Writer Greg Rucka and artist Shawn Martinbrough became the creative team as of #742 (March 2000) and created the Sasha Bordeaux character is #751 (Dec. 2000). Issue #800 (Jan. 2005) was written by Andersen Gabrych and drawn by Pete Woods. Paul Dini became the writer of the series as of issue #821 (Sept. 2006) and created a new version of the Ventriloquist in #827 (March 2007).
Judge Death makes a dimensional jump to Gotham City, murdering two lovers and a police officer. Batman defeats Death, who flees in spirit form. Among the remains of his host body, Batman finds a dimensional jump belt that he accidentally activates, transporting him to Mega-City One, where is confronted by Mean Machine Angel. As Mean Machine attacks Batman, they are both confronted by Judge Dredd. Mean Machine flees to Gotham using the belt, then wanders into the city looking for Judge Death.
Detective Comics #1 vol. 2 (Nov. 2011) is the relaunch of Detective Comics. Story by Tony Daniel; art by Tony Daniel and Ryan Winn. The first issue of the relaunched Detective Comics has received six printings, second only to the relaunched Justice League which had seven printings.The series seventh issue was also DC Comic’s sixth highest selling digital comic, ranking above many other series in the Batman category. Scott West of Sciencefiction.com gave the series’ third arc a positive review, stating that “After last month’s disappointing ‘Night of the Owls’ tie-in issue, it’s nice to see ‘Detective Comics’ getting back to where it should be… good detective stories.” The relaunched Detective Comics received the award for “Best Series” at the 2012 Stan Lee Awards. The series’ first collected edition would reach the number one spot on The New York Times Best Seller list in the category of “Hardcover Graphic Books”.
Legends of the Dark Knight 100-Page Super Spectacular was an ongoing comic book featuring Batman stories by many different creative teams. All the stories were intended to be “continuity free” and do not fit into the canon of any of the mainstream DC universes (Prime Earth, New Earth, Earth-One or Earth-Two). This series was digital first, meaning the stories were first available online, and then later published on paper in this series.
Bruce Wayne’s mission as the Batman has only been under way for a year or so, but he can tell he’s making a difference. Unfortunately, he’s made some powerful enemies. All the traditional power brokers of Gotham resent the disruption the Batman has brought to town…and it seems one of them has a plan to neutralize him. There’s a second Batman haunting Gotham’s rooftops and alleys—and this one has no qualms about murdering criminals, live and on tape.
In early 1939, the success of Superman in Action Comics prompted editors at National Comics Publications (the future DC Comics) to request more superheroes for its titles. In response, Bob Kane created “the Bat-Man”. Collaborator Bill Finger recalled that “Kane had an idea for a character called ‘Batman,’ and he’d like me to see the drawings. I went over to Kane’s, and he had drawn a character who looked very much like Superman with kind of … reddish tights, I believe, with boots … no gloves, no gauntlets … with a small domino mask, swinging on a rope. He had two stiff wings that were sticking out, looking like bat wings. And under it was a big sign … BATMAN”. The bat-wing-like cape was suggested by Bob Kane, inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci‘s sketch of an ornithopter flying device as a child.
Finger suggested giving the character a cowl instead of a simple domino mask, a cape instead of wings, and gloves; he also recommended removing the red sections from the original costume. Finger said he devised the name Bruce Wayne for the character’s secret identity: “Bruce Wayne’s first name came from Robert Bruce, the Scottish patriot. Wayne, being a playboy, was a man of gentry. I searched for a name that would suggest colonialism. I tried Adams, Hancock … then I thought of Mad Anthony Wayne.” He later said his suggestions were influenced by Lee Falk‘s popular The Phantom, a syndicated newspaper comic-strip character with which Kane was also familiar.
Starting in 1969, writer Dennis O’Neil and artist Neal Adams made a deliberate effort to distance Batman from the campy portrayal of the 1960s TV series and to return the character to his roots as a “grim avenger of the night”. O’Neil said his idea was “simply to take it back to where it started. I went to the DC library and read some of the early stories. I tried to get a sense of what Kane and Finger were after.”
O’Neil and Adams first collaborated on the story “The Secret of the Waiting Graves” (Detective Comics #395, January 1970). Few stories were true collaborations between O’Neil, Adams, Schwartz, and inker Dick Giordano, and in actuality these men were mixed and matched with various other creators during the 1970s; nevertheless the influence of their work was “tremendous”. Giordano said: “We went back to a grimmer, darker Batman, and I think that’s why these stories did so well…” While the work of O’Neil and Adams was popular with fans, the acclaim did little to improve declining sales; the same held true with a similarly acclaimed run by writer Steve Englehart and penciler Marshall Rogers in Detective Comics #471–476 (August 1977 – April 1978), which went on to influence the 1989 movie Batman and be adapted for Batman: The Animated Series, which debuted in 1992. Regardless, circulation continued to drop through the 1970s and 1980s, hitting an all-time low in 1985.
World’s Finest was initially a 96 page quarterly anthology, featuring various DC characters – always including Superman and Batman – in separate stories. Comics historian Les Daniels noted that “Pairing Superman and Batman made sense financially, since the two were DC’s most popular heroes.” When superheroes fell out of vogue in the early 1950s, DC shortened the size of the publication to that of the rest of its output, leaving only enough space for one story; this led to Superman and Batman appearing in the same story together starting with World’s Finest Comics #71 (July 1954). The series continued to feature Superman and Batman team-ups until issue #197. Noted Batman artist Neal Adams first drew the character in an interior story in “The Superman-Batman Revenge Squads” in issue #175 (May 1968).
Who Burns Who is a Blackest Night tie-in featuring the Batman Family, written by Peter Tomasi and illustrated by Ardian Syaf. It’s published in the three-issue Blackest Night: Batman mini-series. The story deals with resurrected agents of the Black Lantern Corps attacking Gotham through personal ties with its heroes, wielding dangerous power rings that reanimate them and feed off life energy through human hearts. There is a companion piece written as part of the Morrison’s Batman saga titled Blackest Knight, dealing with the resurrection of Bruce Wayne.
Chuck Dixon became the writer of the series with issue #644 (May 1992). He and Tom Lyle co-created the Electrocutioner in Detective Comics #644 (May 1992) and Stephanie Brown in Detective Comics #647 (August 1992).
The “Batman: Legacy” storyline began in issue #700 (August 1996). The “No Man’s Land” storyline crossed over into Detective Comics in issues #730–741.
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