Batman: Gotham Adventures Omnibus Vol. 1

The animated-continuity Batman comics, collected as a pack of 2 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. The Batman Adventures was the comic spun off from Batman: The Animated Series, written for the same audience and, as it turned out, for everyone else too. Mad Love alone justifies the volume: Paul Dini and Bruce Timm's Harley Quinn origin, which won an Eisner and became the version DC has used ever since. The rest is the animated house style at its best, clean, self-contained stories that work for a child and hold up for an adult, which is rarer than it sounds. The Batman & Robin Adventures followed The Batman Adventures, continuing the animated-series comic after Robin joined the cast and the show's design changed. The Lost Years is the reason collectors chase this: it fills the gap between the original series and The New Batman Adventures, explaining where Dick Grayson went and how Tim Drake arrived. The rest is the same discipline as the first omnibus, short, complete stories with no continuity homework, aimed at any age.

Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale worked on Batman across seven years and four projects, building a single continuous account of Gotham's transition from mob city to costumed city. This omnibus puts all of it together. Read in sequence these are not four books but one: Harvey Dent's fall, the aftermath that creates a new Robin, and Selina Kyle's search for a father, all told in the same seasonal structure. It is also the single most direct comics source for Nolan's trilogy, which the Nolan and Goyer conversation makes explicit.

Batman debuted in Detective Comics #27 in 1939 as a pulp vigilante with a gun, and within two years had acquired a sidekick, a code against killing and most of the rogues' gallery still in use today. Everything the character is built on was invented in about eighteen months, and this is that stretch. The Joker and Catwoman both appear in Batman #1, which is one of the strongest single issues in comics history by sheer consequence. The stories are short and strange, and read closer to pulp fiction than to modern superhero comics.

The Batman Adventures was the comic spun off from Batman: The Animated Series, written for the same audience and, as it turned out, for everyone else too. Mad Love alone justifies the volume: Paul Dini and Bruce Timm's Harley Quinn origin, which won an Eisner and became the version DC has used ever since. The rest is the animated house style at its best, clean, self-contained stories that work for a child and hold up for an adult, which is rarer than it sounds.

Batman: Knightfall Omnibus Vol. 1 begins the Bane saga by turning Gotham into a gauntlet. Arkham's inmates are loose, Batman is forced through fight after fight, and Bane waits for exhaustion to do what brute strength alone cannot: make the Dark Knight break.

Bruce Wayne: Murderer and Fugitive is the year DC arrested Batman's alter ego for homicide and made the Bat-family investigate their own mentor. The interesting half is the second one: Bruce responds to the frame-up by deciding Bruce Wayne was always the disguise and refusing to go back, which forces everyone around him to argue that the man matters as much as the mask. It is the best use DC has made of the secret identity in decades.

No Man's Land is the year DC declared Gotham dead. After the earthquake of Cataclysm, the United States government evacuates the city, dynamites the bridges and leaves whoever stays behind to divide the ruins into territories. The premise strips Batman of everything except the city itself: no infrastructure, no law, and gang leaders marking blocks with spray paint. It is also where Cassandra Cain becomes Batgirl. Volume 1 is the opening third of the crossover, in reading order across every Bat-title, which is the only way it works.

Grant Morrison spent seven years on Batman treating every story ever published as canon, including the ones nobody wanted to remember, and then built a single argument out of all of it. Morrison's premise is that a man who has survived everything published since 1939 would have to be extraordinary, and Batman R.I.P. is the stress test. Damian arrives here as an insufferable ten-year-old assassin and leaves as one of DC's most valuable characters. Everything in the Bat-books for the next decade starts in this volume.

Batgirl: Cassandra Cain Omnibus Vol. 1 collects the run built around a protagonist who barely speaks. Raised as a weapon and taught to read body language instead of words, Cassandra Cain became the most unusual Batgirl DC has had, and Kelley Puckett sustained it for years.