“Superman is boring.” “Superman’s too invulnerable.” “Superman is not as cool as Batman.” I think it’s fair to say that a large majority of comic fans around my age have said one or all of the above. We grew up in a time with the one-two combo of having Marvel…

I wasn’t planning on doing a re-read series of posts for the X-Men. I really enjoyed the comics when I was a teenager, but while I’ve sporadically jumped back in over the years, I didn’t think there was enough there for an X-Men re-read to make sense. Then a friend…

And here we are again, at the end, but also a new beginning. Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s run on Batman did what DC’s New 52 initiative set out to do—it reshaped and reworked the character to make him new reader-friendly. …

I’d originally meant for this to be a much more comprehensive look at Grant Morrison’s extended tenure with the Caped Crusader, but there’s a certain poetry to ending with Bruce Wayne’s death in this penultimate Batman re-read post, before everything resets with Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s run in the…

Outside of the batcave, there are some other places in Batman’s neighbourhood worth shining a light on. And, frankly, you simply can’t do a Batman re-read that passes through the early two thousands without mentioning Gotham Central. Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka, Michael Lark and friends’ series that focuses on the…

If the late eighties were all about psychologically-driven Batman stories, the nineties to the early two thousands were mostly about the big and splashy. The biggest and splashiest was, of course, Knightfall where Bruce Wayne gets his back broken by Bane, and passes the mantle of Batman to some dude…

Elseworlds and crossovers are usually fun for me, simply because the very idea of these sorts of stories is inherently playful. The wonderful thing about a character like our dear Dark Knight is that, because he’s been around for so long and has seen so many changes in his own…

After Frank Miller’s takes on Batman, the next decade or so seemed to have a decidedly more “mature” spin on the character. Some of those succeeded to a greater degree than others. The one that a lot of people would argue did succeed phenomenally is Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s…

While Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight universe was… let’s say, spotty, his work on what was, for the longest time, the definitive Batman origin story is unquestionably him at his best. Year One is a straightforward and absolutely solid noir. No thinly-veiled social commentary, no big ideas. Just the story…