James Tynion IV

Rise and Fall of the Batmen is James Tynion IV's Detective Comics run, built on a premise Batman had always refused: training a team instead of working alone. Clayface is the reason this run is remembered: Tynion writes him as a man in recovery rather than a monster, and the arc that follows is genuinely tragic. It also gives Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown their best modern material, and it is where Batwoman's military background finally gets used.

Batman Eternal was DC's attempt at a weekly Batman series: fifty-two issues published in a year, plotted by Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV with a rotating writing team. The premise is a slow-motion demolition of Gotham's institutions: Jim Gordon imprisoned for a crash he did not cause, Falcone back in the city, and Batman losing the police force, Arkham and eventually Wayne Enterprises. A weekly schedule forces a plot that never idles, and at fifty-two issues in one volume it reads closer to a season of television than to a comic run.

James Tynion IV took over Batman after Tom King and immediately escalated: The Joker War is a full assault on Bruce Wayne's fortune, his allies and the city itself, drawn by Jorge Jiménez. Tynion's premise is simple and brutal: strip Batman of his money and see what remains. Having the crossover chapters from Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Hood and Catwoman in the same volume matters here, because the story is deliberately told across the whole Bat-family rather than in one title.

James Tynion IV and Freddie Williams II crossed Batman with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles three times, and the result outsold almost every other DC/IDW crossover attempted. The setup is a dimensional accident engineered by Krang to rid himself of the Turtles and the Foot Clan at once, which dumps Shredder into Gotham. What makes it work is that Tynion plays both worlds straight: Ra's al Ghul and Killer Croc against ninja mutants, with Splinter and Bruce Wayne sizing each other up as the two mentors they are.

Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV wrote Justice League as cosmology: the Source Wall breaks and the forces that built the universe start taking sides. The premise is that the Justice League have been fighting the wrong war: the Legion of Doom is trying to unmake reality's rules rather than rob a bank. The Batman Who Laughs is included here for good reason, it is the best thing to come out of the era and it reads as the run's real antagonist.

Batman by James Tynion IV, collected complete as a pack of 2 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. James Tynion IV's Batman drops Gotham into a modern pressure cooker: new villains, old fears, corporate power, masked trauma and a city that keeps changing faster than Bruce Wayne can control it. With Jorge Jiménez giving the pages sleek velocity, this omnibus captures a Batman era built around escalation, from the aftermath of major upheaval to the arrival of threats that feel designed for a newer, more unstable Gotham. Batman by James Tynion IV Omnibus Vol. 2 continues the Gotham shake-up through Joker War fallout, Ghost-Maker, Clownhunter and Fear State pressure. The run asks whether Batman can still operate the way he used to when the city, his resources and his enemies have all changed shape.

Justice League by Snyder & Tynion, collected as a pack of 2 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV wrote Justice League as cosmology: the Source Wall breaks and the forces that built the universe start taking sides. The premise is that the Justice League have been fighting the wrong war: the Legion of Doom is trying to unmake reality's rules rather than rob a bank. The Batman Who Laughs is included here for good reason, it is the best thing to come out of the era and it reads as the run's real antagonist. The second Snyder and Tynion omnibus takes the Justice League run to its conclusion, through the Year of the Villain and the rise of the Batman Who Laughs. The Batman Who Laughs stops being a crossover villain here and becomes the character DC built a whole line around: a Bruce Wayne infected by the Joker who is smarter than either. Hell Arisen is where he wins, briefly and completely, and it leads directly into Dark Nights: Death Metal.

The second half of James Tynion IV's Batman, written after The Joker War and built around a Gotham where fear itself becomes municipal policy. Fear State is Tynion's best structural work: Scarecrow weaponising civic anxiety while Simon Saint sells Gotham a surveillance state as the cure. It also introduces Ghost-Maker and gives Peacekeeper-01 a genuinely nasty arc. Volume 2 is where the run stops reacting to The Joker and starts arguing about what policing Gotham should look like.

Justice League Dark: Rebirth Omnibus collects James Tynion IV's complete run, in which Wonder Woman assembles a team of magicians because magic itself is dying and the ordinary Justice League is useless against it. Zatanna, Constantine, Swamp Thing, Detective Chimp and Man-Bat, against threats the main League cannot even perceive.

The Batman Who Laughs: The Deluxe Edition collects Scott Snyder and Jock's New York Times bestselling mini-series, in which the Batman of a dead universe — infected by the Joker's toxin and gifted with the ability to think exactly like him — comes to the main DC Earth with a plan for Bruce Wayne specifically. Includes The Grim Knight, the origin of his equally lethal lieutenant.

The second Snyder and Tynion omnibus takes the Justice League run to its conclusion, through the Year of the Villain and the rise of the Batman Who Laughs. The Batman Who Laughs stops being a crossover villain here and becomes the character DC built a whole line around: a Bruce Wayne infected by the Joker who is smarter than either. Hell Arisen is where he wins, briefly and completely, and it leads directly into Dark Nights: Death Metal.

Justice League by Scott Snyder Book Two Deluxe Edition continues the run as the Legion of Doom gains ground and the League has to consider whether the rules of reality can be rewritten in their favour. Jorge Jimenez handles most of the art.

Justice League by Scott Snyder Deluxe Edition Book Three closes the run, bringing the war between Justice and Doom to its conclusion and setting up Dark Nights: Death Metal. It is the payoff to everything Snyder had been building since Metal.

The Nice House on the Lake: The Deluxe Edition collects James Tynion IV and Álvaro Martínez Bueno's horror series, in which ten friends are invited to a lakeside house by a man they have all known for years, and the world ends while they are inside. It won an Eisner and is one of DC Black Label's best-received books.

New York City: The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles face the battle of a lifetime, fighting not only the fearsome Foot Clan and their leader, the Shredder, but also the alien forces of General Krang, which is exactly Krang’s plan. Now a single dimensional warp can rid him of both of his greatest rivals in one fell swoop!

Batman: Detective Comics: The New 52, collected as a pack of 2 oversized omnibus volumes and cheaper than buying them one by one. Batman: Detective Comics: The New 52 Omnibus Vol. 1 starts the New 52 Detective Comics era with a sharper, more violent Gotham and a Batman pushed through crime, spectacle and body-horror shocks. Tony Daniel and James Tynion IV make the book feel immediate, glossy and aggressive in a way that matches the relaunch mood. The second Detective Comics New 52 omnibus covers Gotham's most unstable stretch of the era, with the city cycling through hallucination, corruption and a replacement Batman. Gothtopia is the standout: a Gotham where everyone is happy and Batman is the only one who notices something is wrong. Layman's run is far better regarded now than it was on release, and having the Gordon material here connects Detective to the end of Snyder's Batman run.

Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo relaunched Batman for the New 52 in 2011 and stayed for fifty issues, producing the best-selling Batman run of the modern era. The Court of Owls does something few writers manage: it adds a piece of Gotham history that feels like it was always there. Death of the Family then brings back a faceless Joker aimed at the whole Bat-family, and Zero Year retells the origin without repeating Year One. Capullo's Gotham is the visual reference point for the decade that followed.

Batman: Detective Comics: The New 52 Omnibus Vol. 1 starts the New 52 Detective Comics era with a sharper, more violent Gotham and a Batman pushed through crime, spectacle and body-horror shocks. Tony Daniel and James Tynion IV make the book feel immediate, glossy and aggressive in a way that matches the relaunch mood.

The second Snyder and Capullo omnibus takes their run to its end, through Endgame and Superheavy, and asks what Gotham does when Batman is genuinely gone. Endgame is the best Joker story of the modern era: no theatricality, no motive, just a threat that treats Batman as a natural phenomenon to be studied. Superheavy then puts Jim Gordon in a mech suit as a city-sanctioned Batman, which is a far better idea than it sounds. It closes the run properly rather than handing off mid-arc.

Red Hood and the Outlaws: The New 52 Omnibus Vol. 1 follows Jason Todd, Arsenal and Starfire as a damaged trio trying to become more than a collection of loose cannons. The run is messy by design: Jason's trauma, Roy's loyalty and Starfire's outsider perspective give the team a combustible identity inside the New 52. Its shelf value is the Jason Todd angle, but the book works best as an anti-hero team piece rather than a solo Red Hood volume.

Batman and Robin Eternal was the second weekly Bat-series, published while Bruce Wayne had no memory of being Batman and Dick Grayson was working as a spy. The hook is that Bruce is unavailable, so the entire Bat-family has to solve it without him and without being able to ask what he knew. It also introduces Cassandra Cain to the post-Flashpoint continuity, arriving in Gotham as a silent young woman looking for Batman, which is the best version of that entrance anyone has written.

Dark Nights: Metal Omnibus collects Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's event and every tie-in, in which Batman's obsessive investigating tears open the Dark Multiverse and lets seven nightmare versions of himself into reality. It is the story that gave DC the Batman Who Laughs, and it is deliberately the loudest, most excessive thing Snyder and Capullo ever made together.

Dark Nights: Death Metal Omnibus collects the sequel to Metal and every tie-in: the Batman Who Laughs has won, Perpetua rules a broken multiverse, and Wonder Woman leads what is left of the resistance. Snyder and Capullo use it to settle DC's entire continuity problem at once, and it ends with the multiverse rebuilt as the Infinite Frontier.

Someone is targeting Batman’s allies in Gotham—young and untested heroes who model themselves after the Dark Knight but don’t yet have his training or resources. With the help of Batwoman, the Caped Crusader recruits these young vigilantes, training them to be a team worthy of Gotham’s biggest threats.