Batman: The Doomsday Prophecy

by Richard Wenk, José Delbo (Illustrator)

This Whichway book brings Batman back. The readers help Batman and the Boy Wonder choose paths that lead into all sorts of adventures with enemies such as the Joker, the Riddler, and Cat Woman. Reissued to tie-in with Warner Brother's spectacular summer movie release of Batman starring Michael Keaton.

Genres: Batman, Superheroes, Choose Your Own Adventure, Childrens, Comic Book

128 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published July 1, 1989

Reviews

[NickMohr · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining number of plots available in this “choose your own adventure” style Batman book, with several of his rogues gallery utilized. It avoids repetition at the cost of believability, since choosing for Batman to go one way or another changes details as important as who the villain behind it all is. If you can ignore that, it’s a fun read with a silver age comics tone.

[Nikky3 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I killed Batman 3 outta 4. :)

[Books And Crimson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cute & fun way to make your own choice to see how your version ends. I like that you can start over & try other options.

[Nick Jones · Rating 1 out of 5]

Even by the admittedly low standards of Choose Your Own Adventure style books, this one is awful. The overall goofy tone seems most similar to the Batman from Super Friends or the old Adam West show, but several endings have either Batman or the villains dying. Endings come out of nowhere, there's absolutely no knowing what any choice you make will lead to, and things are solved mostly through random illogical events. The story is completely different depending on which paths you take, with alternate villains being behind events and those villains plans being totally unique to each branch. At one branch point there's a whale that attacks a cruise ship, and whether the whale is a real whale that is being mind-controlled or actually a submarine that has been disguised as a whale changes depending on which way you choose to go; essentially, a totally new reality is being written as the story goes along, aggravating to me as an adult and likely confusing to the young readers this book was aimed at. Ridiculous contrivances abound even within that changing reality. In one path, The Joker has set a trap within a phone booth to capture Batman, despite the fact that he has no reason to believe that Batman will have to stop and make a phone call or the slightest idea where Batman would be even if he did need to make a call, it's literally a one-in-a-billion lucky break that Batman somehow managed to do precisely the thing that would make him fall into the Joker's trap. The entire book is ridiculous, incoherent, inconsistent, insulting to the intelligence of its intended young audience, and only worth reading to the extent that it is amusingly awful.