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Extra Credit 013 - Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham (Patreon)

Published:
2023-07-31 13:00:03
Imported:
2026-06
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We watched The Doom That Came to Gotham and now we're talking about it!

Comments

Sludgecrawler

DC still going hard for that 10fps, weekend morning in the nineties-cartoon style even when adapting a book by Mignola :|

Eldritch Golem (JPM)

Big Mike Mignola fan, so naturally I've read The Doom that Came to Gotham and was excited by the prospect of the animated movie, which I enjoyed overall though I agree with Chris that the comic is better in most regards. An important point I think that is worth clarifying is that even though Mignola gets all the credit for this miniseries it wasn't actually his idea. According to an Oct. 2012 interview with the podcast Geek's Guide to Galaxy, Mignola says that The Doom that Came to Gotham was actually conceptualized and largely written by Richard Pace but that Pace was unable to finish the book (Mignola doesn't remember why and no one seems to have asked Pace) and so he was brought on to finish it. And because Mignola was the bigger name his got listed first on the cover with Pace as co-author, a fact that makes Mignola uncomfortable. In the same interview Mignola says that despite having written/drawn several Batman stories he's not a fan of the character and doesn't know much about him and so his job on Doom was to mostly just insert as many Lovecraft references as possible. I do wonder however if all the Christian imagery in the story that you mention was also from Mignola since he's Catholic.* I have no idea if artist Troy Nixey was on the project before Mignola joined or not. However Nixey and Mignola previously collaborated on the miniseries Jenny Finn (1999) which is probably my favorite book by Mignola (as writer) and the one no one seems to know about. I would highly recommend it to Chris and Chad, maybe even as a future extra credit, as it is probably the greatest take on Jack the Ripper as Lovecraftian horror story I've ever encountered. And rest assured Jack is NOT the protagonist this time. In the meantime I would also like an extra credit where you two debate the relative merits of Netflix's Sandman adaptation. *I don't know how much of Mike Mignola's Hellboy you've read but in those comics the Lovecraftian Elder Gods are early on equated with the Great Red Dragon in Revelation and it is later revealed that they were actually created by Anum (a Lucifer-like figure) when he attempted to imitate God and fashion his own creation and instill it with life.

Hayden Orr

No offense but I’m gonna be that guy on this one since I’m in a Facebook group that Mignola himself chimes in on occasionally, according to the man himself its MIN-YO-LA. Also the Christian stuff is some of Mignola’s own personal tastes seeping through. It’s in the comic as well, and his Hellboy world mythology is basically, god made angels or watchers and the watchers made all the horrible lovecraftian beasts out of boredom and jealousy. God found out and wrecked the naughty angels’ shit and cast them to hell or onto the earth. Which is where demons and pagan gods come from. But basically the capital G god is the only dude that matters, so Christian iconography and symbols work in a world with all kinds of supernatural hoodoo.

Saint Fu

Regarding Captain America, it sounds as if Chad has only seen the two 1979 Reb Brown TV movies.

It's a Ghost.

Regarding the religious references in the movie, I wondered if it had anything to do with August Derleth's impact on the mythos. The movie does reference The Lurker at the Threshold, the novel that August Derleth wrote "with" H.P. Lovecraft, and we all know that Derleth had a propensity to add Christian elements to his Lovecraftian stories. Also, I really enjoyed the movie, even if it lost me at times. I enjoyed all the voice performances, and especially enjoyed the addition of Kai Li Cain. I hope we get to see more of her character in the future.

Wulf Mungus

As a "wee-lad", I was super hyped to discover there was a comic that combine Mignola, Batman AND Lovecraft! I feel this gets a pass, cuz of all the fun mash ups of Batman's Rogues Gallery and Eldritch horrors.. but it's irks me that whenever we get an "adaptation".. it's always just Lovecraft's greatest hits. Even the video game based off the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game is guilty of this... Everything is always Green, and always Innsmouth...

Jim Cannon

I read this ages ago when it first came out and recall being iffy on it, feeling it didn't really capture either the Batman mythos or the Cthulhu Mythos accurately. I guess you have to expect that - they are two diametrically opposed genres. Superheroes are all about how good triumphs over evil and one person can make a difference, while Cthulhu is all about how "good" and "evil" are meaningless and we are all doomed. I mean, its cool seeing Batman fight monsters, but its not really a great mash-up conceptually. I should dig through the ol' longboxes and give this series another read. I think I am more steeped in Lovecraftiana now than I was then.

Jim Cannon

On the subject of Batman and DC as opposed to Spider-Man and Marvel, I am very much a DC guy. I think Batman is one of the most inherantly plastic ideas in superhero comics, he works across multiple genres and in pretty much any plot. I realize he is a genius martial artist scientist Olympic athlete billionaire, but at the end of the day he is just a guy. I like the fact that at DC, "street level" means a guy with a batarang or a bow & arrow, as opposed to Marvel where it means a guy who can chuck a car at you or who can dodge bullets. Peter Parker's real life may be more relateable, but the stakes in a Batman story are often moreso.

Doug McCool

Kind of a side-note, but I couldn't resist commenting on just how SIMILAR Batman and Spider-Man really are... in my opinion. Obviously, some of these could be applied to more than just the two of them. -Both have a childhood tragedy that they feel responsible for, and that spurred them to be superheroes (Spidey feels guilt for sure, Batman does in some tellings). -Both tend to focus on a single city, rather than saving the entire world every month (Gotham, New York City). -Both have a love/hate relationship with a cat-themed burglar lady (Catwoman, Black Cat). -Both seem to be the only superheroes left who still care about maintaining a secret identity. -Both have a primary villian that is a laughing madman (Joker, Green Goblin) who killed someone very close to them, but that person has, of course, since come back (Jason Todd, Gwen Stacy). -Similar "no kill" philosophy, though that's really the same for MOST superheroes. -Both have an elderly surrogate parent of sorts (Alfred, Aunt May). -Neither comic publisher wants them to be married, so they tease and then sabotage it so it doesn't happen. -Though Batman has more, both have a lot of bat-/spider-themed gadgets. -Both have kids that are also super-heroes (Damian Wayne in main DC timeline; Mayday and/or Annie May in some Marvel alternate timelines). There's probably loads more. Like Chris, I was a Spider-Man kid... still am, I guess. And though I didn't care for DC much back then, Batman was always great. They're really kind of two sides to the same coin.

Aaron La Vene

Trying not to spoil but probably some spoilers here. Watched this as soon as it came out. It had me hard in the first half, felt like mountains to madness mixed with call of Cthulhu, was fantastic… I enjoyed the detective aspect that was occurring and he felt like a Randolph Carter on steroids…and Ras Al Ghul was the perfect villain to summon the eldritch horror. Love what they did with Dent. But the way they presented oracle…. And that entire thing with his dad… and literally all of that. Just take it out. Hard stop unnecessary. They didn’t need to be related to this horror, that was a stretch and I didn’t enjoy it. REY IS PALPATINES GRANDDAUGHTER *GASP* was the feeling it gave off. The ending however ,and the entire thing with the bats ???? Like…. what?!? “The owls are not what they seem” made more sense in twin peaks. than this. And further more…. Why did he turn into that*** and was it really necessary? Idk. I wish it was more so just him being the detective he was. POW pow fight off the cultists. Have to find a way to stop the incantation maybe using Constantine over etrigan…. (Tho I love me some etrigan so it’s fine) …. I’m really trying not to spoil here and it’s hard to bitch about stuff and not spoil. But the transformation and the ending…. Idk lackluster Overall, I enjoyed it. But compared to other animated Batman movies, doesn’t hold up when we have masterpieces like mask of the phantasm, under the red hood, the long Halloween etc…

Forrest Rush

Maybe spoilery. Really enjoyed the comic and liked the movie alot, but agree that it suffers from a lot of transferring one medium to another. It would've been better served being a 3 or 4 part limited series. I also found the ending of the film a little too pat as if trying to say that despite the horror of it all and what Bruce has finally become, he's still BATMAN, which is definitely not very Lovecraft. In the end both are really just for eldricth egg hunters.

Bugberry

First off, I’m surprised I disagree with Chad’s dislike of entering a scene at a joke’s punchline. Humor is subjective, but there can be skill in crafting a punchline that makes you wonder what the setup could be, like how negative space is used in art. It wasn’t a big part of the episode, just calling it universally lazy stood out to me.

Bugberry

Secondly, the discussion here got me thinking about other examples of empowered protagonists in a story that can retain the sense of disempowerment associated with Lovecraft, specifically Bloodborne and the other Souls games. While you have a powerful hero slaying giant monsters, the worldbuilding, difficulty, and the way in which story is delivered help convey a sense that even if you win everything will inevitably repeat, that just slaying enemies won’t halt the existential doom at the core of the setting.

Eric - Speaker in Digressions

I'll adapt my comment from two weeks ago here where it belongs: Glad you did an episode on "The Doom that Came to Gotham." It has a great cast and some good moments, and I appreciated their changing a couple of the Robins into characters that would have made HPL cross the street in fear, but like you I think the plot was a bit too overstuffed with DC characters and trivia. And Bruce's parents were totally not costumed for 1903 or whatever. Also, the Latin in the bat-summoning spell randomly changed between singular and plural. SMH. (I want to take this moment to commend the Latin in "Supernatural"--when it's wrong, it's a plot point!) By the way, the actor not quite Morgan-Freemaning Lucius Fox was Star Trek's own Tim Russ, although really he just sounded like Tim Russ to me.

Aidan McSweeney

Totally unrelated to this but you guys should cover more stories from “Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio” by Pu Songling. Your previous episode on the HPL show was hilarious and wild. I just read one from the collection called “The Laughing Girl” and I thought I knew where it was going but boy I was totally wrong. Just a rec, thanks!

Innsmouth Gold

Glad Chad mentioned losing the plot as I thought it might be me. Strong start for this movie but after about halfway in I didn't have a clue what was going on.

Jeremy Impson

I haven't seen the movie, but read the comic several years ago. I remember being disappointed in it, because it had a relatively uncreative Lovecraft setting, which was not well integrated into the Batman setting. I'd have preferred less specificity about what time period it was set in, similar to how Batman: The Animated Series is depicted (but then, I always want Batman stories to be more similar to BTAS), and as was mentioned by Chris, I believe, more of an investigatory setting. It is the overlap between Batman as a detective, and the Cosmic Horror occurring behind the closed doors of every day life, where I feel the highest potential lies.

Jeremy Impson

Hmm, Chad's thoughts ring true to me about Batman possibly appealing to angry people more than Spiderman does . I also only read Marvell as a youth in the late 80s to early 90s. I burned out of comics by the time I went to college, at the height of the variant cover / quarterly cross over / wolverine everywhere greed fest that was going on. I came back to comics, but strictly to Batman, in my 20s, when anger and discontent were a big part of my life. I'm happy, and happy to report that my life has improved dramatically since then, and I can appreciate many types of stories and characters, but dark brooding Batman will always appeal to me.

Steve

I would have liked Bruce Wayne's parents to be cultists and they died in a ritual, something related to Charles Dexter Ward, or The Dunwich Horror . He didn't really understand it and the story about the mugger was just his way of rationalising it. As Chad suggests, dressing as a bat is part of the coping mechanism. And then Batman starts to discover the truth, and what the suit really represents and it goes all Shadow over Innsmouth with Bruce pondering at the end which way he should go.

Robby H.

My old college roommate's headcanon is that Gotham was built on top of the Blasted Heath from the Colour Out of Space (or at least uses the same aquifer). That would be why Gotham seems to have a disproportionate amount of "mad" criminals and would explain the Penguin's hand deformities. On another note, it's my head Canon that Marvel's symbiote are shoggoths. Knull made outer space shoggoths and the Elder Things made earth symbiotes.

David Halstead

I picked up the DVD for this at Barnes and Noble around Syracuse, NY, where I ran into a local author promoting his Lovecraftian novels. We talked about Lovecraft and Mike Mignola, and I bought his book. I watched the movie with friends who I've watched all the Batman animated series with. We get together to watch Batman stuff all the time. We were very entertained by how crazy dark and WEIRD this thing got. I liked Gotham by Gaslight more, I'll say, but I was in a perfect state of mind to watch this and did it with the best people I know.