New Year, New Comics — Sinking My Teeth Into ‘Batman & Dracula: Red Rain’
by Tom Smithyman
Here’s my new year’s confession: I’m a massive Batman fan who’s never read Batman & Dracula: Red Rain.
I know! I know! I need to turn in my keys to the Batmobile and hang up my cowl in shame. But I can explain. When this graphic novel came out in 1991, I was pretty sick — and even embarrassed — about comics. I had been an avid reader in the 1980s, with Avengers as my go-to book. But the quality of comics in the early ’90s seemed to drop precipitously, and I was clearly too cool for these trifles any more.
When I got back into reading the funny books about a decade and a half ago, Red Rain never popped up on my lists (despite reading 20-30 years’ worth of Batman titles within a few months). So when my local comic shop recently offered a first edition of the graphic novel by writer Doug Moench, penciller Kelly Jones, inker Malcolm Jones III, and colorist Les Dorschied, I knew I needed to jump on it.
At a high level, I knew the Elseworlds story of Batman becoming a vampire to fight Dracula. But I had never actually found the time — or really even the desire — to read it cover to cover. And I’ll be honest with you, I can’t say that I loved it. For me, DC’s Elseworlds were always a bit too abstract for me. There are some good ones (Superman: Red Son, for example), but most were little more than distractions. (Oddly, I never felt that way about Marvel’s What If..?)
Moench’s story is fine, but nothing more than that. He had written Batman in the ’80s, then took a break from the character before coming back to Red Rain. If anything, Rain feels like an amuse bouche to the major 90s stories he contributed to, including Knightfall, Contagion, and Cataclysm.
For me, though, the biggest disappointment is Jones’ artwork. That probably feels like heresy coming from a Batfan, but while some of Jones’ work is stunning, a lot of it is more tentative. There is a great splashpage or two of his typically terrifying Batman, but too much of the character is confined to smaller panels on a crowded page. Let him spread his wings more — literally. Dracula, in particular, looks too much like a regular dude. I get trying to update him for modern times, but give the vamp a cape, for Pete’s sake!
Red Rain, of course, is the first of a Batman vampire trilogy, which also features Bloodstorm and Crimson Mist. If my LCS gets first editions of either, I might pick them up. Otherwise, I’ll focus on different titles in this new year.
