$12.95 from DC Comics
Credits:
“Destiny”
Written by Mark
Kneece
Illustrated by Bo
Hampton
“The Sleeping”
Written and
Illustrated by Scott Hampton
Overview:
In “Destiny,” Batman
finds out he’s one half of an ancient Viking legend. Then he spends a whole
story very actively comatose in the creepy and existentialist “The Sleeping.”
Synopsis
Batman: Other Realms
takes two stories from the odd Batman title, Legends of the Dark Knight, and
packages them together in a trade paperback. I like trade paperbacks for just
this reason. They’re the last stand of the comics fan who enjoys comics for the
sake of the stories, rather than for the “collectability.” The two stories in
Other Realms are “Destiny” and “The Sleeping.” Neither is intended to be an
imaginary story in continuity like you’d usually find in Legends, rather, these two tales could both pretty easily slip into
the DC Batman continuity, such as it is. Their placement in Legends is because
both of these stories take Batman out of Gotham and into some “other realm.”
“Destiny” is told by
Mark Kneece and illustrated by Viking Prince artist Bo Hampton, and the
narrative jumps back and forth between eras. There’s the present day, in which
Batman comes to the grudging aid of a modern-day ecological terrorist called
the Viking, and the distant past, when Vikings roam, and an old Viking hero was
aided by a strange hermit warrior called The Bat-man. It turns out that the
Viking warrior and Viking Bat-Man vowed to always help one another, and now the
modern Viking has to come to cash the promise in. The fun parts are these
Viking-period sections, in which we get to see this Viking in a sort of
gray-pelt-and-sword version of the bat suit. Batman the horrible. Nicely,
Viking Batman shows up on the cover.
Even better, though,
is story number two, “The Sleeping.” Whereas “Destiny” is two action-adventures
in one, “The Sleeping” is a gripping near-death experience story that sends
chills down your spine and convinces you that, truly, there really are lots
more Batman stories. The Sleeping of the title is the strange realm where
people go when they linger in a coma. It seems Batman “wakes up” there after
Bruce Wayne is injured in a car accident. A strange figure says, “Sleep is the ocean
in which you nightly bathe. You’ve plunged to its floor and must kick back to
the surface before you drown.”
This story really is
well done. Writer/artist Scott Hampton devises a whole theory that we all have
memories of this netherworld, and that there are certain rules the world
follows. Batman is soon traveling with two companions: one is a man who’s
slowly losing his grip on life, and may never get back. The other is a lovely
Irish woman who may well be Batman’s “twin soul,” the person who would best fit
him in life. Except once they leave here, they’ll remember nothing. If they can
leave here—leaving has two meanings: you can die, and go where the dead go, or
you can fight your way back out of your coma by crossing dangerous territory
and walking through a raging lake of fire.
“The Sleeping” is a
Batman story where the action comes out of its ideas. The final scenes are
tense and exciting, and I was honestly not sure what would happen. What did
happen, in the end, gave me goosebumps. Which is really more than anyone can
ask from a comic book, and makes Batman:
Other Realms worth picking up.