Batman Comics

[ryangarfield]

So I just bought a fairly large lot of Batman comics and graphic novels (never much of a comic guy but read the long Halloween and was hooked) but quickly realized that I don't know the lineage of all the batman stories. Is there website out there that will tell me the order of all the batman stories and also tell me which ones are critical to read to know what's going on, rather than simply buying every batman comic? Cheers guys!

[redwudz]

One place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Batman_comics But there are lots of sites available. Just do a internet search for ' batman comics '.

[lordsmurf]

Good luck with that.
I've been a Batman fan for years and years and years -- and I don't even know all the stories.

[deadrats]

So I just bought a fairly large lot of Batman comics and graphic novels (never much of a comic guy but read the long Halloween and was hooked) but quickly realized that I don't know the lineage of all the batman stories. Is there website out there that will tell me the order of all the batman stories and also tell me which ones are critical to read to know what's going on, rather than simply buying every batman comic? Cheers guys!

wow, you are just discovering batman comics and graphics novels? you're in for a treat, i have a huge collection of comic books, read all of them, in many cases numerous times and invariable the stories that have stuck in my head are almost exclusively batman stories.

for great reads try "the killing joke", "batman vs dracula" (the first one was awesome), "the dark knight", pretty much any batman themed "annual" (there is one "brave and bold" annual that sticks in my head, where the batman visits this old guy in a wheel chair every year on the anniversary of a crime the guy committed and takes him down a trip on memory lane, the annual ends with the guy in the wheel chair saying to batman "you can't possible still be angry after all these years and batman responds "angry? no, i was taught better than that. i'll see you next year") and if you can find DC comics "elseworlds" they are almost universally good no matter who the title character is but the batman one's, in some cases, are truly masterpieces, also if you ever find a copy of "the red son" where superman crash lands in the ussr instead of america and is raised in communist russia, man what a great read, it puts most "main stream" works of fiction to shame.