After Gotham By Gaslight launched DC’s Elseworlds imprint in 1989, the following decade unleashed a seemingly unending cascade of new and unique tales in which – to use Elseworlds’s famous tagline – “heroes are taken from their usual settings and put into strange times and places – some that have existed, or might have existed, and others that can’t, couldn’t or shouldn’t.” While it is patently clear that Gotham By Gaslight placed Batman in one of those existing areas of world history, throughout the 1990s, Batman would be inserted into some of those stranger and darker worlds which are so radically different to anything before.
Batman/Dark Joker: The Wild was written by Doug Moench with art by Kelley Jones and John Beatty. Published for Halloween 1993, this creative trio would later produce one of the greatest Dark Knight runs (Batman 515-552, barring a few fill-ins) in the character’s long history. However, Batman/Dark Joker: The Wild isn’t quite the first Moench-Jones collaboration. That started with Batman: Red Rain in 1991, the first in the Vampire trilogy. While that was a more horror-based tale, Batman/Dark Joker: The Wild is more fantasy-based and entirely removed from any likeness of your typical Dark Knight tale…
Until the vampires arrived, Dracula was unleashed, and Batman himself was transformed into a blood-sucking creature of the night, Batman: Red Rain could easily have seemingly taken place in the usual DC Universe. Over the course of that trilogy, events change, as do characters and their fates, but even by the final page, it’s still a world somewhat recognisable to readers with a Gotham City still infested with criminals. Batman/Dark Joker: The Wild creates an entirely new world.
The Wild is a place like no other. A vast wilderness consisting of caves, forests, the occasional village, and all kinds of strange creatures and villains, think of the Wild as what if Gotham City injected itself with class As and grew out its national parks. There’s nothing quite like this setting in any other kind of Batman tale. In Batman/Dark Joker: The Wild, there are really only two similarities with the usual events of the DC Universe. Firstly, although tweaked, the characters, such as Batman and the Joker, along with a few others along the way. And secondly, the structure of this Batman’s origin. In a vast titanic tower in the Wild, Majister and his wife Lilandra plan to have another child. But this child won’t be bred for peace or happiness, but for war. Majister and Lilandra have plans for their child which will shape its destiny forever – its goal is to defeat the ultimate villain of the Wild, calling himself the Dark Joker. So far, this all seems pretty cliched, but Moench adds some mysticism and twists to the early pages of this tale. Majister and Lilandra don’t procreate like most species. Instead, they conduct some bizarre ritual to bring their new child into life. Sadly, that ritual is cut short when – surprise, surprise – the Dark Joker arrives. Little is known about this villain and his evil ways until later, but right now he leaves his mark by killing Majister and Lilandra before throwing their newborn out of the window to its apparent death. As openers go, this is good. Moench conveys much of the backstory involving Majister and his wife later in the tale. For now, we’re given snippets of a much larger story. But again, I return to the structure of this opening scene as its an origin story. Who should be the child of Majister and Lilandra but Batman himself! With the Dark Joker acting as the Joe Chill of the tale (something of a refence to Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman movie), this is one notable change in the origin of the Dark Knight. But the basics remain the same – his parents are killed, and he wants revenge.
Twenty years after his birth. Batman lives the life of a wild animal. He is simply a beast with no purpose and speaks no language. Meanwhile, the Dark Joker continues to haunt the Wild and its people with his nefarious gang of monsters. A village is decimated by the villain’s power, with the words of mysterious womanly sorceress disregarded by the townspeople, believing her to be a witch. Known as Saressa, she seeks her role to warn of the Dark Joker’s war against the people of the Wild, but as the story progresses, she becomes something of a mentor figure to Batman. She finds this wild creature of the night in the forest and pledges to train and teach him to become a hero of the Wild. These scenes between Saressa and Batman make for good reading, especially since the former does more than simply teach the latter about good and bad. Since Batman has been alone in the Wild for two decades, Saressa teaches him how to speak and about the concept of trust. Since the Dark Joker ruined the ritual which brought Batman into life, his appearance and intelligence is sub-normal. In the end, as is common with most mentors to protagonists in fictional works, Saressa is killed when she gives herself up to the Dark Joker to give her powerful blood to Batman. Her sacrifice comes after a revelation – Saressa is Batman’s secret sister. Okay, okay. I know that secret siblings have become extremely tiresome and cliched as a story device, but here Moench makes it work. For starters, this doesn’t exactly come out of the blue. In the introductory pages, Majister and Lilandra speak of a mysterious first child before Batman, one who was meant to kill the Dark Joker. However, Majister and Lilandra gave up their child because of love – they couldn’t face transforming their loved child into a weapon. By the start of this story, they realise what must be done and that’s why Batman is created. Including Saressa as a sister figure succeeds not because of the futile shock of a secret sibling, but because it adds a human layer to a such a hard-fantasy tale. It adds a sense of warmness to Majister and Lilandra who, although brilliantly written with mystery, clearly exude good beliefs that end up shaping both Saressa and Batman. Although alone in the Wild for twenty years, Batman is backed up with a family who, underneath all their sorcery and obsession with defeating the Dark Joker, cares about him and the world.
With Saressa out of the way, the main focus is back on the Dark Joker. Once a regular-looking criminal with a love of torture and inflicting pain, Majister burns the villain for his crimes, transforming his skin white, his lips red, and his hair green. This version of the Joker seems darker than the one we’re used to. In fact, the Dark Joker is strikingly similar to the Joker of the Golden Age. Calculating and ruthless, this Joker is a mixture of insanity and cold logic. His main goal, other than to inflict more harm on people, is to unlock the secrets of Majister’s sorcery. But for what? More evil! A noticeable flaw in Batman/Dark Joker: The Wild has to be its two-dimensional characters. While there is much good to be said about Batman and the Dark Joker, their reasoning for why they are either good or bad is empty. Despite the grimness of the wild, Batman is somehow good because his parents were. Meanwhile, the Dark Joker is bad just because he likes being evil. Perhaps this isn’t far-removed from what it’s like in most mainstream Batman stories. Excluding Batman and the Dark Joker, no other character really makes much of an impact. The Dark Joker’s goons, while powerful and good at providing muscle, don’t provide us with any memorable moments. They are just there to fight.
While the Dark Joker has his band of destroyers firmly backing him up, Batman is by no means alone. Hightown is another town in the Wild which the Dark Joker has his eyes on. Batman asks for the villagers to help him in his quest to defeat the Dark Joker. Moench writes a split in the village between Jaymes – the leader of the village who believes Batman stands for good – and an underling named Rath, who believes that Batman is evil and working in cahoots with the Dark Joker. It’s clear that Moench wrote Jaymes as a Commissioner Gordon figure. Not only is he called Jaymes, but he has a long coat and a moustache. Jaymes gets his way, and he helps Batman in his ultimate fight against the Dark Joker. Sadly however, Moench fails to make Jaymes or the people of Hightown interesting whatsoever. Sure, they may naturally fight amongst themselves over whether Batman is a goodie or not, but what else do they have going for them? Jaymes is a natural leader, but he’s dull. Meanwhile, nobody else is given any time in the limelight because they have no powers. They are ants compared to Batman and the Dark Joker. Sure, they do help Batman by stealing some of Dark Joker’s airships and striking an aerial attack on the villians’s base, but in the end of the day, they are just Batman’s Gotham City. They exist as a plot device, something for Batman to protect. Moench wastes too many pages focusing on petty dramas and uninteresting discussions between villagers who have little to do in a world like the Wild.
The confrontation between Batman and the Dark Joker is pretty much as expected, but since this is an Elseworlds tale, Moench makes much more of an impact with his writing. Although the fight is perhaps prolonged for too long, it’s ending is a memorable one. With the Dark Joker’s monsters defeated, Batman claws off the Joker’s face, tears his throat out with his teeth, and throws him out of a nearby window. There’s little comeback for the Dark Joker there. With that threat dealt with, Batman pledges to protect the Wild from any future villains. He then suddenly transforms into a man, before returning back to bat-form and flying off into the night. How or why, Batman transforms into a man is beyond me – it’s not clear whether he just gained that power then or had it the whole time. Either way, Moench concludes Batman/Dark Joker: The Wild and its world with a structure very familiar to us - Jaymes creates a signal to shine into the sky to call upon Batman, who pledges to protect the people of Hightown from any future villains.
Compared to other Elseworlds stories, the tale of Batman and the Dark Joker is – for the lack of a better pun, one which I hope you’ll excuse – wild. Conventional Elseworlds tales go down either of two routes – placing a character in a different historical setting or moving the furniture around of the mainstream setting and tinkering around with a character’s life in differing ways. Very few of them go down the route of Batman/Dark Joker: The Wild, whereby an entirely new world is created, and brand-new backstories are created for the main characters. While it would be grossly unfair and incorrect to dismiss the Elseworlds tales which don’t radically alter aspects of a character’s world, Batman/Dark Joker: The Wild is a good, if not perfect, example of the potential this imprint has. Moench has been allowed to create his own world with its own characters. There is such creative freedom for writers and artists with Elseworlds, and that is why so many readers enjoy them. The sense of variety and imagination makes it possible for readers to experience new worlds.
Batman/Dark Joker: The Wild offers an experience of action-based fantasy, a genre which the mainstream Batman title would fail to construct successfully. Now, this may not be a genre which I’m hugely fond of, and I do think that Batman/Dark Joker: The Wild is brought down both by dull villains and a typical structure (the villains have the upper hand, and then the hero turns up to defeat them), but you cannot deny that the story’s content is creative.
Unlike a few other Elseworlds tale which have received follow-ups and sequels, Batman/Dark Joker: The Wild has been given no such thing. Was there potential for a sequel? There is some potential, certainly because of the vast world that Moench created here. However, it feels like the tale of this Batman is complete. There’s nothing else that needs to be said about Batman, or even the story of his parents which really should remain a good mystery. Moench concludes the story just as we feel we’ve learned to know these characters, and I think that’s best. But maybe a sequel would have made it more memorable.
Perhaps, for all that praise I offered about this story’s creativity and unique image, stories that feel just that one step away from reality or the mainstream title are more likely to be remembered. The Batman Vampire trilogy is a prime example of that. There, Moench and Jones simply recreated the usual setting of Gotham City with a grim Batman, but then added the vampire element as a new and extra layer. With Batman/Dark Joker: The Wild, this is something entirely new. And since this has remained a one-off, Batman/Dark Joker: The Wild has – sadly – remained buried.
Although the style of Kelley Jones’s artwork still had some distance to travel before it reached the peak where it has been for the last few decades, his work here in 1993 is nonetheless fantastic. His storytelling transfers Moench’s often wordy and slightly dusty plot into solid action and drama. Not only that, but he adds that essential appearance of horror and creepiness which his work has become so renowned for. His design for this Batman, while frankly plain in terms of features, looks hugely impressive with its bellowing wings and razor-sharp ears. I wouldn’t say it looks frightening, at least not in the same way that Vampire Batman does, but that may be because this Batman is more heroic than his vampiric alternative self. Jones also adds a new element of darkness to the Joker. Still enjoying that menacing grin and that murky green hair, the Dark Joker appears quite similar to the Joker of the 1940s. With the Dark Joker a more dangerous figure than the usual Joker in the mainstream titles, Jones reflects that change brilliantly. What’s more, John Beatty’s brilliant inks bring the darkness and fearfulness of Kelley Jones’s artwork to life. As an inker who both encapsulates and then improves upon the work of a penciller, John Beatty is a great match for an artist like Jones. Overall, this tale could have looked very different were it not for Kelley Jones, and it’s primarily because of his art frankly that this story is remembered.
VERDICT
Overall, Batman/Dark Joker: The Wild is a good Elseworlds tale which proves how creative writes like Moench can be. He takes some of the structure of the typical Batman world and energises with them fantasy elements. I wouldn’t say it is a great story by any means however – the story’s structure is too basic, and excluding some of the main characters, the cast list is exceptionally boring. Batman and the Dark Joker are easily the story’s best features, along with the fantastic artwork of Kelley Jones.
Next Week: Green Lantern/Green Arrow: How Can An Immortal Die? (Green Lantern (vol 2) 90-99). Written by Dennis O’Neil with art by Mike Grell, Robert Smith, Terry Austin, Dick Giordano, Vince Colletta.
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