Here is an archive of all the past top five lists I've done over the years.

Batman has appeared in a bunch of Elseworlds stories, some of them really quite excellent. Here are the top five!

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Batman: Detective No. 27

This charming tale by Michael Uslan and Peter Snejbjerg tells of a group of super detectives, with members including Theodore Roosevelt and Allan Pinkerton, and how their group needs desperately to recruit their 27th member in 1939 to save the world...a member named Bruce Wayne...









Batman: In Darkest Knight

This Mike W. Barr/Jerry Bingham joint is perhaps a bit TOO on the nose, but it is written with such earnestness that it really does work...











Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham

Mike Mignola co-plotted and scripted this story with a co-plot by Richard Pace and art by Troy Nixey and Dennis Janke. Simply put, it is a combination of 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 sorcerer 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...



SO creepy!

Superman/Batman: Generations

John Byrne did an excellent prestige format mini-series detailing the concept of “What if Batman and Superman and their casts aged in real time from when they first appeared?” and Generations shows exactly how this would come about. Along the way, Byrne naturally alters his style to reflect the era that each story is being told in. Great stuff. It was followed by two sequels. By the time it ended, Byrne had practically created a whole other universe filled with stories starring these characters (the final sequel was twelve issues long).

Here's a sample from when Batman II (Dick Grayson) is killed by the Joker and Robin II (Bruce Wayne Jr.) takes over....









Go to the next page for the last honorable mention at the beginning of the top five!

Batman/Houdini: The Devil's Workshop

Howard Chaykin and John Francis Moore and artist Mark Chiarello put together this story that involved Batman and Harry Houdini teaming up with each other. Chiarello, now one of the very best editors working in comics today, drew the hell out of the project, which set Houdini and Batman against vampires and a version of the Joker (named Jack Schadenfreude!)...









5. Batman vs. Dracula: Red Rain

Just as the title suggests, Doug Moench, Kelley Jones and Malcom Jones III show us a world where Gothamites are slowly being turned into vampires and Batman is the greatest of them all, come see what I mean...









4. Gotham by Gaslight

Brian Augustyn, Mike Mignola and P. Craig Russell got together to give us the comic that pretty much launched the Elseworlds line of comics, as this graphic novel tells the story of Batman in the time of Jack the Ripper, with outstanding artwork from Mignola and Russell (a dream team if there ever was one)...









GO to the next page for the top three!

3. Batman and Captain America

This story sort of inspired the aforementioned Superman/Batman: Generations story, as this was first comic where John Byrne would meticulously place comic book characters in the proper context of their times while also telling enjoyable yarns set in those times. The end result is one of the best intercompany crossovers of all-time.

Byrne's artwork is strong but most of all, he just completely embraced the FUN of having Batman and Captain America team-up during the Golden Age...









2. Batman: Holy Terror

In this graphic novel by Alan Brennert and Norm Breyfogle, the world is ruled over by the chucrch. Bruce Wayne discovers some corruption in the death of his parents and ultimately becomes the Batman of this world...







One of the cool aspects of thsi comic was all the nods to non-Batman DC characters like Dr. Mid-Nite.

1. "Year 100" (Batman Year 100 #1-4)

In a Gotham City that is essentially a federal police state, there is little room for honest cops like Jim Gordon (grandson of the famed Commissioner Jim Gordon) but there is even less room for unexplained phenomena - after all, everyone is being constantly monitored - there is no such thing as privacy, no such thing as secrecy. That is, of course, until Batman somehow shows up on the grid. It is unclear if this is the original Batman (since it is so far in the future it certainly seems unlikely) but whatever the case, this Batman is a thorn in the side of a corrupt federal government and writer/artist Paul Pope does an amazing job showing how Batman manages to evade capture while showing how Batman (along with his pair of young helpers, including a young man known as Robin) keeps up his aura of mystery (think fake teeth to make him look demonic)...







That's my list! Agree? Disagree? Let me know!