A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Marvel Universe

“It’s all over, Tech!” Batman declared. He glanced to his right and saw Commissioner Gordon fleeing the Mad Hatter’s warehouse lair with the Mayor’s daughter, Catherine, in tow.

The of the Mayor’s daughter had gripped the city. It had taken Batman days to find the Hatter’s lair. When he finally did track down where Jervis Tetch was hiding the innocent Catherine, he discovered the college-aged girl wearing a frilly powder blue and white ‘Alice’ dress. She was having tea with the twisted Hatter. Batman had tried to get through to the girl, but she had been heavily hypnotized into serving the warped villain. Not only that, but the Mad Hatter had mind-controlled several Gotham City PD officers as well. They each wore their uniforms, but also had been fitted with cheap, plastic masks of the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Queen of Hearts and other characters from Alice in Wonderland. They had been brainwashed into being the mad villain’s own personal guards so he and his new Alice could be left alone. Tetch had ordered the officers to kill Batman or anyone else that would ruin his fun on sight. In the fight, the Hatter and Catherine had tried to make a quick escape. He wanted desperately to corrupt the poor girl even further into becoming his perfect mate. His very own Alice.

It would have worked, too.

Batman had been busy fighting the Gotham PD officers, and was trying to dispose of them in a way that wouldn’t do them lasting harm. The Hatter had seen this as an opportunity to make a quick exit, but had been stopped by Commissioner Gordon at gunpoint. The longtime lawman had clocked Jervis Tetch in the skull with the butt of his pistol and had pried Catherine out of the demented villain’s clutches.

Currently, Batman stood glaring at the defeated Mad Hatter. The bodies of the Gotham City police officers were strewn around him on the warehouse’s floor.

“Callooh! Callay, Batman!” the Mad Hatter exclaimed. He looked frantically around for a way to escape his foe, who had begun to advance on the rail-thin man. The Hatter laughed wildly and quickly made his way up twisting metal stairs until he found himself on a high catwalk in the old abandoned factory. He looked down to Batman and shouted, “Why do you always insist on ruining my fun? Here I had everything under control. Nothing bad was going to happen to sweet Catherine. I was going to help her!”

“You only ever want to help yourself,” Batman huffed, he grabbed his grappling hook from his utility belt and shot it upwards. In an instant, the Dark Knight had soared up to the catwalk and was face to face with the Mad Hatter.

The Hatter, meanwhile, had grabbed a pipe off the ground and swung it at the Caped Crusader’s head. Batman dodged the blow, and made short order of knocking the weapon from Tetch’s gloved hands. He then backhanded the villain in the face, before grabbing him by the collar and slamming him down onto the cold metal of the catwalk.

“Easy does it, Bats! Gordon already rang my bell earlier. Don’t want to be a copy cat now, do we?” Tetch hissed through the intense pain. He then laughed and looked around at the catwalk which hung from the ceiling, “Is this thing even stable?”

Batman balled up his fists and reigned them down on Tetch’s face. He punched Jervis Tetch until the Alice in Wonderland-obsessed criminal was beaten to a bloody pulp. Half-conscious, Tetch rolled over onto his stomach and attempted to crawl away. Batman rose up and was shocked that the Hatter was somehow still conscious.

“You’re going back to Arkham,” Batman stated, “There’s nothing you can do can stop that.”

Suddenly, a loud booming sound echoed in the warehouse. Both the Batman and the Mad Hatter looked around for its source. The deafening, vibrating sound slowly died down and in its place was replaced by a chaotic crackling noise. Then it happened. Just below the catwalk, it seemed as if all of reality was being torn away in a brilliant flash of white and blue light. Both hero and villain stared down at the disturbance and saw that it was forming a hole.

Batman couldn’t believe his eyes at what he was seeing. For the Mad Hatter, a man who sometimes believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast each day, what he saw sent an absolute thrill through his badly beaten body. Here it was. His very own rabbit hole to fall down and become lost in. It was either that or to go back to Arkham Asylum. He didn’t even hesitate.

Batman saw Tetch make his move, but it was too late. He reached out just as Jervis Tetch rolled himself off the catwalk, and fumed silently as the crazed laughter of the Mad Hatter could be heard above all the noise as the villain fell directly into the swirling vortex below. Once Tetch was absorbed by the inky darkness inside the temporal disturbance, the black hole then closed in on itself. The swirls that had been raging fizzled out and returned the warehouse to normal. Batman could only gaze down in disbelief at what he had just experienced. Then another thought entered his mind.

Jervis Tetch, the Mad Hatter, was gone. Where he would end up, he didn’t know.

The Dark Knight’s brilliant and inquisitive mind quickly snapped to deducing what had just happened. This disturbance didn’t seem like a transportation wave. It seemed much more like a temporal disturbance, or rip in space and time. No, not a rip, the Dark Knight thought. It was a hole. He recalled the works of Lewis Carrol and how Tetch was always so obsessed with the concept of Alice and Wonderland. Alice had fallen down a rabbit hole to get to Wonderland, and now Tetch had found his very own rabbit hole.

A multitude of questions sparked in the World’s Greatest Detective’s mind. What were the odds of this occurring at this given moment? Was it some unknown plot by a greater power that would mean the world harm? Was it simple coincidence? Batman shook his head in disbelief. Despite all the questions, he kept returning to two main points.

Where had Jervis Tetch’s rabbit hole taken him?

And if it was a new reality, would that world be ready for him?

**********

It was dark. Completely dark and silent. Completely dark and silent and the Mad Hatter didn’t know how long he fell. For the mad villain it almost seemed peaceful. Except for the Mad Hatter, he had always found trouble actually finding peace. His mind was a storm of utter chaos and soon, frantic thoughts began to fill his head.

Where was he going?

What was this place?

Was he even alive?

A toothy grin filled his gaunt face and wondered if Batman had finally done it. Had he beaten him so badly that he was dead? Was this...

**********

There was a bright flash of light and a bizarre-looking figure landed with a thud on the platform inside the lab. It caught Reed Richards, and his wife, Susan Storm-Richards, by surprise. Two H.E.R.B.I.E. robots flew over to check the man’s vitals. Sue had her hand over her mouth in shock and her brow was furrowed in concern for the poor, man. He looked like he had been bludgeoned half to . Reed, on the other hand, rose off his chair in a jolt. He was far more focused with the way the man was dressed. A large top hat, the crazed red hair, the shabby green coat, a maroon bowtie with yellow polka-dots and checkered pants. Reed had always been a well-read man and he made the connection immediately.

“What in the name of Lewis Carrol?” Reed Richards asked, and turned to look questioning at the Invisible Woman.