one of the 52 Earths!

*To be fair, Marvel has rarely done the true alternate world stories that DC does…they do, what if Doctor Strange had oatmeal instead of eggs for breakfast, rather than Stephen Strange: Wild West Barber!

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[…] at Mightygodking.com considers Batman: Holy Terror to be “one of the best Batman comics ever written“. Which is high praise from a guy people want to actually write for DC. Hilary Goldstein at […]

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[…] I’d be put on some sort of watch list for putting such a title on world) on the recommendation of MGK, whose blog you should really follow if you like comics at […]

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