Masks.
At first I thought this story was the inspiration for the Batman:Animated Series episode where Bruce Wayne wakes up and discovers that the Batman was a creation of his fractured mind. I think in that episode it ended up being the Mad Hatter who was responsible. It turns out to be a different conclusion here, but I still quite enjoyed this slightly trippy tale.
After thwarting some small time crooks (who always seem to be the catalyst to start a bigger plot) Batman becomes light headed, stumbles into an alleyway and collapses. When he comes to, he is in a hospital bed and is confronted by an incredibly rude nurse. It soon transpires that he is a regular at the hospital, and that the Batman is a delusion borne of his grief and alcohol dependency following the death of his parents.
Several odd characters inhabit this alternate reality, and there are even some guest appearances from villains such as Two Face and Joker - although these appear to be hallucinations. There is also a blonde nurse, who tells Bruce/Batman to 'believe in himself'. It is this, and a strange conversation with 'Catwoman' that leads to Bruce trying to figure out what exactly is happening to him.
When the conclusion is revealed, it is an interesting twist on what lengths someone would go to for vengeance if they had the resources and the funds to do so. In fact, we saw two alternative fates for. Bruce Wayne here - the insanity and the addiction, or the deranged plots to get vengeance on those who took away his loved ones. Luckily for us, neither of these fates were the ones that befell Bruce Wayne.
Images.
Some interesting imagery (no pun intended) was present in this second story - particularly the moment early on where Batman crashes through a mirror to interrupt a meeting between Joker and some nameless criminals. The idea that Batman is the polar opposite, the mirror image of the Joker is one that has been explored several times, and could not be presented more clearly to us here.
In terms of the storyline, which annoyed me in the sense that it goes against the 'first meeting' seen in The Man Who Laughs (a superior storyline might I add) what we get is actually fairly standard for Joker. He threatens someone in Gotham, kills them in an impossible way using his Joker venom, then repeats and tries to extort money from a potential victim. In fact now I think about it, this was pretty much the plot of Man Who Laughs. Maybe I'm taking out my irrational anger at a timeline with continuity issues on a perfectly good storyline.
What is intriguing, and some might disagree with me here, is the possibility of a character being related to the Joker - even calling him Uncle Ja- at some point before the Joker stops him. And we all but get confirmation here of the 'Red Hood' origin, although I prefer to believe that not even the Joker knows who he was before he was the Clown Prince of Crime.
There is also lots of detective work from Batman here, which is always welcome. And the Joker's dialogue is suitably crazed, with rhyming and quips giving the clown a sharper edge than he sometimes does. The artwork for the effects of the Joker venom is fantastic, really twisting the features of its victims into a pained expression.
After all is wrapped up neatly, another neat artistic touch comes when Bruce Wayne's strange white hat casts a bat cowl shaped shadow on his face. This is all whilst he is brooding over the death of Joker's cousin(?), as usual blaming himself for the actions he didn't take.
Tao.
An exploration of the Gotham underworld, which also adds some mysticism, Chinese mythology and Bruce Wayne's earlier years.
Batman and 'Dragon' (a character who I thought might be Richard Dragon at first) cross paths when they are pursing a criminal named Khan. Batman takes out some of his employees whilst Dragon murders a fortune teller after trying to find out where Khan can be found. It is the manner of these murders - the necks broken and the head twisted 180 degrees - that gets Batman to realise he has crossed paths with this killer before.
Cue flashbacks to Batman's training under Master Shao-La, who he tracks down to be taught the ways of 'Tao'. He is told, rather cryptically, that 'the Tao that can be told is not the true Tao'. We get a montage of sorts, showing Bruce performing various tasks such as cooking for the Master and then attaching himself to a (prophetically designed) bat-kite. On this flight, over which he has no control, Bruce crashed into Dragon and their feud begins.
When Bruce later reveals that he wanted to pursue 'Tao' so he could see the future - and determine whether his pursuit of learning and training would bear fruit - Shao-La reveals he cannot give these secrets. This results in Bruce's second confrontation with Dragon, where he 'takes everything' from Dragon as his master deems him to be more worthy of training than Dragon.
Back in the present, Batman tracks down Dragon and they fight, ending in Dragon impaling himself on a spike to avoid the shame of defeat.
Sanctum.
An odd little tale, written and drawn by Mike Mignola, which is even more filled with bizarre imagery and hallucination than Masks was.
We open in a graveyard, where a dodgy looking character is drawing patterns on a wall/gravestone with blood, rambling about someone called Drood. Batman confronts him, is stabbed by this strange man's knife, before the man is impaled on some spikes (strange that this happens twice...)
Collapsing into a mausoleum, Batman then finds himself in a strange underground world where he engages in conversation with Drood. Everything starts to get a little odd, with Drood confessing to murdering his wife and taking his own life. He mentions immortality and there are Cthulu-sequence tentacles at some point.
Batman fights to escape this strange world, only to discover it was a hallucination. Or was it? We end with him having found the home of Drood, but doesn't pursue the investigation further, claiming that more modern cases would be better suited to his efforts. But there is a hint in there that he is afraid what he would find if he looked further into the matter.
Usually, the beauty of the Legends of the Dark Knight series is that it allows for one off stories like this that explore different sides to Batman. However it detracts from the nature of the 'timeline' I am trying to follow, which had begun to take on a bit of momentum with the stories that I had been reading. Obviously the continuity will level itself out again, but it is jarring to read stories that contradict past stories I have already read. And now I sound like th sort of person who bemoans certain casting choices on Internet forums - perhaps I shouldn't be such a slave to the continuity and just enjoy the stories that I get to read?
Next up - Batman: Snow
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