DC’s “Elseworlds” label, which is unfortunately used relatively sparingly, is all about alternate-universe versions of existing characters. Not to be confused with Marvel’s “What If?” (a thing you know I love if you’ve been reading this newsletter since… December), which are built around a single divergence point from regular canon — Deadpool becomes Venom, Wolverine becomes Deadpool, Spider-Man goes to Best Buy, etc.

I think Elseworlds is more fun, because you can go totally wild, and this week’s book is a good example of that. 1997’s “Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stone” is set in a space colony in the far future, far enough that nobody’s quite sure if superheroes were ever real or if they’re just fictional characters. A girl with magic powers named Jama has received a premonition that a terrible cataclysm (a “giga-clysm!”) is coming at the hands of demonic monsters, and so she assembles a group of other teenagers that lines up with a similar team from history (or is it mythology?) that matches up with this level of demonic threat.

They don’t ever really explain what she’s talking about, which is a cute touch, but she’s referring to the first adventure of George Pérez and Marv Wolfman’s New Teen Titans, when Robin, Cyborg, Starfire, Beast Boy, and Raven teamed up to battle Raven’s demon father Trigon. Jama figures that, if she can exactly recreate the circumstances that brought the Teen Titans together, then she’ll be able to avert the disaster. After all, the whole thing with superheroes is that they always win… right?

Jama recruits a girl named Gabrielle with a cyborg body (giving her super-strength, like Alita) and a boy named Hikarimono who was killed and resurrected by some kind of energy-based alien entity — giving him the power to shoot energy beams and stuff. That makes her Raven, Gabrielle is Cyborg, and Hikarimono is Starfire, leaving one missing piece: A “nigh-omnipotent muscle boy in spandex.” (There’s no Beast Boy equivalent, for some reason.)

To accomplish that, she implants an AI personality based on a fictional/historical superhero into her ex-boyfriend, a dopey jock named Alec who wears a video shirt that constantly changes to show an image of a different anime-esque scene— which features some neat Easter eggs. He’s obviously set up to be the Robin/Nightwing of the team, but it turns out that the personality Jama gives him is actually a recreation of Batman himself, and he has long since accepted that he is just a digital personality that gets implanted into a body when people are in danger — he doesn’t know if he’s real, or if he was ever real at all, and he’s fine with it.

It’s kind of the ultimate evolution of Batman: He doesn’t have to pretend he has a real life, he doesn’t have to worry about the Bat-family, he just has to show up, put on a mask, and do superhero stuff. He’s also weirdly a comic relief character, since he’s so familiar with the superhero tropes that Jama is trying to evoke that he can tell when they’re off-base, like when Jama gives everyone horrible superhero codenames (Captain Thug, Prosthetic Lass, and Dead Prettyboy) and impractically tight and revealing superhero costumes (Batman, as Captain Thug, quips that he’s glad she didn’t find out about capes). He also knows that he’s there to be Robin, not Batman, so he makes an effort to be a little friendlier than he otherwise would.

The whole book is just so much fun. It’s a gentle deconstruction of superhero tropes in general and The New Teen Titans specifically, but it’s also presented with the perspective of a version of Batman who has an extra level of meta-awareness. Also, Batman as Captain Thug has an incredibly cool and silly design, with armored boots, a domino mask, and a leather jacket covered in patches with Jama’s name and face.

The comic ends on an interesting downer note that could’ve been expanded in a cool way if the story had gone on, but it’s still a nice bit of commentary as a one-off. It turns out that being a superhero isn’t all it’s cracked up to be — or at least that’s what happens when your team has a Batman instead of a Nightwing. Being a downer is his whole thing.

I’ve been rewatching Arrow, so let’s bust out the Team Olicity buttons we bought semi-ironically (not ironically at all) at Hot Topic 10 years ago and talk Green Arrow. As always, click the suggester button below to suggest a topic idea, click the button below that to subscribe/read the archives, and click the button below THAT if you’d like to donate a couple of bucks.