Even with this large amount of comic books that have been collected in trade paperbacks, there are still a number of great comic books that have never been reprinted in print (I'd say roughly 60% of them are DC Comics from the 1980s through the mid-1990s). So in this feature I spotlight different cool comic books that are only available as back issues. Here is an archive of the comic books featured so far.

Today we look at Mike Mignola's Batman mini-series, The Doom That Came to Gotham.

First off, right off the bat, it is just ludicrous not to collect a Mike Mignola-written Batman series. Mignola is one of the most popular comic book creators in the industry today, and while it is fair to note that he did not DRAW this series (if he did, there's no doubt that it WOULD have been reprinted by now), he still wrote it and that should still be a major sales pitch. Hellboy comics kept selling well after Mignola stopped drawing them regularly.

The three-book series was plotted by Mignola and Richard Pace, scripted by Mignola and drawn by Troy Nixey (who has since become a film director) and Dennis Janke.

The gist of the series is that Mignola is merging Batman's mythos with H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos. The series is set in the late 1920s where explorer Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham City for the first time in years.

The ancient sorceror Ra's Al Ghul is bringing rise to a "thing" that only Batman can stop. Check out Ra's introduction...





and check out this creepy as hell sequence...





Mignola has a keen eye for how to combine various Batman characters with the Lovecraft mythos, with particularly inspired choices being Mister Freeze, Poison Ivy and, of course, this striking take on Two-Face...



Wow, that is awesome.

After Oliver Queen falls victim to the coming evil, Batman takes Queen's magic arrows and makes a final stand, prepared to give up anything (including his own humanity) to stop the arriving darkness...



Even if you're not a Lovecraft fan, I think you'd enjoy this well-told story, but if you ARE a Lovecraft fan, then this story is a must-have.

How would this not sell? You can even use Nixey's future success as a filmmaker as a selling point on top of Mignola's popularity!

Collect it, DC!