There’s none of the hesitation to use the Batman rogues gallery that we see on Morrison’s sister run, nor is there any of the absurd retro-continuity either. They don’t break new ground, or reveal anything too insightful on the character, but they are very well-told.

His fantastic run on Detective Comics mostly featured a collection of done-in-one stories, which is a remarkable acheivement in this era of decompressed comics and six-issue miniseries. It’s not that he is as good at staging a story as Jeph Loeb or as deep and philosophical as Grant Morrison or as definitive as Frank Miller or as revolutionary as Denny O’Neil, but I get the sense that Dini is quite happy to let Batman be Batman, for better or for worse. Paul Dini might be my favourite Batman writer. Here Paul Dini is attempting to move the most recent major bat baddie from the latter category into the former. Very occasionally these are succesful – Bane is a fairly well-known addition to the ensemble, despite only arriving about fifteen years ago, and Victor Zsasz remains the most recent bad guy to be featured in Nolan’s movies – but mostly these are failures – like Orca or KGBeast. However, once every few years the powers that be will attempt to introduce a new major villain into the character’s life – for example Grant Morrison populated his own run on the title with new enemies (and the Joker). He has tonnes of opponents who are easily recognised by the public and are wide and diverse, many that any other comic book character would kill for. Thanks to the character’s absorption into popular culture (by the live action series, the cartoons, the movies), he has a fantastically strong and well-recognised selection of villains – to the point where people who haven’t picked up a comic book wonder whether The Riddler will be the villain in the next Batman film. Batman’s rogues gallery is a strange one.

Batman by paul dini