Sunday Special: Batman 1939: The Dangers of Being Cold

Title: Batman 1939: The Dangers of Being Cold
Author: Stewart M
Media: Comic Book
Topic: Batman
Genre: Can’t find one (there was a fanfiction upload at one point, but that seems to have disappeared), so let’s call it Mystery/Adventure
URL: Here you go
Recommended by BatJamags

“Oh, Bats is doing a Sunday Special? He must’ve finally gotten through the Backlog of Doom?”

Yeah, no. We’ve still got three more Shadow Warriors chunks and three more fics (all of which are long as balls) to clear before that happens (not to mention any seasonal riffs I break all that up with), assuming I don’t get any further during that time. I just wanted to inject a little positivity into the proceedings before we… proceed.

So, my new tradition (which I actually came up with in September but like hell am I going to go back and screw over the scheduling of my riffs that are already done to implement it) is that I’m going to recommend a good fic between each of my bad fics. Until I run out of good fics, which won’t take overwhelmingly long because I don’t read all that much fanfiction outside of what I do for the Library. But I’m hoping this’ll motivate me to find some more good ones.

Today’s recommendation is a Batman fic because I’m kind of extremely predictable like that. The premise of the fic is that Batman’s first outing as Batman was his real-world publication date of May, 1939, though characters introduced much later like Slade Wilson and Amanda Waller are also featured. The plot concerns a string of corpse thefts escalating into murder, which Batman traces back to a military base outside of Gotham. He’s forced to recruit Catwoman to help him break in and figure out what the corpses are being used for.

It features fantastically intricate worldbuilding, excellent pacing, gripping tension, awesome fight scenes (but not too many), and Amanda Waller being hilariously badass as usual. Also, lots of cutesy little references to stuff (mostly stuff that’s actually relevant to DC continuity, and even the external references are still fairly on-topic), which you could view as a good or bad thing depending on your point of view and how many of them you catch.

There are two sequels. The first one, which wasn’t finished when I read it, is actually a Wonder Woman crossover, but I don’t remember the plot very clearly. I haven’t seen the third and most recent installment at all.

Overall, the original in particular is easily the best fanfic I’ve ever read, and I can’t recommend it enough. I’ll see you guys next time with a considerably less well-written Batman fic.

*SLAM!*