The Doom That Came To Gotham!
I am not a buyer of Batman books by and large, though I have a weakness for the character when rendered by Neal Adams. But that doesn't mean I don't have a few collections here than there about the joint. The Doom That Came to Gotham was a gift and landed on a stack waiting its turn to be read. It waited and waited and then got covered up and waited some time longer, but at last I dug it up and I found myself in a Lovecraft mood.
I am a fan of the early Mike Mignola Hellboy comics though I've not followed the character much into the new century, save for the movies. But The Doom that Came to Gotham felt a whole lot like a Hellboy story and that's not necessarily a bad thing at all. An Elseworlds project, the book is fun to read from the perspective of finding the new permutations of vintage characters revised for this new domain and there are scuds of those here. We have what might be the ultimate Penguin take and Mr. Freeze is exceedingly well handled. Two-Face is on hand to play a role but the main villainy is left in the care of Ra's Al Ghul and his daughter Talia. Those two fit into a Lovecraft universe very well indeed. Man-Bat, Green Arrow and The Demon play significant roles as well and there are Robins galore for those want Robins. It's a diverting yarn, fun in its quasi-Lovecraftian ways but also a bit confusing and I found I had to read sections over a few times to glean what was happening, which is not a good thing for the pacing. Not bad overall.
Here are the original Mignola covers.
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Lovecraft's "The Doom That Came To Sarnath" is the only one of his stories that was originally published outside the United States. It first appeared in a Scottish magazine called The Scot.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that. Always like learning more about Lovecraft, one of the true originals in American letters. When I was a wee tot it seemed Lovecraft was sort of a secret, but now he's all over the place.
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