This week I read
Batman: In Darkest Knight by Mike W. Barr and Jerry Bingham.
Unlike the previous Batman Elseworlds we've explored, this issue does not take place in some dystopian timeline long-fractured from our own or a distant period our present has already passed by, but instead is set in modern times, in a normal Gotham city, in a world almost identical to a standard Batman tale. The difference in this issue does not come from a change to Batman's environment, but a change in Batman himself, for in this world, on the night a bat was intended to burst through Bruce Wayne's manor window and inspire his guise as the caped crusader, instead came a light and a glowing green lantern ring.
The story, if you can call it that, starts off strong with Bruce Wayne receiving the final message of the alien Green Lantern Abin-Sur (a message traditionally received by a different character, Hal Jordan), hunting down his crash site across the Wayne estate with Alfred, and being gifted a green lantern ring from the dying alien, transforming Bruce into the Green Lantern, albeit with a fun Batman-esque flare. Unfortunately, from there the story mostly devolves into a sequence of events showing how Batman characters and Green Lantern characters get mashed together without much justification.
The art by Jerry Bingham is probably the best aspect of the story, with Bingham's Bruce Wayne Green Lantern design depicted in his sketchy yet simplistic and nostalgic style perfectly invoking a fusion between an early 70s Neil Adams-style Batman and an early 60s Gil Kane/John Broome-style Green Lantern, which is what the story feels like when its at its best. Unfortunately, its best moments are few and far between.
Often this story is far more caught up with mashing Batman and Green Lantern characters together as opposed to actually telling how they get mashed up or making a story out of it. The most egregious victim of these random mashups is this story's version of the Green Lantern arch-foe Sinestro, who here is forced away from his normal authoritarian elitist persona to also become a sort of Joker stand-in. This change is barely justified and most of his devolution into madness is shown off panel, making a lot of the big reveals with him feeling disjointed and only able to invoke a response from the reader based on the reader's pre-existing familiarity with normal Batman and Green Lantern lore, unlike the prior stories I've read that, through telling an actual story, are able to invoke a response from the reader on the story's merits alone.
Overall, despite its good art, Batman: In Darkest Knight is easily the worst Batman Elseworlds I've read for this blog. It has a good premise, but squanders it in trying to reference as much of the normal DC universe and its characters as it can instead of forging its own path as a story.
That leaves us with this end ranking:
- Batman: The Blue, The Grey, And The Bat
- Batman: Holy Terror
- Batman: In Darkest Knight
Next week we'll be going from a Batman defined by light to a Batman defined by his evasion of it as Batman gets bitten by Dracula and becomes a true Bat-Man in
Batman & Dracula: Red Rain.
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