Batman: Monsters


By James Robinson, Warren Ellis, Alan Grant, John Watkiss, John McCrea, Quique Alcatena & various(DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2494-3

In 1989, when DC found the world had gone completely Bat-crazy for the second time in twenty-five years, they quickly supplemented the Gotham Guardian’s regular stable of comicbooks with a new title designed to redefine the early days and cases of a revamped and revitalised Caped Crusader.

Three years earlier the publisher had boldly begun to retcon their entire ponderous continuity via the landmark maxi-series Crisis on Infinite Earths; rejecting the concept of a vast multiverse and re-knitting time so that there had only ever been one Earth.

For new readers, this solitary DC world provided a perfect place to jump on at the start: a planet literally festooned with iconic heroes and villains draped in a clear and cogent backstory that was now fresh and newly unfolding.

Many of their greatest properties were graced with a reboot, all employing the tacit conceit that the characters had been around for years and the readership were simply tuning in on just another working day.

Batman’s popularity was at an intoxicating peak and, as DC was still in the throes of re-jigging the entire narrative continuity, his latest title presented multi-part epics rewriting established villains and classic stories: infilling the new history of the re-imagined, post-Crisis hero and his entourage. The added fillip was a fluid cast of premiere and up-and-coming creators each getting “their shot” at one of the most iconic figures of the industry

Most of the early story-arcs were collected as trade paperbacks, and helped jump-start the graphic novel sector of the comics industry, whilst the careful re-imagining of the hero’s early days gave fans a wholly modern insight into the highly malleable core-concept.

Later collections took a more selective approach, such as this one gathering Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #71-73, 83-83 and 89-90: mini-epics which could be comfortably grouped together under the theme of Monsters…

After two seemingly unconnected murders in Gotham, ‘Werewolf’ (by James Robinson & John Watkiss from B:LDK #71-73, May to July 1995) finds the Dark Detective prowling the streets of London…

The killings are completely dissimilar: one a cool, precise hit by a professional and the other a savage, brutal attack by something strong and probably inhuman. The victims are only linked by their relationship to the Wayne Foundation.

The assassinated Fitzroy was investigating money-laundering in the London office whilst mauled and mutilated Dr. Hugh Downs had, at the behest of great friend Alfred Pennyworth, recently taken up a position with the company in America.

The latter death is further complicated by an eyewitness who swears the attacker was a werewolf…

Linking Downs’ murder to two similar killings overseas, soon hero and valet are stalking foggy London streets and moody rooftops in search of answers. As the hitman who most likely killed Fitzroy also hails from the Seat of Empire, Batman wastes no time in rousting the local underworld in search of ruthless mercenary Captain Carruthers and discovers the ex-Foreign Legionnaire used to be called Le Loup – “the Wolf”…

Unlike Gotham where the unwelcome vigilante is barely tolerated by the police, in London Batman is eagerly welcomed by Inspector Colman Nash, who first meets the masked avenger at an abattoir where the grisly remains of the two Wayne Foundation executives Fitzroy had been investigating are found hanging on meathooks.

With his butchered former employees’ guilt apparently confirmed, the Dark Knight then focuses on the werewolf’s English kills. That trail leads to a confrontation with psychotic East End gang lord Tommy Twist whose even crazier brother Danny was the second victim of the lethal lycanthrope…

Danny was a loan shark who died after putting the squeeze on defaulting maverick inventor Charles Blake, who has since gone missing. Possibilities start to gel when Batman – in cunning disguise – interviews the widow of the first mauled corpse and discovers that her first husband was the odd duck and person of interest Charles Blake…

With the more outré case seemingly solved but for an arrest, Batman turns his attention to finding Curruthers but is soon distracted by New Age celebrity Raven Maguire who claims the Werewolf is a primal god-beast that she and her acolytes have a right and duty to worship…

Days pass and the two cases remain frustratingly stalled until Batman tracks Curruthers to Docklands. However, after a blistering battle the hero only manages to hold onto the killer’s blood-money as the ferociously competent soldier-of-fortune spectacularly escapes to wreak more mayhem and vengeance…

When Batman returns to Scotland Yard, Nash has a lead on two more prospective victims Blake has targeted, but as the Dark Knight rushes to Belgravia, in a wave of roiling fog the Werewolf jumps him…

Smart, moody and action-packed, this yarn is actually a savvy classical detective thriller, brimming with notable characters, intricate chains of clues, devious plot twists and beguiling red herrings which all lead inexorably to a surprise shock ending that will delight fans of the genre.

Moreover, as magnificently rendered in the eerie illustration style of artistic Renaissance Man John Watkiss, the tale unfolds with a quintessentially British tone and timbre…

A far more visceral and cynical shocker comes in the two-part ‘Infected’ by Warren Ellis & John McCrea (Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #83-83, from May and June 1996) which begins when a pair of biologically altered solders escape their (perhaps) rogue military doctors and begin slaughtering indigents and low level thugs in the dingy backstreets of Gotham.

The ghastly slaughter escalates when Chief Branden of Gotham SWAT takes over. A holdover from the city’s recent corrupt political regime, the barely rational gun-nut is as happy blasting away at the despised caped vigilante as at the clear and present danger…

For Batman, mere months into his obsessive war on crime, this first brush with rampant, unbridled super-nature goes badly wrong. When he tracks one of the beasts it shoots him with bone bullets manufactured from the harvested corpses of previous victims before escaping…

Despite his wounds the Dark Knight perseveres and doses the kill-crazy beast with a lethal nerve agent before retreating.

Back in the Batcave, as Alfred tends to his wounds, the battered champion’s formidable computer resources examine the bone bullet and uncover a doomsday project harking back to the Cold War paranoia of the 1970s which sought to create warriors who could fight on even after America had succumbed to atomic, bacterial and chemical Armageddon.

Now somebody has revived and completed the research and the results of this programmable cancer are loose in his city…

When word comes in that one of the creatures is dead, his first thought is that his weapon was responsible. However the truth soon comes out. The mutant killed itself, forcing Batman to consider that they too might be victims.

Further research then reveals a chilling codicil: the creatures are designed to work in pairs and if one dies the other immediately goes into reproductive mode. Somewhere in Gotham the other killer is already growing spore sacs. Soon they will explode, dispersing an airborne wave of instantly infectious transformative mutative contagion to reinforce the nightmare army…

Bleak, chilling and gut-wrenching, this ferociously manic countdown to catastrophe shows the Gotham Guardian at his most brutal and uncompromising…

This quirky compilation closes with a canny reworking of a silver age super-villain into a truly modern monster in Clay’ by Alan Grant & Quique Alcatena from B:LDK #89-90 (December 1996-January 1997).

Having been the Batman for less than a month, the neophyte crimefighter’s attempts to rescue a hostage girl from the goons of mobster Boss Xylas are brutally thwarted by a hulking mass of mud who casually tosses him aside before killing the captors and making off with the girl itself.

Although his body swiftly heals thanks to Alfred’s ministrations, Batman’s psyche and morale are crippled…

Elsewhere, Lisa is shocked to discover that the merciless mass of mud that saved her is actually her new boyfriend Matthew Hagen. Still besotted with him, the ingenuous lass fails to realise that he was also responsible for her plight, leaving her to carry the can when Xylas found him appropriating a haul of diamonds the gang had stolen.

In his desperate flight, ratbag Matt had stumbled into a submerged cave and a strange chemical pool which transformed him into this monstrous state. Horrified, Lisa swears to stand by him, determined to bring out the sweet, decent, honourable side the petty thug just doesn’t have…

In trying to calm the increasingly unstable “Clayface”, she accidentally seals her own fate by helping Hagen learn how to hone his powers and perfect the ability to mimic or duplicate anything he can visualise…

As Clayface goes on a robbing rampage, he discovers that there is a time-limit to his abilities, whilst under Wayne Manor the still-debilitated Dark Knight potters in his lab, creating an arsenal of weapons to fill his utility belt and augment his mere human prowess. He also begins devising tactics and strategies to make his crusade more efficient and all-consuming…

With the monster running wild in the streets and Xylas’ murderous goons hunting Hagen, eventually the psychologically-impaired Batman is compelled to leave his cave and return to action, but for all his preparation he is unable to handle Clayface… until he sees what the killer has done to Lisa.

In that ghastly moment the true agent of vengeance is born…

Oppressive, action-packed and deviously compelling, this frantic caper is a breathtaking Fights ‘n’ Tights fiesta for fans and casual readers alike, further redefining the Caped Crusader’s previously shiny, innocuous Gotham as a truly scary world of urban decay, corrupt authority, all-pervasive criminal violence and nightmarish insanity.

Taken in total this is another superb Batman extravaganza: dark, intense, cunning and superbly engaging. What more do you need to know?
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