It's 1998 and the Batman writers have noticed The X-Files is really popular. So Bats gets abducted while out for a drive and spends the rest of the book trying to work out if aliens are real.

Alan Grant never quite squares that with the fact Batman has met tons of aliens (not least Superman), but I don't care: for this story, Batman needs to be a sceptic and so a sceptic he will be. The DC Comics universe has always been pretty plastic anyway.

I love it when Batman gets shoved into some faddy new format, whether it's Predator crossovers, kung fu action, or UFO conspiracy thrillers. There's something endlessly appealing about grumpy old Batman, whose ambition is to take down crime in Gotham City, getting dragged into these gimmicky fun adventures against his will. You wanna be a hero? Well you're gonna have to have some fun, boy!

And in the 90s that meant getting a probe up your bum (fun fact: reports of alien abductees being anally probed only became common after colonoscopies were introduced in the 1960s). This was the same year Lara Croft went to Area 51 and climbed aboard an alien spaceship. As well as The X-Files there was the famous 'alien autopsy' video in 1995, Men in Black in 1997, and any number of indulgent documentaries. (The UFO fever seems to have petered out after 9/11 gave the conspiracy theorists something else to worry about – though not before the 39 members of the Heaven's Gate cult tragically committed group suicide in the belief their souls would board a passing alien spacecraft.)

Anyway, there were a lot of people getting very worried about this stuff in 1998. As Batman proudly tells Alfred: "According to what I've accessed on the internet [sic] the UFO phenomenon appears to have been with us for virtually all recorded history!" Presumably he also found out a lot about the Grateful Dead and some pretty lo-res pornography. (I hope he doesn't still try and solve all threats to Gotham by just googling them...)

But I love it. I love the po-faced, zeitgeist-riding madness of it. I love it slightly less when it goes a bit psychedelic around the midway point and a floating hippie begins throwing illusory Bruce Lees at the Caped Crusader, but it did remind me of Batman: Arkham City – and I love that. ( )

A "Batman" graphic novel about what happens when Batman finds that he has been abducted by aliens, in the urban legend sense. Interesting in concept, but a very convoluted story that leaves a lot of loose ends. I'm not all that impressed with the artwork either. ( )