176 ELSEWORLDS
eventually ending up as a yearly feature for the book. By creating an explanation for
the existence of disparate versions of the same character, Fox conventionalized alternity
for comic books. Th e next decade would see a blending of imaginary stories and paral-
lel Earths: a parallel Superman would even marry Lois Lane in 1978’s Action Comics
#484.
Alternate realities gave credence and relevance to imaginary stories, building a fan-
base and allowing narratives to develop apart from what was considered a marketable
approach to a character. Th us, in Alan Moore’s Whatever Happened to the Man of
Tomorrow, published as two parts in 1986’s Superman #423 and Action Comics #583,
Superman’s retirement holds emotional impact since, indeed, the version of Superman
that had been published throughout the 1970s and 1980s was about to be replaced
by the reconceived Superman from a diff erent reality appearing in John Byrne’s 1986
miniseries Th e Man of Steel. Th e convention had become so ingrained that Frank
Miller’s Th e Dark Knight Returns, a miniseries also published in 1986 telling the
seemingly fi nal story about Batman’s retirement, could feature a future with a Super-
man who never retired and was not perceived to be the same Superman from Moore’s
contemporary Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow without eliciting confusion
from DC’s fanbase.
Th e Elseworlds concept is the fi nal step in the development of alternate reality in
comics; it takes the characters of the DC universe and expands upon the possibilities
of their origins, futures, and fundamental characters. Th e fi rst Elseworlds tale (retroac-
tively labeled as such in subsequent editions) was a 1989 one-shot called Gotham by
Gaslight written by Brian Augustyn and illustrated by Mike Mignola, which featured
Batman fi ghting Jack the Ripper in the 1880s, his parents having been gunned down
by carriage robbers years before. Batman’s costume was redesigned with a Victorian
slant, and he even discusses his parental issues with Sigmund Freud. Fundamentally,
however, the character’s core identity remains the same: Batman still dedicates his life to
fi ghting crime due to the traumatic experiences he had as a child. Th is formula would
be repeated in the pages of comics published under the Elseworlds imprint, and in sub-
sequent stories Batman has shaken hands with Harry Houdini, fought Lovecraftian
monsters, drank blood as a vampire, met Hitler, fought Hitler, and rooted out church
corruption as a Catholic priest.
While the caped crusader has the lion’s share of the titles, Elseworlds didn’t stop at
Batman. Superman, Th e Green Lantern, Flash, Wo n d e r Wo m a n, and a cavalcade of
DC’s supporting characters have appeared in Elseworlds tales. Some noted Elseworlds
books are Superman: Speeding Bullets, where Superman’s rocket lands in Gotham
and he becomes Batman after the tragic death of his parents, Th omas and Martha
Wa y n e ; Th e Golden Age , which pits the heroes of the Justice Society against modernity
and the growing anti-hero public policy of the United States Government; JLA: Th e
Nail, which muses about a DC universe without there ever having been a Superman;
Superman: Red Son, which posits the life Superman would have led if he landed in
the Soviet Union; and the most critically acclaimed of all Elseworlds tales, Kingdom
