Survey of Batman comics

28 May, 2025

A friend over on Bluesky asked about comic collections to understand Batman and I realized I didn't want to try to type this into a series of microblogs. So, in an attempt at chronological order, a bunch of Batman collections that I think of when I think of surveying the history of that character.

Unless I say otherwise, these stories are available in collections under their own names.

Origins: Batman Chronicles

The Chronicles line is a bunch of trade collections DC makes reprinting the early years of their standout comics. Batman of course has several. I haven't read the Chronicles version myself -- I've read bits and pieces of the Kane and Finger run over the years -- but I have the first Wonder Woman Chronicles and it's nice, so I presume it'll be equally well put together.

You can't go wrong with Bill Finger's insane character design and... Bob Kane is there too. This is where a lot of the characters come from, one way or the other.

Lacuna 1: the 60s

I don't know much about the 60s comics, I'm afraid. From what I understand, the tv show reflected the comic pretty well until such a point where the writers kind of decided they didn't like the way people reacted to the show and began to change the comic away from the show's crystallization of Silver Age goofery.

the 70s: Detective Comics

Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams worked together throughout the 70s on a ton of DC comics, including Batman. They're probably most famous now for two stories that spawned two well known covers: the Green Lantern where a Black man asks GL what he's done for Black folks lately, when he does so much for green and blue folks (that is, space aliens). The other cover is the one where Speedy is shooting up.

O'Neil and Adams reached outside the internally coherent but batshit crazy silver age sealed sphere to bring comics back in touch with the world, while avoiding turning them into the, uh, the type of comics that would become popular in the 90s, let's say.

The actually worked on both Detective Comics and Batman; I chose that for the heading because they went back to the idea of Batman as a detective. Since they worked on so much other stuff at the same time, there's no single collection of just their stuff. But DC produced a Neal Adams Batman omnibus that has it all, I believe.

To be clear, this is where we get the character of Ra's al Ghul and Talia, so if for no other reason (there are many), this would be influential for that reason.

The 80s: the weird shit

Batman was one of the main characters in the huge seismic shift in superhero comics, of course. Tim Burton, after someone none-too-gently reminded him they'd fire him if he just did "Ratman" without telling anyone,¹ turned in a moody, visually appealing and "gritty" (whatever the fuck that means) version of the character, but shit like that had been happening in the comics as the Vertigo weirdos began to influence everyone.

Alan Moore: The Killing Joke

a short collection, which I do in fact have, The Killing Joke is probably one of the most influential Batman stories to date, setting up a lot of the long term influences, both thematic and practical, that we still have today. Spoiler but that's not why we're reading: the Joker goes on a rampage to try to turn Jim Gordon into also the Joker and winds up shooting Barbara Gordon, permanently paralyzing her. This leads her to stop being Batgirl and become Oracle, the brains of the Bat-family, running everything from the Batcave's computer. This also sets up the grim dichotomy of Batman and his villains, asking the question of whether Batman is encouraging them. There's a much talked about action at the end, that is only hinted at visually, that shows Moore, not breaking with tradition so much as just toying with it.

Grant Morrison: Arkham Asylum

This is apparently the best selling comic collection of all time, because DC shipped it out to bookstores as an attractive trade so they had something for their end displays when the fucking movie came out. So millions of people went into bookstores after seeing the movie and spotted this. It is fantastic, Morrison working with Dave McKean, who's more famous for working with a famous rapist. This is presumably not McKean's fault. Hilariously, in the edition I have, Morrison says Robin was supposed to be in this comic but McKean, who was already mad they were making him draw a superhero at all, said he absolutely refused to draw Robin.

At any rate, the story is just that Batman heads into Arkham Asylum after the inmates break loose and take over. He stumbles onto fragments of things left behind by the guy who built the place, and there's a worrying subthread that this person was also crazy and somehow the house is cursed. Batman falls deeper and deeper into a nightmare. The Joker struts around in drag, highlighting how Batman hews just a bit too close to toxic masculinity. Morrison has said they wanted to write "Batman's nightmare he has every night." Apart from inspiring the wildly successful series of video games that began with Arkham Asylum, this comic also just delved deep into the basic assumptions about the character that people would start really interrogating about this time.

If I must: The Dark Knight Returns

I don't like this comic. I think Frank Miller lost his mind for a while there, and he's most famous maybe for just temporarily being very racist in 300 but this comic sucks too. However, it's wildly influential, and arguably is how we ended up with Batman Beyond in the 90s, so it's important.

In a dystopian future, Batman is retired and very, very angry. He's remembered as a weird legend, and nuclear armageddon is coming. Batman builds a mechanical suit so he can go back out there, starts simply murdering petty crooks, and eventually fights Superman for, uh, Reasons. Also, he gets a new Robin, a young girl in a poverty-stricken household who, I believe, we're supposed to infer is abused, but also just doesn't seem to like that her mother has sex in the other room.

Miller needed a therapist is what I'm saying to you.

A Death in the Family

Starlin and Aparo write up what I remember was the result of a poll? DC asked, if any Bat-Family character could or should die, who should it be? And they chose Robin. At this point Dick Grayson had quit and we had Jason Todd.

Hold on I just looked it up. So O'Neil was editor by this point, and fans hated Todd because he was... a simple rebellious teen. He thought they should write him out, and did a poll based on an SNL sketch.

At any rate, yeah, so the Joker fucking beats Robin to death with a crowbar. Todd came back eventually, as the Red Hood, and continues to this day I think, but they waited a long time to pull that stunt, so this really was "a superhero died. No, for real." And Todd's Red Hood is in all the Bat-stuff now, so this is what that character's about.

the 90s: stuff happens

This is when I was actually reading Batman comics, though I didn't read the best one in this section until grad school.

Spooky stuff: The Long Halloween

That's this one. Loeb and Sale turn in a cool, wickedly fucked up looking Batman story. Seriously, look up what the Joker looks like in this fucking thing.

The basic set up is there's a serial killer who only kills on holidays, and Halloween is coming up. Batman has to rinse through the usual suspects as well as work out what's going on, and shit is just very strange.

Medical stuff: Knightfall

Remember when Bane broke Batman's back? No, not in the movie, in the comics. Yeah, for real. It was a bad time. That drawing still lives in my head sometimes, oof.

At any rate, naturally there was a huge ripple effect in the comics. There was this guy, a martial artist I think, that had appeared in some comics before, and Batman recruits him to replace him when he, you know, can't do it anymore. Because of the spinal injury.

Azrael, as he was called, becomes Batman, and I think a lot of people dislike his whole plot, but I'll tell you what: that fucking Batman costume whips ass. No, go look for "Azrael Batman" in an image search. I may hate all the stuff that cribs from it, but honestly those drawings are sick as fuck.

The overall tension is that Azrael has no compunction about killing, but the rest of the Bat-Family is still around. And of course he's ruining Batman's reputation.

No Man's Land

Welcome to the end of the 90s. Literally, I looked this up too, this was just the entire Batman story for 1999.

What if a really huge fucking earthquake just ruined Gotham City? What if all the supervillains treated it like a Mad Max holiday, and because of those fuckers, the federal government actually has trouble getting relief in? That's basically this story. I think even in the 2010s they were still mentioning it as a significant moment in Gotham's history, in the comics.

Twenty-somethings

Lacuna 2: the noughties

Look, I went to college and started reading manga, I don't know what to tell you. I can't really speak to this period at all. The exception is that Grant Morrison was doing a bunch of JLA comics at the time, beginning in the late 90s, and those of course also feature Batman. But I don't think there's much there was that influential outside of just being good JLA stories.

Really several of the comics I'm about to recommend were late 2000s but bear with me, I was busy when they came out.

Batman: Hush

A friend did loan me one collection in school, though, this one. I had to look up who write it (Jim Loeb) because what I remember is what everyone remembers: Jim Lee drew it. And it looks great.

I'm reading a synopsis here because I couldn't remember why it was so influential other than the art. It's got an actual post-silver age use of the idea that Batman keeps kryptonite around to deal with Superman, as Poison Ivy ends up drugging Superman at one point.

The basic story is that someone is sabotaging Batman: not fighting, not trying to do Crimes, just, like, cutting the wire he swings on when he's chasing Killer Croc. Batman almost dies and has to have major surgery. The villain is Hush, a Darkman-looking mystery figure invented for the story who has unclear motives for wanting Batman dead. A future story will kind of crib from this, I think, with the character of Sexton the gravedigger, who is swathed in bandages, only to reveal a much more familiar character later.

2010s: peak Morrison flow

Batman: RIP

Seriously that's the name. What if Batman fucking died? Except, kind of not really. Hold on though.

This is another fucked up Morrison joint, where a group organizes the perfect killing of Batman, stripping him down until he's in a psychotic haze (from being drugged) on the streets, smearing the bat symbol on his chest. They enlist the Joker, who delivers one of the best supervillain adjacent monologues ever: he complains to them that his actions never have any rhyme or reason, they're meant to be total chaos. And every time, Batman figures out a rhyme and a reason, he assumes there's a plan and works it out and always manages to use that revelation to stop the Joker. He's fucking boxing the Joker into sensible thinking when the Joker is trying to escape that box.

So naturally Batman wins the day, but not before being literally buried in a box and needing to claw his way out. Naturally there was fallout from everyone temporarily thinking Batman was dead.

Son of Batman

Technically 2007, I see, but I didn't read it until later, and also as you'll find, it was more influential in the 2010s. So DC realized they should just let Morrison do whatever the fuck they wanted with Batman.

First, Morrison brought back Batman's kid, Damien Wayne -- featured way back in the 80s and totally forgotten about. Naturally he had this kid with Talia al Ghul, who's raised him to be an amoral killing machine. He wants to get to know his father, the perfect detective, and becomes Wayne's new Robin. There's a lot of hilarious tension where Damien can do the superhero stuff really really well but is a huge asshole (he's like 12 and also an assassin).

Final Crisis

OK so now let's kill Batman for real (also not really).

So Final Crisis is actually a huge crossover event, though mercifully, the actual story is self contained in Final Crisis. You don't have to read what was happening in the monthlies at the same time. Darkseid figures out the Death Equation and white space begins to eat at the edges of the pages as more and more superheroes are infected with zombie nihilism. Batman shoots Darkseid with a bullet that pierces time, and the blowback sucks Batman back into the past. Of course everyone assumes he's dead, which leads to...

Batman and Robin

Morrison again. Naturally Dick Grayson would take up the Batman mantle, but now he's saddled with Damien Wayne, who never really quite managed to figure out how to stop being a little shithead (affectionate). However, he does here.

Also, I want to specially call out Frank Quitely's art here. It's lovely, and there's a whole sequence where Dick Grayson, the former circus kid, fights a supervillain gang of circus "freaks" and fuck does Quitely knock it out of the park.

This is the one with Sexton the gravedigger I mentioned earlier.

The Return of Bruce Wayne

Literally what it's called. More Morrison. So Batman went back in time. He keeps sort of Quantum Leaping forward, bit by bit, by finding the hole he made. He realizes slowly he's in Gotham, and is accidentally shaping the history of the city -- until it is built into the dna of the city itself that a bat spirit will arise one day. He accidentally time shenanigans himself into existence basically. It's cool as shit.

Batman Incorporated

So Batmans's finally back from the past. Dick Grayson goes back to being Nightwing and now Damien, who had kind of really liked working with Dick, is resentful that this fucker who he doesn't know that well is back and taking over just because.

At the same fucking time, Batman realizes that "Batman" is a meme, and it works because it's a meme, and so he franchises it, with the full backing of his deep pockets and years of expertise. This is an excuse for Morrison to dive into the decades of strange alternate Batmen both in and out of continuity.

Court of Owls

Not Morrison this time. But they were still involved hilariously enough. OK, so in the wake of Final Crisis, DC decided to do the "New 52," where they'd reset every single comic to #1, and go from the beginning. Some of them were pretty good. Morrison was also writing Superman, and that story is great. Batman was given to Scott Snyder, and Greg Capullo returned to draw it. Capullo's art is exactly what you expect. Maybe Batman's a little too beefy, but he looks fucking cool.

Something funny here is that Morrison was still doing Batman Inc at this point -- which was not New 52. They just has this one comic that wasn't in their continuity at all because they were wisely just letting Morrison do whatever. They wrapped up Batman Inc in a way that gently shifted it into the new timeline though, just because they didn't want to be an asshole and thought it's fun if other people could draw on this stuff later.

I don't love Snyder, but these comics are good, and the Court of Owls lives on as a very influential group nowadays. The basic story is just another group coming to Gotham to try to take over, who naturally have it out for Batman because they're proactive.

The Blanks

I'm certain I've missed a lot of things here. I couldn't tell you without looking when Tim Drake first appears, or exactly when Red Hood comes back. I haven't touched on any of the other series, like Robin, Nightwing, Batwoman, or Batgirl. I'm fond of the Stephanie Brown era of Batgirl, but don't have any collections. The New 52 Batgirl is a lot of fun, just sort of suddenly allowing Barbara Gordon to walk again, but with memories of being wheelchair-bound for ages. It turns her kind of into "hipster Batgirl," insofar as she goes to college and moves into the hipster part of town. The art by Babs Tarr is fantastic.

But there are going to be even more influential stories, I'm sure. Hopefully someone else can help out with that.

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