"What If" series are pretty popular in comics. Marvel has done lots of them. DC has also done its fair share. Other publishers of properties like Transformers have done it. Star Trek has an entire mirror universe that's its own "what if" thing. Even Star Wars did some "What if" issues.
DC's "Tales From the Dark Multiverse" is a series that spun out of the stupid Metal event starting in 2019. I read the first one on its own last year. The stated premise was one that would intrigue me: what if Azrael had defeated Bruce Wayne in Knightfall to remain Batman? But then I was really disappointed because the story wound up being a Bruce Wayne story and not an Azrael story. I felt the author, Scott Snyder, cheated by having Azrael keep Bruce alive instead of killing him, which of course allowed Bruce to defeat Azrael later on.
I bought the collected volume with 4 more stories that mostly deal with DC events from the last 30 years: Death of Superman, Blackest Night, and Infinite Crisis. The only older one is the last one that deals with the Teen Titans Judas Contract story.
The Death of Superman story was probably the one I liked the most. After Superman and Doomsday kill each other, Lois Lane is bitter and angry about how he died fighting alone and how the world basically went back to being shitty after he was gone. When she's given the chance to merge with "The Eradicator," she does so and basically gets Superman-type powers herself. Then she starts killing bad guys like Lex Luthor and the Joker and even some heroes like Batman. But then Cyborg Superman shows up--as does a revived Kal-El. The Cyborg Superman kills Kal-El and Lois is bummed a second time and...it just kinda ends at that point. What was she going to do next to "fix" the world? I'm not really sure. This one definitely could have used to be longer.
The Blackest Night one works under the premise that Sinestro forged the white ring of life and didn't share it with others so the Black Rings (zombies!) won. Three weeks later, Dove (of Hawk & Dove) is the only non-zombified human on Earth because of something that makes her immune to the Black Rings. Lobo the bounty hunter is also immune because of his Wolverine/Deadpool-type healing and is sent to get Dove. They meet with Mr. Miracle (Scott Free version) who has a plan to use the "Source Wall" to channel the creation energy of the universe to defeat the Black Lanterns. But when Mr. Miracle finds out that this would mean killing his wife, Big Barda, he turns and kills Dove. Sinestro goes through with the plan, using Lobo to channel the creation energy, which kills the Black Lanterns but in its wake creates a whole universe like Lobo, which is not something you'd want. D'OH! It was OK but not really great.
The Infinite Crisis one revolves around Blue Beetle (Ted Kord version) who in this story kills Maxwell Lord and takes over a secret organization known as Checkmate. And then really it just becomes the Future's End event as Ted and Brother Eye or OMAC or whatever it's called assimilates all the heroes to take over the world. I think you'd really have to be a comic book nerd to actually give a shit about this. Just too obscure, really.
The Judas Contract one really reaches for its premise. Robin (Dick Grayson version) is giving up the Robin costume and this somehow convinces Terra Markova to kill Deathstroke, who had her join the Teen Titans as a mole. She then uses some super soldier formula Deathstroke took to up her earth-controlling powers. She kills the Teen Titans and when Superman tries to stop her she summons a bunch of Kryptonite to kill him. And then kills most of the world, leaving only scattered survivors to worship her as the goddess Gaia. Like I said, it felt like it was really reaching to make this fairly local story into a global catastrophe, but it wasn't too terrible.
Recently I thought of my own Tale of the Dark Multiverse story that would spin out of the Batman: Vampire graphic novels from Doug Moench and Kelley Jones. In the first one, Red Rain, Dracula comes to Gotham and Batman struggles to find a way to destroy the growing legion of vampires. Ultimately he becomes a vampire and destroys Dracula. In book 2: Bloodstorm, Batman struggles to control his growing blood lust by drinking synthetic blood. Then he meets Selina Kyle, who's become a were-cat, and they fall in love, but when the Joker kills Selina, Batman finally snaps and kills the Joker and becomes a full vampire. At his request, Alfred and Commissioner Gordon drive a stake through his heart. But they didn't cut off his head, so in book 3: Crimson Mist, as crime is rising in Gotham, Alfred pulls out the stake and brings Batman back to life. But being trapped between life and death has driven Batman mad and so he becomes a fiend who slaughters pretty much his entire remaining rogue's gallery and all the inmates at Arkham and Blackgate. Alfred, Gordon, and Two-Face work together then to kill him by blowing up the Batcave, which causes light to burn him up.
My idea then is...what if they didn't kill him? What if this terrifying vampire Batman had just gone right on slaughtering people?
The idea then is that Gotham has become a nest of vampires with Batman ruling with an iron fist. Any normal humans are there only to provide sustenance.
Scenario 1: Since I don't think any of the Robins were in the first three books, we can have Dick Grayson be one of the humans who's brought in to feed the vampires. His parents were already murdered by the vampires and he wants revenge. (Really you can use any of the other Robins: Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Carrie whatsherface from Dark Knight Returns...)
Somehow Dick escapes and goes underground in Gotham. Eventually he meets up with Alfred and/or Gordon, (or some other ally like Lucius Fox, Barbara Gordon, Kate Kane, one of the other Robins...) who help him to get into Batman's lair. Being a Dark Multiverse story we don't want this to end Happily Ever After, so it turns out to be a trap! Dick is captured and turned and becomes Batman's vampire sidekick. If you want to be macabre, you could do a parody of the Batman '66 credits only where they're bloodthirsty fiends. Bwahahahaha...
Scenario 2: It's like 25 years later and most of the world's population is turned or dead--including the heroes. Ra's al Guhl's mountain stronghold is one of the last bastions of normal humans. There, Damian Wayne has been bred and trained to destroy his father and the vampire hordes. Damian, Talia, and some others (like maybe Deathstroke or Deadshot or Teen Titans like Raven or Lobo's daughter and DC would probably have to include Harley Quinn just because) go to what's left of Gotham and fight their way to Wayne Manor's ruins, where Bruce is holed up. Talia is bitten and Damian kills her out of mercy and most of the others are turned or killed.
Damian makes it to his father's chambers and there's a fight, but while Damian gains the upper hand, he can't bring himself to kill the father he never got a chance to know. And in that moment of hesitation, he's bitten and turned.
If something like this was already done, maybe someone could let me know.
I thought of some more What If scenarios only involving my own stories that I will share on Wednesday and Friday.
2 comments:
one of the worst "what if" stories I've ever read was the one IDW did for Transformers doing a "what if Optimus Prime didn't die in the 86 film" and it was the single stupidest piece of comic book material I've ever seen and read and I feel dumber for having read it. That also sealed the deal of not reading any more Transformers comics.
I don't know anything about dark/vampire Batman, but your ideas had me reading. Batman looks super evil on that book cover.
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