Friday, March 2, 2018

What Makes for Good Elseworld Tales?

File this under "Posts No One But Me Cares About."  (Which is a pretty long list.)

Anyway, two things really bring this question to mind.  First, there was recently the release of Gotham By Gaslight, which was one of the first DC Elseworld graphic novels.  That features kind of a steampunk Batman in London during the 1890s as he tries to track down Jack the Ripper.

And though you probably didn't read Monday's post, I recently read a couple of volumes of DC Elseworld tales, one focusing on the Justice League and one just on Batman.  I didn't like a whole lot of those stories and so I got thinking about why.

It occurred to me that the ones I've liked best so far are the Superman: Red Son and Batman: Vampire stories.  (Neither featured in those collections above.)  And then I got thinking the reason for that is because they actually do something interesting with the character.  And that to me is what makes some Elseworld tales better than others.

If you're still wondering, an Elseworld tale is when the writer takes a familiar hero and puts him/her into a different situation or era, like those mentioned above.  A lot of them is just taking the character and putting him/her in another time period.  Which isn't really all that interesting.  I mean it's a gimmick that wears out pretty quick.  Ooh, Batman in the Old West, Batman in Victorian London, Batman in the 1910s, Batman in the 30s, Robin in the future...it gets to be kind of monotonous after a while.  Because for the most part the differences are just in the clothes and gadgets.  It's pretty superficial.

There are some others though that just go too far out, to the point there's really no similarity to the character at all.  Like one in the Justice League volume that was some kind of weird fantasy story with kids brought there like Narnia or whatever.  It didn't really make a lot of sense.  Another was again more of a fantasy one with a literal Bat-Man and evil wizard Joker.  It was just kinda weird.

By contrast what I like about Superman: Red Son and Batman: Vampire (which is actually 3 books) is that they put a different twist on the character.  What if Superman had landed in the Soviet Union in 1938 instead of America?  It presents a whole different take on the character and the world.  By the same token, the Batman: Vampire series imagines what if Dracula comes to Gotham and Batman turns into a vampire?  The first book is just him defeating Dracula, but then in the second part he has to deal with the thirst for blood while trying not to kill innocent people.  The third part has a completely ghoulish vampire Batman slaughtering his enemies while his former friends have to decide what to do about him.

The difference with those versus other ones is the change isn't just superficial.  That makes it more meaningful.  I guess overall that's really what I want from one of these stories.  I mean it can be fun to see Batman in a Victorian getup or Green Lantern costume, but it's not something I really want for more than a single issue.  I guess that's why most Marvel "What If" comics are just a single issue and not a graphic novel.

There you go, food for thought.  Or probably not.

1 comment:

Michael Offutt, Phantom Reader said...

It's interesting to think of these Elseworld comic books, especially given that the regular Marvel and DC universes use mythology to great effect. Take DC for example, putting the Greek gods in the modern era. Isn't that an "Elseworld" type of thing?

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