Batman and Dracula : Red Rain by Doug Moench
Book review
by John Goodrich

Rating:

You always knew it should happen; the two Bat People finally have their showdown. Dracula, Lord of the Undead, invades Gotham City, and comes face to face with The Batman. The potential behind the meeting of Bruce Wayne and Dracula is endless--a clever writer could easily fill a trilogy of gripping, intelligent novels with the two of these characters meeting. Both are lords in darkness; but while Dracula is a warlord who dreams of conquest, Batman is a loner whose vision of justice is his guiding light. And so it is unfortunate that they come together, at last, in Red Rain.

The plot is utterly unsatisfactory. Dracula comes to town, and so does his enemy- a female vampire named Tanya. She and her cohorts of vampires wage a losing war against Dracula and his rapidly-growing minions of the night. Batman's role is annoying passive for the first half of the book, since he's no match for Dracula physically. All in all, it adds up to a very unsatisfactory story.

But what does save this from being a one-star piece of firewood is Kelley Jones' art. It is beautiful, wicked art, full of odd angles and exquisitely detailed human figures. But even this cannot make the Red Rain story great. It can't even make it good. You'd probably do well to simply pass this graphic novel over. It does honor to neither Dracula nor Batman.