| “ | When I close my eyes, I hear it calling from the ice. It tells me it’s coming. It tells me, I have come home | „ | |
| ~ Oswald Cobblepot's journal entry , Batman: The Doom That Came To Gotham |
Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham is a three-issue comic book miniseries published in 2000-2001 that puts Batman in the world of the Cthulhu Mythos. It was written by Mike Mignola and Richard Pace, with art by Troy Nixey (pencils) and Dennis Janke (ink). It was published as part of DC Comics' Elseworlds line, for stories that are not part of the regular DC continuity.
The title combines H. P. Lovecraft's "The Doom that Came to Sarnath" with Batman's Gotham City, the plot riddled with Lovecraft references.
Synopsis[]
Having witnessed his parents' brutal murder as a child, Bruce Wayne traveled across the world for twenty years in search for answers behind the criminal mind. But everything changes when he and his wards travel to the Antarctic to find an expedition crew led by eccentric socialite Oswald Cobblepot. What Bruce finds there, Cobblepot wandering the frozen wilderness while his surviving crewman Grendon became an animated frozen corpse digging out a creature from the ice, compels him to return to Gotham with the latter in his custody. But against the crime-ridden backdrop of The Roaring '20s, Bruce delves into a connection of the city's dark past with his father, his parents' killer, and a murdered scientist named Kirk Langstrom who claimed to speak to bats. Furthermore, Bruce learns that only he could stop the Cult of Ghul from bringing about the end of Gotham and the world, which requires him to die and sacrifice his humanity to do so.
Allusions[]
- Ra's al Ghul is given aspects of Abdul Alhazred as a Mideastern sorcerer who wrote a book of dark magic while visiting an ancient city. The animated movie also gives him elements of being an Avatar.
- The lizard creature supporting the Cult of Ghul is named Ludvig Prinn.
- While Grendon resembles DC villain Mr. Freeze in appearance and power, his nature as a corpse that would decompose into slime if not exposed to cold temperature is a homage to Muñoz from Lovecraft's short story "Cool Air".
- Iog-Sotha, an extra-dimensional dark god that Ra's al Ghul tries to summon in order to end all of humanity, is a pastiche of Yog-Sothoth.
Adaptations[]
- On 28 March 2023, Warner Bros. Animation and DC Studios released an animated adaptation of the story, whose cast included, amongst others, Jeffrey Combs, an actor with a long history of involvement in screen Mythos productions [1].
References[]
- ↑ Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham (film) at Wikipedia