Batman: White Knight #1
Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger
Script, art, covers by Sean Murphy
Colors and cover colors by Matt Hollingsworth
Letters by Todd Klein
Asst. Editor: Maggie Howell
Editor: Mark Doyle
DC Comics
Release date: October 4, 2017
Price: $3.99

First, I’ll state the obvious: Batman: White Knight #1 looks spectacular.

Sean Murphy‘s style is tailor made for Gotham City and its inhabitants. In the action-adventure series Chrononauts, he showed his range, packing each frame with so much kinetic energy it burst at the seams — but it’s in the shadows where Murphy shines brightest. He was born to illustrate Batman.

At the moment there are a handful of artists at the top of the food chain — Adam Hughes, Greg Capullo, Rafael Albuquerque — and Murphy is among the very best. Not to be overlooked, Matt Hollingsworth adds a pitch-perfect color palate to offset Murphy’s darkness, and the results are stunning.

Each and every week, I, “…….!” Henchman 21 and “Stop pretending to be Snake Eyes!” Empress Eve read a lot of comics. Seriously you guys, a lot of comics. Maybe too many comics. I mean, it is possible”¦ theoretically. Naturally, we look forward to some more than others. I mean, who doesn’t? So, let’s take a look into the depths of our pull lists, grab some comics, and we’ll let YOU know what the top books to look forward to are for the week of August 13, 2014. Single issues and trades, they’re all here.

Just like every comic can be someone’s first, every GoD List may be someone’s first, so let’s run down what the deal is. Every week, we give you a few titles we’re looking forward to or think you may be interested in buying. Then, you go to your local comic store or online retailer, buy something from this list, or maybe something else you’re interested in. We just want to get the word out that there are awesome comics on the stand every week. Sound good? Let’s waste no more time on explanations and get right into The GoD List!

A lot of sites are probably putting together several lists right about now in honor of this Friday’s release of The Dark Knight Rises that would name most of these as “must-reads if you’re wanting to get into Batman comics,” or something to that effect. But how I’d like to phrase this entry is in more of an academic sense. These books that I’m about to suggest to you are being referred to as “Read these first” because a lot of the more “higher learning” readings require a sophisticated palette that must be developed by learning the different takes on the character of Batman prior to jumping shoulders’ deep into the complex and clever stories of these more advanced works.

Now, that’s not to say that any of the comics listed are bad. Sure I may not like some of them as much as others, but based on my research and personal experiences, the comics listed here in Batman 101 are some of the books that have gotten most hardcore Batman fans to start loving the character in the same way I do. Keep in mind that this is a list of comic books, so you’ll look elsewhere to see things like Batman ’66 and Batman: The Animated Series. So, if you’re ready, let’s get started with something I like to call Batman 101: A Beginner’s Guide To The Dark Knight.

Since the first couple of issues of Tony Daniel’s run on Detective Comics, Batman’s arch nemesis has been MIA. That all comes to a close in October when Scott Snyder and company bring The Joker back to the pages of Batman with the much hyped “Death of the Family.”

As per usual, Snyder and DC Comics hype this upcoming storyline as, “This is Joker as you’ve never seen him before.” Now, I don’t know if that’s true. I’ve seen a lot of Joker stories, and unless they plan on making him a woman’s rights activist in light of his previous mistakes with the ladies, I think that’s probably just hype. What’s not hype, though, is that this is truly Snyder’s chance to tell a Joker story in a way that he absolutely wants to. In the post, Snyder name checks The Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum, which are my least favorite contributions from the writers of those books, are indeed astonishing and impressive interpretations of The Joker as a character, which is what Snyder is trying to get across.

Continue reading for a full look at the promo art by Greg Capullo teased above.

Batman Vol. 1: The Court of Owls
Written by Scott Snyder
Pencils by Greg Capullo
Inks by Jonathan Glapion
Colors by FCO
Letters by Richard Starkings and Comicraft’s Jimmy Betancourt
DC Comics
Release Date: May 9, 2012
Cover Price: $24.99

Batman: The Court of Owls is a deconstruction of Batman and Bruce Wayne’s vision of Gotham City. The DC Relaunch provided a landscape in which writers and artists had a way to completely recreate characters and the DC Universe as a whole into their vision. Scott Snyder doesn’t exactly do this. The Court of Owls works as both a perfect starting place for new readers to comics as well as experienced readers who have kept up through the Grant Morrison saga and Snyder’s work on Detective Comics. Characters created and explored during that time period are even featured in the opening pages of this book, so it’s not a title that completely ignores its past, which, whether on purpose or not, parallels the concept of this book. And this book is quite simply a masterpiece.

In Court of Owls, Scott Snyder tells a story of how the past of Gotham City, a past unbeknownst to The Batman, has come to haunt The Dark Knight in a way that no one, other than Snyder, could have ever imagined.