ELSEWORLDS was a great concept--take the core of a character but then play around with that character in a new setting or conceit.

Holy Terror's mildly confusing for its alternate history with a religious spin, but this is one of the stronger "Alternate-Batman" stories ever done (the best, in my opinion, being Gotham By Gaslight).

The cameos and world-changes to many other DC heroes makes this a story that thinks about all the ramifications of altering history, not just hyper-focusing on one character, as so often is the case.

Highly recommended for anyone who likes Batman or alternate histories.

This Elseworlds tale takes place in an America ruled by an intolerant theocratic government who may be responsible for the death of Bruce Wayne's parents for being secret anti-government radicals. This alternate origin story for Batman sets the tone for the Alan Brennert story, which finds Batman on a crusade to find his parents' killers. This puts him at odds with the clergy Bruce Wayne has committed to joining. Overall the story is fairly average, but artwork by the legendary Norm Breyfogle is always welcome.

Read for TLP

What if America were a Christian theocracy (Christianity - popular in America? The mind boggles!) and issues like abortion and equal rights for gays were outlawed (hmm.. is this “Elseworlds” or 21st century reality?), and there is no higher power than the Church. And the Church has killed Bruce Wayne’s parents because they were secret underground dissidents, working against Church dogma to help people – the sheer audacity of practicing Christian charity! This Church is obsessed with experimenting on people in Dr Mengele-style for some reason but Bruce is going to dress as a bat and find vengeance for his parents against the Church.

This “Elseworlds” – an alternate reality series for DC’s biggest characters – is the worst one I’ve read because it’s mind-numbingly boring. Once Bruce becomes Batman (through a series of inane contrivances not worth listing) he enters Church HQ, we see the Church’s horrible experiments on other famous DC characters – for no reason other than because that’s what bad guys do - and then Batman vows a jihad against the evil Church. The end! There’s no point in putting Batman in a Christianist dystopia when it’s definitely not entertaining and the writer doesn’t have anything to say other than, duuuh, bad people manipulate others through religion. Holy Terror, Batman, this book sucks!

The writing of this story is remarkably good. There’s a lot of world-building done for a story this short, and frankly I wanted to see more. The first official Elseworlds title (“Gotham by Gaslight” retroactively was the first actual Elseworlds title), and the imprint hit the ground running.

Me sangran los ojos. Esto me pasa por volver a leer cómics de superhéroes.

A cool and different world for batman to be in. This Elseworld story may not be the same caliber as Red Son but it has a cool concept and the world this batman inhabits is really interesting. The problem is the beginning has some good pacing but then the ending feels rushed. I loved the scenes with flash and the other experiments, but it gets so rushed at the end, nothing pays off. Which is the main problem with this, it has an open ending, but this story didn't need that. It needs something satisfying at the end, and there is nothing.


So in short, cool concepts, cool batman, nothing pays off in the end, and it is rushed.

Fantastic art from one of the great all-time Batman artists. Bruce Wayne has grown up to become a priest in a society where the Church rules over everyone. When he discovers members of the Church had his parents murdered, he becomes the Dark Knight to avenge them

"Holy Terror" was the first of four DC Comics Elseworld books recently lent to me by my uncle. For those of you unfamiliar with the premise (as I was when they first came my way) the Elseworld books are stand-alone alternate universe stories involving the DC superheroes and their associates, with the focus generally on AU versions of Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent from what I've seen, but bringing in several others as well. Having now read all four (the other three, incidentally, were "Castle of the Bat" and the two volumes of "Elseworld's Finest") I think that "Holy Terror" stands out for me as the favourite. Aside from anything else, it's an overtly dystopian tale of the kind I really enjoy, and - dare I say it? - seems to borrow heavily from the premise of my favourite graphic novel, "V For Vendetta". Yes, I think it's fair to say that if you pared "V" down to a slight 50 pages (taking into account all the necessary simplifications of plot and theme) and then replaced the main characters with members of the Justice League, you'd come up with something a lot like "Holy Terror". However, I'm not necessarily saying that this is a bad thing. This comic may not have a lot of new things to say about the big themes of dystopia which it touches on - a totalitarian state drawing its power from a corrupted fundamentalist religion, the abuse of those classified as "dangerously different" in state-controlled medical testing facilities, secret courts and covert assassinations passing judgement on those who try to bring down the system from the inside, heroic personal sacrifice underscoring the importance of individual freedoms - and indeed it can sometimes feel a bit like you're being hit over the head with some of these elements due to the short amount of time spent establishing them; but it does offer some interesting insights into the Batman origin story, which to my way of thinking is worth 50 pages of any interested reader's time. What's nice about "Holy Terror" in particular is that there's a feeling of certainty about the whole thing - that, no matter what universe he's in, Bruce Wayne will always become Batman; but the road that takes him there might differ greatly, and indeed the man behind the mask may not be the same one that we're used to seeing, and his reasoning might be very different even if the outcome is the same. While "Holy Terror" doesn't break any new ground in terms of the genre, it's well worth a look if you're already somewhat familiar with Batman and would like a sideways look at the characters in the DC universe.

This is technically the first official Elseworlds book, but not really. Gotham by Gaslight came before, and of course Dark Knight Returns before that.
But anyway, it's alright. It's not my favorite, but I get what it's going for. It was a bit messy for me. You may enjoy it more.

The mantle of the bat goes to medieval times...

In a fascist theocratic state, preacher Bruce Wayne attempts to investigate murders of various JLA analogues when he discovers a secret cabal within the state is responsible for not only those deaths but the death of his parents as well. He soon takes justice into his own hands as Batman to avenge those who suffered at the hands of the government.

Given my taste for cynical religious commentary and my appreciation of Breyfogle's art, I thought I'd be more intrigued by this then I was. While the prose from Brennert is quite good I felt the narrative amounted to little more than an origin story with barely any plot to speak of outside of exposition.