10 essential Batman comics from the last decade
These are the most compelling recent places to start with the Caped Crusader, along with noteworthy related titles involving Catwoman and more
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Ask for a list of essential Batman comics and you’re likely to get a list of books from decades ago. From The Dark Knight Returns to A Death In The Family, Year One to The Killing Joke, many of the most famous Batman books in pop culture are from the ’80s. Having a passing knowledge of these books can help people understand how Batman is usually portrayed, but some—perhaps even most—of what made them innovative and important at the time they were published is out of date, and in some cases no longer even canon for the character.
Comics featuring Batman are easy to come by, but decades of backstory (to say nothing of repetitious titles and changing numbering conventions) can make finding where to start difficult at best. If you were to begin with the most recent Batman #1, for example, it would only take you back to 2016. The one before that came with the launch of The New 52 in 2011, with little guidance on how linked they are during the intervening years. The last decade of Batman has largely been defined by three men: Scott Snyder, who launched the character into the New 52 continuity; Tom King, whose run was in some ways defined by Batman’s romance with Catwoman; and James Tynion IV, who brought new characters and new perspective to the Batman franchise. If you’d like to dive into the best of the more recent Batman runs, it’s impossible to go wrong with any title on this list.
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It’s always nice to see Batman Eternal and Batman & Robin Eternal get some love, they’re severely underrated. B&RE in particular is one of my favorites.But my favorite story from the ‘main’ Batman series in the past decade is probably the Joker War arc from #86-105 of the current volume. I generally don’t like the comics versions of Joker and Harley, but Tynion totally sold me on them here. It got me invested enough to buy the current Harley Quinn series.
At first I was actually really taken back that Tynion isn’t listed here as he is one of the three centrals writers on the book over the past decade, but thinking it might be partially because of not wanting to include recent stuff and the fact that he didn’t have such a long run due to his own choice. As well as these things being subjective, although it still feels odd to ignore The Joker War for multiple reasons.
However, I would still argue that in retrospect you really can’t include King without also counting in Tynion as it is one of the weirdest dynamics. While Snyder’s run is a masterpiece that stands separate from the others, Tynion’s run at times feels really reactionary and corrective to decisions made during King’s run. As a result, when looking at them together it really feels like this debate about the character of both Batman and the setting as well as what they should be.
I liked Tynion’s run on Detective much more than his Batman run, and I’m surprised to not see it here, as the Bat-family dynamics in it are so interesting.
I liked Joker War for the most part but there’s one scene in it (or maybe it was in the prelude to Joker War) where Joker gives some big monologue to Batman (its when they’re in the movie theater), but it’s very much winking at the reader too, talking about how people don’t really want anything different and I wanted to scream. Like, fuck you Tynion, I would LOVE if people would take a break from Joker stories for a while and try some new ideas, don’t use the clown to accuse me because you can’t come up with something fresh.
Joker War was kind of a weird spot because Tynion went into it believing DC was going to do another reboot and this was going to be the for real final battle between these versions of Batman and Joker. It’s also supposedly why Alfred had been recently killed, it was all ending anyway.
I would have put Zero Year on there above Snyder’s All-Star book, ZY is probably the best Bruce Wayne Batman story Snyder’s ever written.
Additionally Damian didn’t die in Death of the Family- in fact no named character did. The end of the story was a metaphorical breaking of the Batfamily’s trust with Bruce which got reverted very quickly. Damian died at the end of Morrison’s Batman Inc.
I’m a little bit surprised by the inclusion of War of Jokes and Riddles here. Not because I disliked it personally, although I do despise the King run on the title, but because I would argue that even within that run that’s not really the one that I’ve seen hyped the most. Actually the opposite, and this might just be my own limited perception of how things were received, I almost felt that was the initial turning point on King’s run and how it was discussed.Want to stress, though, I do think that something from King’s run should be included here regardless of how one feels about it, just a curious choice. Still, these are subjective listings, that will always be admitted.
WoJaR is very much when I checked out on King’s run…but I never even managed to get into Snyder’s “Morrison’s Concepts, Ideas, and Story Beats But Grimdark and EXXXTREEEEME” stuff.
I liked King’s run, but I also agree that War of Jokes and Riddles wasn’t great. I got the same feeling from it that I get from a lot of the Brian Michael Bendis stories: Someone had a great set-up for a story but failed to sketch in enough plot details to make it seem real, and despite a number of good moments it deflates at the end. The best thing to come out of it was the Kite Man characterization.
If we had seen the whole story from the point of view of the low-level goons, where not understanding the whole of what was happening or why would have been part of the atmosphere, it may have worked better.
War of Jokes and Riddles suffered a lot from telling, not showing. It’s largely Batman recapping an epic war between his rogues gallery from years back, leading to a supposed shocking twist that doesn’t really pay off. There are some highlights, and the art is fantastic, but it was mostly a letdown.
Im very surprised that Sean Murphy’s White Knight isn’t here. It’s a standalone batman story with incredible art about Joker being cured and Batman losing his mind. It’s easily my favourite Bat story of the last decade. Fast paced, twisty, unpredictable, political and fresh. I feel like you could have lost one of the many Snyder books to make room. (And for me, Black Mirror is the best Snyder Batman comic)
Oh yeah, White Knight is fantastic. I think it would make a great animated film.
Agreed, White Knight was great, as were its two follows ups; Curse of the White Knight and White Knight Presents: Harley Quinn. They manage to take so many familiar Bat-verse characters and make them feel fresh again while also offering poignant commentary on how the lines between hero and villain can become so blurred in a place like Gotham. Also, I highly recommend the White Knight series to anyone who has ever asked “why doesn’t Bruce Wayne just use his money and influence to improve Gotham instead of prowling around beating people up as Batman?” since it addresses that question directly and (in my opinion) in a pretty satisfying way.
I agree with all that, except I haven’t got round to the sequels yet. I’m really looking forward to them.
I didn’t like White Knight that much but then it did have the scene where basically every character got to drive a Batmobile and like every one from across film/TV history was there and I just had to go “okay this rules”
Fantastic artwork, borderline unreadable otherwise. It wants to be the best of all worlds, and is somehow the worst of everything it robs from.
Vol 2 of Batman Incorporated was better than a fair number on this list.
Yep – I’d even go so far as to say that Creature of the Night and Catwoman are the only stories listed here that reach Batman Inc’s level, even as Morrison’s intended story was eviscerated by DC in favor of Snyder’s Dark and Edgy remix of their run.
I haven’t read too much of the newer Batman stuff since Snyder left some years back. I quite liked his run overall.The Future state stuff has been good, though it felt like I missed an issue which introduced the characters and their relationships.It’s been fun to go back and read some of the lesser-known storylines that I loved as a kid of only own one or two issues of – A really great and super underrated one I went back to this week was 1990’s The Penguin Affair from Marv Wolfman and Alan Grant. Great art from Jim Aparo, Norm Breyfogle and Mark Bright particularly.
I am pleasantly surprised by the new The Knight story line. Yes, it’s Batman’s origin, yet again, but it’s written by Chip Zdarsky, and it miraculously mines some new angles of this well-worn tale. The Killing Joke is mentioned here as one of the canon Batman stories … does it still hold that place? I recently re-read it, and it really has not aged well at all. It’s just an ugly story …
Apparently Batman week is slideshow week. Can you do better than a bunch of lists?
“Batman Week” is mostly “Reposting old content as if it were new”, this article being an exception.
Dick’s time as Batman, though I am realizing that was more than 10 years ago. They were the best stories of the past 13 years, then.Slideshows are awful, please stop making them.
Court of Qwls is one of the times as an adult where I actually freaked out reading a comic book. When I saw Batman broken and beaten I was thinking “get up Bruce, it can’t end like this, you can’t lose like this. Where the fuck is Dick to save him!!!!”It was so well done and then part 2 also hits the right note in having Alfred involved and then most importanly him and Grayson being the baddest team ever (as they are) taking on everything at once.Also Death of the Family is a great read as well as it’s ending of no one forgiving Bruce for well, being Bruce and a dick was great. With the one thing that they knew the fans wanted, the only person who forgave him quickly and knew why he is the way he is, was again Grayson.Can’t wait for the movie on Thursday and before I die, I want a live action set of Batman movies that lead to him and Grayson as a team when Dick is the leader of the Titans as Nightwing!
Court of Owls was maybe the best combo of Batman writing and art I’ve read, at least in the last 20-30 years. I mean a perfect synergy between the story and how it looked, particularly the Talons. I basically stopped reading comics around the time Snyder’s run ended, but this is a pretty good list judging by the stuff I’ve read. Anyone else stop reading comics after trying to go digital? It seems ridiculous to spend 4 bucks on 10 comics each that will take me 30 minutes to read, but, I really do miss actual, physical comic books.
I really haven’t read comics on a regular since 1995 (I’m almost 50 now) but I read events when they have come out since the 2000’s that seem to be interesting.I actually did try and read a couple of digital issuse but it bugged me for some reason, I prefer the physical comic.
Sean Murphy’s “White Knight” books are fantastic.
Most of these I can get behind but Metal and Death Metal are awful, hell I’d argue potentially some of DC’s worst comics in the past few years, period. It’s Snyder engaging in some of his worst tendencies (to me at least, for instance he has a real hard-on for Joker and writes a lot of stories that are more based around a feeling of “that would be awesome” then they are “that makes sense”) with a bunch of overly grimdark nonsense that wouldn’t feel out of place in a 13-year-old’s Tumblr instead of a grown ass professional writer. For real the Batman Who Laughs is just The Worst and I pray to God he never appears again… even though I know he will at some point because that’s just the way of things.
I’m a big fan of The Shadow, so I’ll have to check those books out.
I’m happy to see the recent Batman-Catwoman Christmas Special here. We’ll see how well King can stick the landing on the whole series, but I found the one-off to be very affecting. At one year per page, it was reminiscent of the opening sequence in “Up”. The book was also a wonderful tribute to John Paul Leon.
The basic problem with trying to find a definitive take on the Catwoman character is that, unlike Batman, there really is no definitive conception of what Selina Kyle is or represents as a person. That means that every writer that comes along reimagines Selina into whatever he or she wants her to become. For one writer, she is the wayward, unacknowledged child of one of the gang bosses, whose sole focus is on her father. For another writer, she is a greedy thief, who is mostly defined by that greed. For another writer, she is a balancing force for Bruce Wayne’s broodiness and she is entirely defined by that relationship with Bruce. Etc.
Unless there is communal agreement on what exactly Selina is as a person, Selina will always be nothing more than whatever the current story requires her to be and when a character is written that way, there can never be a ‘definitive’ version of the character.