It seems like one of the favorite topics to debate among both gearheads and comic geeks (and especially gearheads who are also comic geeks) is which Batmobile is best. A lot of times it comes down to people who favor Tim Burton’s version of the Dark Knight’s ride and those who love the Tumbler from Christopher Nolan’s trilogy.
Check out Shaq’s Superman here.
But there are many more versions of the Batmobile in the comics, including a monster truck used by the Caped Crusader during the Road to No Man’s Land event right after Gotham is tragically struck by a catastrophic earthquake. Yet it seems everyone either never knew such a thing existed or has forgotten all about it.
Batman rolls out hard in his monster truck to get through all the rubble and other obstacles that keep most vehicles from traversing certain parts of the ruined city. Led by Oracle, he’s rushing to stop Mad Hatter and Narcrosis from releasing a cloud of toxic chemicals over the city, turning the survivors into mindless zombies.
Yeah, the plot’s a little ridiculous but it’s a comic book and so it works. And Batman’s monster truck is outfitted with a rocket launcher for clearing rubble that comes in handy later.
A few issues later in the Road to No Man’s Land event, the monster truck Batmobile makes another appearance. This time, Nightwing rides shotgun with the Dark Knight as they seek to disperse an angry mob that’s trying to raid a government relief camp. Cannons mounted to the roof shoot a mixture of turpentine and bat guano dyed green as a form of crowd control and marking those who are rioting.
The sheer utility of the monster truck Batmobile is impressive. While one artist portrays the tires as the size of those you’d find on earth movers at a mine, another draws it in more Monster Jam proportions. Both are great and we’d love to see this, the unsung and perhaps best Batmobile of all time, make an appearance again, maybe even in a movie. But that probably won’t happen. Sad.
There was a Batman monster truck that FELD Motorsports launched back in 2006 for Monster Jam events. Maybe it was inspired by the comic book version but it doesn’t really look like it in any way.
Also, there’s an alternative timeline where Bruce Wayne’s consciousness was uploaded into a self-driving monster truck called Batmobeast and the whole world was like a Mad Max fever dream. That’s part of the Batman Who Laughs storyline and isn’t the weirdest thing in it, somehow.
