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Jeph Loeb/Tim Sale’s Batman Reading Order

Happy Halloween! No team in the Batman mythos is associated with this celebration more than Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale for their The Long Halloween story. Presented as a classic detective story, The Long Halloween is one of the most celebrated and influential Batman tales, featuring Tim Sale’s striking art, a good introduction to the world of Gotham, Batman’s Rogue Gallery, and an origin story for Two-Face.

For Loeb and Sale, it all started with Challengers of the Unknown (1991), their first creative collaboration that would lead to more iconic works. When editor Archie Goodwin asked artist Tim Sale in the early ’90s to work on another Legends of the Dark Knight arc after Blades (with James Robinson), Sale asked if Loeb—who was working in Hollywood at the time—could write it. This resulted in what is now known as The Haunted Knight, a collection of three Halloween-themed stories.

For Loeb, the plan was to stop there—he had another job. However, Archie Goodwin had other ideas. He asked Frank Miller about the gangsters featured in Year One, and Miller said he had no further plans for them, giving Goodwin free rein. As Loeb recalled, “Archie thought we should do something bigger with this group in mind, maybe something longer than the 80 pages of the first Halloween special. Maybe… a year.” (from The Long Halloween Deluxe Edition.)

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Darwyn Cooke’s Must-Read Comics: Exploring a Work Filled with Boldness and Hope

Graphic Ink: The DC Comics Art of Darwyn Cooke

Canadian Cartoonist from Toronto Darwyn Cooke (1962–2016) always dreamt of making comics for a living, but it was not economically viable for him for a long time. He instead worked as a magazine art director, graphic and product designer until finally going back to his first love during the 1990s. He answered an ad placed by Bruce Timm that led him to work as a storyboard artist on Warner Bros. Animation shows like The New Batman Adventures, Superman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond (he created the opening sequence), and Men in Black: The Series (as a director).

Cooke’s pitch to Timm, a Batman story that got him a job in animation, was later discovered by DC Comics art director Mark Chiarello who hired the artist to make a graphic novel based on it. That became the 2000 graphic novel Batman: Ego. Cooke officially transitioned to the comics world.

Despite a short career in comics, Darwyn Cooke’s distinctive artistic style became highly influential as well as his stories. He found popular success with some of his now-considered classic series and gained industry recognition with his work, winning 13 Eisner Awards, 8 Harvey Awards, and 5 Joe Shuster Awards.

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DC Finest: Your Guide to the Upcoming Graphic Novel Releases (2024-2025)

Years ago, Marvel launched its Epic Collection, a great way to read full stories at an affordable price. You choose your favorite heroes and pick one up to have a complete run and arc, to access some old and newer, some classics, some forgotten… It was and still is a massive success. Now, DC Comics has decided to follow this with its own line of books: DC Finest.

What is the DC Comics Finest line?

The model is not completely identical to the Epic Line, but the idea behind it is relatively similar: “a new line of comprehensive collections of the most in-demand periods, genres, and characters from across DC history.” as DC Comics puts it. This large-size paperback collections start at $34.99 and, unlike most of DC’s already established collections, puts the focus on characters and storytelling genres instead of creators.

Each DC Finest book will cover a specific period and, depending on the chronology, a volume dedicated to “Robin” may feature Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Damian Wayne, or Jason Todd. Idem with the Green Lanterns, expect stories on Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Kyle Rayner, Alan Scott, and others, depending on the era. You’ll have some of the classic silver adventures of Barry Allen and at another time some Modern Age Wally West will run toward danger in one of the Flash books.

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Lex Luthor, Your Recommended Reading List for Superman’s Archenemy

Alexander Joseph “Lex” Luthor is one of the smartest people in DC Comics and Superman’s most emblematic villain. Initially depicted as a mad scientist and narcissist, the character was reimagined in the mid-late 1980s (following Crisis on Infinite Earths) as the powerful CEO of LexCorp, willing to do anything to rid the world of Superman.

Although Luthor has no superpowers per se, he considers his genius to be his gift—and with good reason! Luthor is not only a mad scientist but also a criminal mastermind, expert tactician and manipulator, ruthless businessman, and formidable leader. His ability to survive any scandal underscores his cunning. Luthor is the master of complex, multi-layered plans to destroy Superman, with his primary weakness being, as is often the case for men like him, his arrogance—and his inability to truly understand his enemies.

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Doomsday Reading Order

Like Cyborg Superman, the supervillain Doomsday made his debut during the “Death of Superman” story arc. If everyone knows his name, it’s because he is the character who killed Superman! That’s certainly one way to make an impression.

Created by Dan Jurgens, the first appearance of Doomsday is a cameo in Superman: The Man of Steel #17, before making his full appearance in the following issue, Superman: The Man of Steel #18 (December 1992). As Jurgens wrote on his website, “When we first started talking about Doomsday, he didn’t even have a name. We talked about him in terms of “living rage” or “force of nature”. ”

There is no better way to define Doomsday, an unstoppable force of destruction engineered long ago by Kryptonian scientists to be the ultimate weapon. Devoid of emotion and shaped by an unforgiving environment, Doomsday was forged through a brutal cycle of deaths and forced evolution. In the end, he became an unkillable machine filled with primal rage.

After escaping Krypton and embarking on a killing spree across many planets, Doomsday was finally defeated and buried on the primitive planet Earth. But Doomsday always comes back to life, and he returned, once again evolved, more unstoppable than ever, becoming one of Superman’s most iconic foes.

Since his creation, Doomsday has made several appearances on live-action television and in animated series, though his most mainstream incarnation is in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Discover the ultimate Doomsday reading order, guiding you through the essential comics and many epic battles involving The Destroyer!

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Batman Omnibus Reading Order!

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Today is Batman Day! One of the most popular comic book characters, Batman needs no introduction. Since his first appearance in May 1939, the Caped Crusader has investigated crimes of various natures, ranging from murder and theft to supernatural occurrences. Originally conceived as an heir to the pulp heroes, Batman has evolved over time, gradually softening and refining into the hero we know today.

The world of Batman expanded with more team-ups, new villains and allies, and iconic stories. His adventures have been chronicled in ongoing series, annuals, miniseries, maxiseries, one-shots, graphic novels, and every other format imaginable. Over the years, DC Comics has collected many of these tales, story arcs, crossovers, and runs in various formats, including the famous Omnibus line.

With a growing collection of Omnibus editions dedicated to Batman (and his extended family), we have decided to create a specific Batman Omnibus Reading Order. This guide can serve as a roadmap to explore the world of the Dark Knight, helping both new and seasoned readers discover more about the World’s Greatest Detective!

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DC Compact Comics: Your Guide to the Upcoming Graphic Novel Releases (2024-2025)

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A group of comic book covers from the DC Compact Comics Edition. The titles include "Batman: Hush", "The Court of Owls Saga", "Joker", and "Catwoman"

Following in the footsteps of French publisher Urban Comics and its ‘Urban Nomad’ collection, DC Comics has recently started to release a new line of graphic novels called DC Compact Comics. The concept? A new-reader-friendly collection at a good price that you can take with you everywhere!

What is the DC Comics Compact Edition?

Launched in June 2024 with the ultimate classic DC Comics (and best-seller of all time!) Watchmen, the new DC Compact Comics line is designed to appeal to prose and manga readers with a smaller format than the traditional 6 5/8″ x 10 3/16″. Featuring a 5.5″ x 8.5″ standard book trim—the most widely circulated softcover size in the US—DC wants to attract new readers by offering iconic stories in a more portable and affordable format. With a price point of $9.99, these compact editions deliver a full-color self-contained, best-selling DC stories that you can take with you everywhere!

Spanning stories from many genres, such as science fiction, thrillers, horror, fantasy, adventure, and mystery, the DC Compact Comics line will introduce readers to Green Lantern Sojourner “Jo” Mullein with Far Sector, a sci-fi murder mystery on the other side of the universe, or revisit the myth of Superman with the multiple-award-winning All-Star Superman. While the emphasis is put on self-contained stories, the release of American Vampire Book One shows that the collection isn’t limited to one-off tales but also serves as an opportunity to collect long-running series.Read More »DC Compact Comics: Your Guide to the Upcoming Graphic Novel Releases (2024-2025)

Plastic Man Reading Order

Launched as a minor feature in Police Comics #1 in 1941 (originally published by Quality Comics and later acquired by DC Comics), Plastic Man is a creation of artist and writer Jack Cole. He initially thought of a character named the Indian Rubber Man, inspired by sideshow freaks, but Everett Arnold–who was the founder of Quality Comics–suggested naming the character after that material that was all the rage at the time.

According to Art Spiegelman, who profiled Cole for The New Yorker magazine, in 1943, when Plastic Man expanded into his own book, Cole explained the morphing hero to new readers: “If you should see a man standing on the street and reaching into the top window of a sky-scraper…that’s not astigmatism—it’s Plastic Man!… If you happen upon a gent all bent up like a pretzel…don’t dunk him…it’s Plastic Man! All this and bouncing too, you’ll see when the rubber man and his pal Woozy Winks gamble their lives in—The Game of Death.”

This is the story of Patrick “Eel” O’Brian, a lowlife gangster. While committing a robbery, he was accidentally doused by some unnamed acid. Nursed back to health by a reclusive order of monks, Eel became a new man. He now had stretching abilities that defied the laws of physics and, inspired by the teaching of the monks, he was now ready to put his criminal past behind him to protect the law–he first helped the police force and later became a special agent for the F.B.I.

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DC Comics’ Prez, America’s First Teen President Is The Politician of Another Time

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The chaotic world of comic books is full of oddities. On that survived in a strange way is Prez, America’s First Teen President!

The year was 1973. DC Comics had a problem: Marvel was publishing many comics that the newsstands were full of them and DC Comics was barely visible on the racks. Publisher Carmine Infantino had to do something and he ordered more series, most of them were collections of reprints, but a few contained original characters, like Prez.

Created by writer Joe Simon (Captain America‘s co-creator) and artist Jerry Grandenetti, Prez: First Teen President of the U.S.A. introduced a teenage boy named Prez Rickard. He was named “Prez” because his mother dreamt of him becoming President one day. How prescient of her.

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Elongated Man Reading Order (Ralph Dibny)

In The Flash #112 published in 1960, writer John Broome and penciler Carmine Infantino told the story of how The Flash went after Elongated Man, suspecting him of being behind multiple crimes. It turns out that he was framed. In fact, he is the opposite of a criminal, he is a superhero detective and his secret identity is Ralph Dibny.

Well, everybody quickly learned who was Ralph Dibny as he was one of the first to publicly reveal who he really was behind the costume. He’s also one of the only superheroes to get married. But he rarely starred in his own series–however, he had a lot of backup stories in Detective Comics.

Apparently, editor Julius Schwartz didn’t know at the time that DC Comics had the rights to Plastic Man when Ralph was created (also, Superman’s pal Jimmy Olsen had been Elastic Lad for a time, so no “Elastic” for Ralph). What Schwartz wanted was a new supporting hero and the one he got was not that serious about being a hero.

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