absolute beginner's questions

City of Crime is fantastic and I wish there were a dozen other Batman stories like it

I am kind of a fan of Blind Justice, written by the scriptwriter of the first Burton movie, Sam Hamm, to go with the fiftieth anniversary. I seem to recall it is the opposite of a fan favourite though.

Also Gothic, GM's first Batman story, is fun.

the batman adventures series based on the bruce timm animated show had some fantastic stories, although obviously none of them are in dc universe continuity.

those greatest batman / greatest joker collections really are excellent tasters for the many permutations the characters have been through over the years.

i remember really enjoying greg rucka's detective run at the time.

Scott Snyder's Parliament of Owls stuff from the Johnsiverse shouldn't be overlooked.

Will anyone stan for Grant/Breyfogle or Starlin/Aparo runs in Detective or Batman?

breyfogle's batman visuals are some of my favourites, although it's been so long since i read the stories i can't be sure they're as good as i remember them. grant brought a bit of 2000ad weirdness to the books, like the ventriloquist and anarky. can't overlook the vitally important post-crisis introduction of ace the bat-hound either.

I read through a lot of Batman issues last year and enjoyed both. The Grant/Breyfogle run hit the right balance between gritty, freaky and funny, with lots of good one-shot villains. The Tulpa/Etrigan three-parter is simply awesome, as is the Tim Drake vs Scarecrow story when they switch over to Batman. The only downside is that, at times, Grant had a tendency for heavy-handed preachiness, but that's forgivable. Breyfogle suffered a stroke recently, terrible.

Starlin wrote Batman very much in the gritty street crime vein of Miller, and there were some great issues, although Ten Nights of the Beast is hilariously over the top at times (and worth a read for that very reason). The Wolfman run which followed wasn't so hot, but I guess he deserves credit for the emphasis on Bruce Wayne and Alfred as characters, who the other post-Crisis writers had largely ignored at that point.

I really like the two stories which appeared on Batman and Detective when the Grant/Breyfogle and Wolfman/Aparo teams switched over: Milligan's Dark City as mentioned above (Batman 452-454) and John Ostrander's meta-comic story in Detective 622-624, with covers by Dick Sprang!

I know he gets knocked a lot here, but Chuck Dixon also wrote some good stories with Graham Nolan and Tom Lyle on art. He could get pretty generic (and a lot of his run is spent on big crossover stories) but also wrote excellent issues like "A Bullet for Bullock", which I think is the only comic issue which got a straight adaptation in the Animated Series which came out after the show had begun.

Greg Rucka's post-NML run is really good, but it's more about the perspective on Batman from different characters, which is why Gotham Central was so good.

I'll second Blind Justice. And actually, City of Crime seems to be more of an "opposite of fan favourite" story, I've come across a few who consider it the worst Batman story ever! Wasn't too crazy about it myself.

That part of the run and Final Crisis is some grad school level super hero comics, you got to read the pre-requisites to even get how deep the easter eggs roll in those stories.

i find it funny that nobody mentioned Hush yet, but I assume the OP will get around to it sooner or later... just because it is a big deal and is a huge part of "2000s-era" Batman

i didn't mention hush becuase it's fucking terrible

I never read any of Loeb's Bat-epics, but I'm curious if their general critical reception has soured in light of the subsequent revelation of Loeb as one of the most inexcusably terrible comics writers of our era?

eh, just because he's bad now doesn't mean he wasn't a competent storyteller back then (see: Frank Miller)
(though I definitely wouldn't back up Hush so much as The Long Halloween)

see also: John Byrne

I just got the first collection from Detective Comics New 52 run - my problem with superhero comics was always dealing with decades of back story and interweaving storylines and shit, so I figured I'd just pick a starting point.

Read The Killing Joke recently and tbh I didn't think it was that special?

Frankly, I don't think it's all that special, either. Definitely one of Moore's lesser works. Pretty, though.

Similar to Morrison's Arkham Asylum in that a) important read in context of what had been coming out at the time and b) impressive artwork

really appreciate all the replies here. would the consensus be that year one isn't the best place to start? those greatest x collections sound interesting. are they like a best of, compilations of various comics or a separate individual thing? i do like the idea of starting from the beginning though (chronologically not publication date)

If u make a task of reading like all detective comics from the beginning I might join along :p

The Greatest collections are hodgepodges of stories from all over the place, usually in a big overprint size with a ton of pages. Mostly good self-contained issues and stories, though I think they update the contents every 10 years or so. Another great benefit is instantly seeing how the character evolved through different writers and artists over 60 years.

Year One - like all the darker, grittier, noirish takes on Batman, DKR, TKJ and so on - are more fun to read IMO if you understand the context of Batman going from the 30s/40s street avenger to the 50s/60s wackadoo camp to the 70s gothic dark detective era before it settled down into basically, the uber-serious, hyper-competent THE fucking BATMAN of the modern day.

(Skipping over the '90s/'00s extended Batman Family-era, I suppose, though I like that stuff too, that "style" of Batman was best done by the various Animated Series)

The Long Halloween is flawed and doesn't really deserve its "classic" reputation, but it is a fairly engaging Batman mystery featuring most of his villains, and a good place to start.

Another big fan of City of Crime over here.
Blind Justice, too! There's some film podcast that recently had Sam Hamm on to talk about Batman Returns, and he told a great story about working on Never Cry Wolf, that basically his job was to get rid of all the swears for Disney.
And Blind Justice had some lasting effect...bit of a dry run for the Bane/Broken Bat story...the Ducard character introduced in it was kind of in Batman Begins... though, admittedly, my best memory of those issues is the 50th Anniversary pin-ups in the back. Especially Keith Giffen's.
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y298/hukl/giffenbatman.jpg

Recently re-read the first chapter of The Long Halloween, and it signals the "twist" in exactly the same way Hush does.
If you must read Loeb, read his Batman/Superman run, at least the McGuinness issues, and the Carlos Pacheco ones are great too. Real Bob Haney style over the top kookiness (bogged down by overbearing "he completes me" parallel interior monologues.

Ian - Nhex's post is good advice.

There's a run of 1970s issues -- I think they're O'Neill/Aparo or O'Neill/Adams -- that had me absolutely riveted as a teen, but I couldn't tell you the issue numbers because I read them in UK reprints. Lots of Talia and Lucius Fox and a butch but slightly emo Bruce Wayne. Any ideas?

My general preference is for long but self-contained Batman stories -- feels like the title's been in Big Event Mode since Knightfall 20 years ago.

Loeb is interesting - he's superb at setup and just astoundingly awful, like who-did-you-fuck-awful, at finishing stories.

Is the run drawn by Marshall Rogers any good? I dig that guy.

The 70s Rogers & Englehart is primo 70s Batman. If you like Marshall Rogers, you'll love this. I don't know if the Strange Apparitions trade is still in print--but you're reading mostly digital, anyway right? The first issue of the the 2004-ish reunion did nothing for me, despite my admiration for the 70s stuff.

Englehart's notes on the run: http://www.steveenglehart.com/comics/detective%20comics%20469-476.html

Thoughts on any of these/are they worth purchasing? Trying to trim down my continually expanding list.

Station 16 (Its pretty short? concept sounds like The Thing in comic form, cant be bad but worth the $$??)
Xmen - Bishops Crossing & Fatal Attractions (is there an identifiable point in the 90s when xmen goes from good to bad? read an issue of age of apocalypse and it just seemed so lame)
To Terra
Cross Game
Frank Miller Daredevil (read the issue where bullseye kills elektra and loved it, is the whole run on that level of quality/storytelling?)

Miller Daredevil starts wonky but picks up quick.

I don't know if the Strange Apparitions trade is still in print

OOP and very expensive.

'90s X-Men was actually decent for a little while. Age Of Apocalypse might be the wall you don't want to breach unless you're a super-fan. Bishop's Crossing is a good jumping-on point of the issues immediately following Claremont's departure. Fatal Attractions is probably a less good jumping-on point, as it collects stuff from about two years later and is a crossover involving all of the X-titles from that time. From the looks of it, Mutant Genesis 2.0 would actually be the best companion volume, as it collects the X-Men issues that were released at the same time as the issues of Uncanny collected in Bishop's Crossing. Helpful hint: they printed sooooo much of this stuff at the time that almost all of it is still available really cheap in back issues.

Okay, I just did some hardcore nerd work for you. If you're interested in reading post-Claremont '90s X-stuff up through the first crossover, here's what I'd recommend beyond the two books in my previous post:

-The first three Peter David X-Factor Visionaries trades (collecting 71-83). Good stuff that still holds up and pretty directly informs David's current run on X-Factor.
-The X-Force collections A Force To Be Reckoned With and Under The Gun (collecting 1-15). Mind you, although it gets better as it progresses, this is mostly Liefeld stuff. You have been warned.
-X-Cutioner's Song (collecting the following issues of all four titles).

If you're not feeling it at that point, it might be worth moving to a different era.

Greatly appreciated! I'm working may way through claremonts 80's stuff and just trying to plan ahead. Things look pretty messy after he's done and I don't want to guess and check so those are a huge help.
The glimpses I got of the artwork of Fatal Attractions are what had me intrigued.

Frank Miller's Daredevil is dope. Note that he doesn't officially become writer until about 10 issues into the run, at first just doing the artwork, but you might as well go for the whole ride as he gradually gets into the plotting. After you've finished his first run, you'll want to pick up the miniseries Elektra: Assassin as well as his return arc, Born Again, which is probably his crowning achievement here. Then if you still want more you can get his "Year One" of Daredevil, The Man Without Fear miniseries.

Fatal Attractions has about seven different artists, so I'm not sure which caught your eye. Quesada on X-Factor and Capullo on X-Force are the only ones I can think of that stand out. They both started on their respective titles around the time of X-Cutioner's Song and neither lasted much past Fatal Attractions (about a year). Oh, Romita, Jr. might've been on Uncanny by that point, too. I guess '90s X-art generally looked pretty good for a couple of years there until it went into the shitter.

Then if you still want more you can get his "Year One" of Daredevil, The Man Without Fear miniseries.

don't do this, it is a pointless comic and not very good

otm

I kinda hate Romita's art too

i used to as well, actually, but he got better in the 2000s. (and/or was helped by better inkers/colorists/technology)

for readers i recommend and use Comic Zeal for ipad and Ehon for the mac
reading comics on an iphone or on a panel-by-panel basis is madness
I would second all of mordy's choices and recommend most of Legends of the Dark Knight and Batman Black and White and Gotham Central

miller more or less stopped doing anything of interest immediately following sin city tho ymmv
the daredevil run is canonic, dark knight really doesn't hold up.

torranced Strange Apparitions over the weekend, looking forward to reading it

Look forward to learning that Marshall Rogers didn't "lose it" in the late '80s, he really couldn't ever draw properly

miller more or less stopped doing anything of interest immediately following sin city tho ymmv

specifically after the DHP run, not the decade+ of subsequent series

(I call Give Me Liberty #1 as his last sort-of-interesting / sort-of-good work. By the fourth issue you could see 90s Miller in full flowering.)

the daredevil run is canonic, dark knight really doesn't hold up.

Dark Knight holds up exactly as well as it did in 1987 - formally clever* & thrilling, gorgeous to look at (Varley), operatically overblown in a really fun way, seethingly right-wing & nigh-fascist 5 microns below the surface.

*heavily influenced by American Flagg, but Miller did process those lessons and develop an incredible sense of pacing & panel rhythm along with the grid variation, talking screens & quick cutting.

i agree that the first book of sin city is the cut off point; the other books and Liberty have moments but they're often horrible

it's very very hard for me to see dark knight the same way as i did when it first came out as i got copies about a year after the release and those babies are catnip for a thirteen year old. they're all but unreadable now but v v pretty btw.

my longer form miller flowchart is roughly as follows (the importance of Darrow, Gibbons, Mazzucchelli, Jansen is hard to understate):
daredevil first run > daredevil second run > ronin > Sin City v.1 up to big fat kill >hard boiled > year one > martha washington > rusty and the big guy > elektra > later sin city > wolverine > Dark Knight > DK2 > all star batman and robin

"hard to overstate"

http://thegoldenagesite.blogspot.ie/2013/11/marshall-rogers-batman-portfolio-1981.html

I haven't seen much Marshall Rogers, but this stuff is pretty good.

Jeez, when it comes to a lot of the art you'll have to tolerate from mid-80s onward superhero comics, Romita Jr is a godsend. Tim Sale, Walter Simonson, Jerry Ordway, Chris Weston and Alan Davis are talented too. Mike Weiringo and Ed McGuinness have quite pleasant cartoony styles but don't know how often you're likely to bump into them if you're looking for storylines. I don't think Kevin Nowlan ever done a proper "run" on any superhero but he's good.

Rogers' artwork got more anatomically wayward the further he got away from Terry Austin, but I like the architectural flamboyance of his best work, and even have a fondness for Detectives Inc

Agree that JR JR only got really good after DareDevil Year One, but for a while he was easily Marvel's best, most consistent superhero artist