Batman of Two Worlds Takes the Dark Knight and His Doppelganger to Parallel Perils
Batman of Two Worlds Takes the Dark Knight and His Doppelganger to Parallel Perils
Two-for-one fun with Gotham’s favorite sons.
Sometimes it’s a temporary passing of the torch, like when Azreal or original Robin (Dick Grayson) took up the cape and cowl. Occasionally, another timeline’s version of Bruce Wayne took his life in directions so wild that they made the character unrecognizable. Regardless of the in-universe explanation for it, there have been a lot of versions of Batman over the years… often sharing literally nothing in common with the original outside of a name.
Take Adam West’s Batman, for example. His Batusi dance alone would be enough to make Frank Miller’s Batman melt into a puddle of concentrated shame. And in the formalized comics canon, these are all separate people. At least one Batman has hopped around the multi-verse to meet alternate movie, comic, and TV versions of Bruce Wayne: learning a little from Michael Keaton’s Batman, the Arkham games hero, and—yes—even Adam West as he made his way back home. It also came to light that all of those Batmen have yet another Batman to bear in mind; A mentally unhinged back-up personality named “Batman of Zur-En-Arrh” standing at the ready to take over Bruce’s mind if he faces an opponent who somehow manages to outsmart him?
Against all odds, the idea of an extremely fit guy dressed up in a costume to express his equal love for both justice and bat-theme accessories has become one of the most popular “super” heroes in the world. That popularity has led to nearly endless iteration, but none of those variants has ever been able to claim the bat-crown from the original’s furrowed brow. But that may not be true for much longer. Absolute Batman, a new Bat-variation living in his own distinctly horrible world, has been selling better at comic shops than his still-very-popular “core DC universe” counterpart for a couple years now. With a new television adaption in the works, there are no limits on how high he could fly from there.
Something similar happened when Miles Morales, the Ultimate universe version of Spider-Man, first hit the scene. It was a slower burn, but he eventually rocketed to stardom via the Spider-Verse series of films. But Marvel’s approach to maintaining multiple Spider-Men has its limitations. Sure, there’s strength in numbers, but lumping them together also worked to undo their respective identities as the “one and only Spider-Man”. Instead of feeling like concentrated displays of Spider-Man’s essential properties, they became like family: Different expressions of the same creative DNA. It’s great, but tossing multiple Spider-Men together for too long dilutes their collective Spider-uniqueness.
Batman and Absolute Batman aim to dodge any potential Bat-redundancy by keeping things separate, yet more or less equal. Their upcoming Batman of Two Worlds comic will feature both “regular” Batman (older, colder, and filthy rich) and Absolute Batman (cash-poor, but quick to lend a hand… and maybe even quicker to cut one off). Given that “regular Batman” already lost a hand not long ago, it’s easy to see how the two may not feel all that comfortable around each other, let alone feel like family.
Maybe that’s why these two Dark Knight detectives will stay in their respective universes rather than truly crossing over. The two Bruces will both attempt to solve parallel, nearly identical crimes in their own worlds. Seeing the two tackle the mirroring mysteries with give DC the opportunity to juxtapose their massive differences, and in doing so, justify their simultaneous existences. It’s also a great way to give folks who are only familiar with the current exploits of one of these two Batmen a sample of what makes the other stand out.
It’s a smarter move than the standard team-up or showdown, as evidenced by the ho-hum performance of the recent DC K.O. event, which stretched itself into showing Batman fight his Absolute brother (as well as Superman take on Homelander from The Boys, and Plastic Man duking it out with Sub Zero from Mortal Kombat). Events like that are cool on paper, but often amount to vapid, empty calories in practice. They’re practically begging for fans to burn out. On the other hand, truly eye-opening stories that take pride in showing exactly what makes their characters special can reinvigorate a lapsed reader. Here’s to hoping that Batman of Two Worlds delivers on the latter when it’s released in comic shops this September.