I never knew a wolf could cry

So, yesterday, I remembered the existence of a strange Elseworlds Batman oneshot that’s a loose adaptation of Phantom of the Opera. I love the Batman universe, and I’ve been a POTO fan for 18 years, so obviously I had to read it. This even takes place in the late 19th century!



If nothing else, I was hoping it would be an interesting little curiosity.

Unfortunately, reader, it was Very Bad.


This oneshot does not use the Batman characters in an interesting way, nor does it use the themes and plot points of POTO in an interesting way.

In fact, very strangely, we have two Phantom characters here, neither of which are used well.
First, we have Harvey Dent as a Phantom character. Sure, that makes a lot of sense upon first glance.

In this adaptation, Harvey is a dancer who has his face burned onstage. We later find out that he’s the secret admirer of the story’s Christine stand-in, Laura Avian. Unfortunately, Laura is a very flat, basic love interest.

Other than her and Harvey both being dancers, we really aren’t given any reason as to why he is infatuated with her.

This problem extends to Bruce’s role in the story, as he is somehow both a Raoul stand-in and a Phantom stand-in??

We learn that he knew Laura’s father in school. And … that’s really the only connection he has to her. Of course, he has a forced romance with her, and there is also no reason for him to develop feelings for her.

And there should be a reason, because he trusts her enough that he reveals his identity to her! The scene where he reveals his identity is … odd. The Batcave in this scene is very clearly based on the Phantom’s lair in the ALW musical, and Laura is wearing an outfit that is almost an exact copy of Christine’s dressing gown in the stage show.

Another weird detail in this scene is an inexplicable Hellraiser reference? Laura asks who he is, and Bruce says, “Angel to some, devil to others.”

That is almost an exact a quotation of Pinhead’s line in the first Hellraiser: “Angels to some, demons to others.”

I don’t know why this was added other than the fact that Hellraiser is also gothic and spooky.
Anyway, I digress.

The most clearly Phantom-y character, Harvey, is surprisingly not really sympathetic here at all. It seems that he goes mad because he’s disfigured now and not because he had pre-existing mental issues.

That could hypothetically work, but we don’t even see much of other people reacting in horror to his new appearance, so it isn’t as if he gradually goes mad from rejection and isolation. I guess he’s just so vain that he’s crazy now.

Bruce gets all the brooding sympathetic stuff you sometimes see with Phantom characters, which … sure, okay, Bruce is usually pretty brooding.

But by making your more obvious Phantom stand-in largely unsympathetic, you are very much ignoring the themes of the original story, ie the themes of social rejection, isolation, and redemption.

In the end, Harvey decides that if he can’t have Laura, then no one can, so he decides to drop the chandelier. Of course, Bruce saves Laura, and Harv is crushed by the chandelier instead.

So, yeah. This story was messy, rushed, underwhelming, and did not use any of its sources of inspiration well.

I think there is an interesting kernel of an idea here, but it didn’t execute the idea well.

I actually have an idea of what I think would be a better way to tell a POTO inspired story in the universe of Batman, which I shall expand on in a later post.