By d. emerson eddy — I'm a firm believer that some of the best Batman stories are steeped in the supernatural and the occult. There's a darkness inherent in Batman that tends to work well in a horror or spooky setting. Even when that horror goes from understated to overt action like in something like the Red Rain trilogy, it still works. Blending the Bat and the spooky has given us everything from the Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale Halloween Specials collected in Haunted Knight to series like Ray Fawkes & Ben Templesmith's Gotham by Midnight. There's something deeply appealing about it. Which leads me to one of my favourites, “Sanctum” in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #54 by Mike Mignola, Dan Raspler, Mark Chiarello, and Willie Schubert.

In many ways, you could consider this a dry run for some of the themes and ideas that Mike Mignola would explore later in Hellboy. Batman is joined in the middle of a fight with a devotee of a bigger bad, during which he inadvertently knocks the baddie into a wrought iron fence, impaling the baddie, and himself falling through the roof of a mausoleum, landing on the grave of the baddie's boss, Osric Drood. Wacky hijinks ensue as Batman is transported into a kind of quasi-purgatory where Drood is awaiting resurrection through Batman's blood. We learn about Drood's membership in the Order of the All-Seeing Eye as he plumbed the depths for occult knowledge. Here “Sanctum” gives a wonderful mix of Gothic Horror, the occult, secret societies, and even some Lovecraftian nightmares that we'll see in different forms and degrees in Mignola's later work. Still, it works incredibly well as it's own self-contained Batman story.

It's fun the way that Raspler and Mignola play off of Batman's dogged determination to rely on empirical facts and evidence, even in the face of seemingly supernatural events, leading him to rationalize everything otherworldly that happened. So too does it double as a bit of a character study of Batman as it explores how Drood tries to manipulate the guilt that Bruce might feel over the death of his underling.

All of it pulled together incredibly by the gorgeous artwork from Mignola and Chiarello. There's just sheer joy looking at Mignola's art here, following through some gorgeous action sequences, the details in the architecture of Drood's Victorian purgatory, and the tentacles. It's that mix of shape and shadow, blending bits of Kirby and Simonson with his own verve, that makes Mignola's Batman shine here. With the largely flat color schemes of blue and green that Chiarello uses throughout the story, the linework just pops with spooky atmosphere. There's a sicklieness to the appearance and color of Drood's presentation that give the impression more of a threatening infection, adding greatly to the tone of the story. When you add Willie Schubert's jagged word balloons and somewhat off-kilter typeface for the dialogue here, this becomes a well-realized, spooky little tale.

Overall, Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #54 by Mignola, Raspler, Chiarello, and Schubert is one of the high points in the first five years of the series, when pretty much everything in the series was a high point. The tone and atmosphere of this horror tale is spot on, showing some amazing things that you can do in a single issue story.

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #54

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #54
Story: Mike Mignola & Dan Raspler
Words: Dan Raspler
Pictures: Mike Mignola
Colorist: Mark Chiarello
Letterer: Willie Schubert
Publisher: DC Comics
Featuring art by Mike Mignola! Batman's battle with a deranged killer in an old Gotham City graveyard leads to the shattering of an ancient crypt and the unleashing of an incredible supernatural force that threatens to consume the Dark Knight's sanity, his life...and his very soul!
Release Date: September 30, 1993
Price: $1.99 on Comixology | Also collected in The DC Universe by Mike Mignola ($12.99)

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d. emerson eddy is a student and writer of things. He fell in love with comics during Moore, Bissette, & Totleben's run on Swamp Thing and it has been a torrid affair ever since. His madness typically manifests itself on Twitter @93418.