Randy Lofficier

The Reaching Hand had a Detective Wayne where people are being scared to death. Rockumentary was, I guess, Clark, Ollie, Barry, and Arthur as the Beatles, heh, but also turns the DC Universe into a music universe, pretty cool (heh, even here Harley and Ivy were ‘Alternative’). The Babysitter one was-- heh- The Incredibles eat your heart out. Vigilantes in 3B was… weird. Barbara and Dinah in the same apartment going after Catwoman. Superman Jr. Is No More has Junior quitting, but, coming back when his Dad dies. ScandalGate has a President Superman, and was very very drippy and weird. World’s Apart was… dude, yikes. Silver Age Elseworlds were all short cool stories. Dark Night of the Golden Kingdom is in the future where Superman has lost his nerve? It was different. Metropolis, like the movie not the city, was interesting. Batman Nosferatu was what I was expecting as well as sorta being a sequel to Metropolis. Blue Amazon is also a companion to the previous two, and just as weird. And then there’s JLA Act of God. That was okay, I liked some of it, but didn’t like the Wonder Woman/Superman stuff.

It was a fun bunch of stories and I’m psyched that they’re collecting all of these sorts of stories, because sometimes they’re hard to find.… (mer)

Batman: Nosferatu, written by Randy & Jean-Marc Lofficier with art by Ted McKeever, is the middle book in DC's German expressionist Elseworlds trilogy. The first book is Superman's Metropolis and the third is Wonder Woman: The Blue Amazon. This volume draws upon Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. As the three are interconnected, there are certain plot elements in this book that only make sense if the reader has read the Superman volume. Further, despite borrowing elements from German expressionist cinema, the books are set in an unclear time period that seems to borrow from the times of those films and some uncertain future. While the concept is certainly interesting, the execution is rushed and the story jumbled. Worse, McKeever's art is less expressionistic than ugly. It looks like a poor imitation of Mike Mignola, who would certainly have done a better job with more visual consistency. Fans who are curious may find this an interesting experiment, but it lives up to the Elsewords description: "Heroes are taken from this usual settings and put into strange times and places - some that have existed or might have existed and other's that can't, couldn't, or shouldn't exist."… (mer)