The Top Runs of Batman

Bruce Wayne's best written/drawn series

Top Ten Batman "runs" – Yahoo News

What's discussed: they talk about the Doug Moench and Kelley Jones run; Paul Dini's stretch; the "New Look" Batman of John Broome, Gardner Fox, and Carmine Infantino; the Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers Batman stories; the Tom King Batman, Frank Miller's work on Batman; the Jeph Loeb Batman with Tim Sale; Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's recent long Batman run; the Grant Morrison Batman; and finally their "number one run" of Batman comics are the Neal Adams and Denny O'Neil books.

Lists like this are pretty subjective, and this list is obviously turned in a direction to accommodate the tastes and probable depth of knowledge of a 21st century Batman aficionado.

A nice highlight of the article is a quick discussion of why Frank Miller's Batman, which I think any fair analysis will recognize as probably the most influential "version" of Batman since the 1980s, is only given a mid-tier position. The article explains why by saying it is based upon not just looking at Batman Year One and of course the enormous impact of The Dark Knight Returns, but by considering Miller's various sequel runs on Batman which followed and have been, shall we say, uneven.

Personally, in terms of quality, any list without Archie Goodwin's one year run on Detective Comics is an incomplete list, and any list without isolating a string of Bill Finger issues is simply ignoring reality.

The article, though, has reasonable arguments for the composition of it's "top ten" and in general presents a good Greatest Hits of Batman centered on highlighting the creative teams instead of stories or eras.