Review: Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Batman - Knightfall #1

Tales from the Dark Multiverse: Batman - Knightfall #1 by Kyle Higgins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Dark Multiverse, expanded upon after the mind-bending Dark Nights: Metal saga from Scott Snyder was an interesting concept, adding to the already expansive Batman Mythos.

Harkening back to the Infinite Crisis and more specifically to JLA: Earth 2 by Grant Morrison, as well as its much underrated by narratively brilliant Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths animated movie, the dark multiverse as its name implies, explores chaos theory.

For every major event which happened in the main DC continuity that we know, ones where the heroes were able to overcome great odds, and triumph over evil, there could be other alternate infinite realities, where the villains won, where evil triumphs, where the heroes fell.

Where the paragons of everything good, just and compassionate strayed from their moral compass and ended up consuming the very world and reality that they swore to protect.

Much like, soap bubbles that last for a moment and then burst to nothingness, these dark realities often imploded upon themselves. But what happens when the denizens of these doomed existences, claw their way into the light side of reality. Their very presence spreading the cancerous chaos which threatens to consume everything good and holy and worth preserving.

This concept has given the readers a litany of Elseworlds stories, where their beloved heroes fell to the dark side.

And this one-shot, exploring the butterfly effect of what would've happened, if the Dark Knight collapsed in face of his decisive battle against the usurper Azreal, paints the Black mirror version.

Quick and simple, the key takeaway of the story is a Batman who, following decades of imprisonment, torture and mental strain, succumbs to his failure, turning into an entity more dangerous than the villain he sought to vanquish.

A good read, which tickles that part of your reader's mind, that keeps asking the question, 'What if?'.

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