It’s no secret that many of the greatest Batman short stories are black-and-white. There’s something about the mood, between art house and classic Hollywood (serials aside), the urgent page count, and the overall sense of bare-bones minimalism that seems to bring out the best in everybody involved. Or maybe it’s just the fact that the most amazing creators in the industry have worked with this format…
I highly recommend the Black & White collections for anyone looking to read a bunch of solid Dark Knight tales – hell, for anyone who wants to read kick-ass comics with a fair amount of experimentation and little concern for continuity.
These are the top 20 stories:
20. ‘Long Day’ (Dustin Nguyen)
19. ‘I Killed the Bat!’ (Blair Butler, Chris Weston)
18. ‘Greetings from Gotham City’ (John Arcudi, Tony Salmons)
17. ‘Legend’ (Walter Simonson)
16. ‘Hide and Seek’ (Paul Levitz, Paul Rivoche)
15. ‘Into the circle’ (Rafael Grampá)
14. ‘Funny Money’ (Harlan Ellison, Gene Ha)
13. ‘Fear is the Key’ (Mike Carey, Steve Mannion, Hilary Barta)
12. ‘An Innocent Guy’ (Brian Bolland)
11. ‘Head Games’ (Howard Mackie, Chris Samnee)
10. ‘The Bet’ (Paul Dini, Ronnie del Carmen)
9. ‘A Black and White World’ (Neil Gaiman, Simon Bisley)
8. ‘The Black and White Bandit’ (Dave Gibbons)
7. ‘Case Study’ (Paul Dini, Alex Ross)
6. ‘Namtab’ (Rian Hughes)
5. ‘To Become the Bat’ (Warren Ellis, Jim Lee)
4. ‘Two of a Kind’ (Bruce Timm)
3. ‘Last Call at McSurley’s’ (Mike W. Barr, Alan Davis)
2. ‘Devil’s Trumpet’ (Archie Goodwin, José Muñoz)
- ‘Perpetual Mourning’ (Ted McKeever)
NEXT: Gothic calling.
Awww, yeah. I was heading down this list, some nods, some shakes, some blinks of polite confusion – and hoping with every entry I knew what #1 was going to be.
This isn’t the first time I’ve done this, but it might be the first time I’ve ever been right.
For the time being, “Perpetual Mourning” is probably my #1 Batman story of *all* time, and it was nothing short of genius to open Volume 1 of Batman: Black and White with it. I’ve grown increasingly bored with psychoanalyzing Bruce Wayne himself over the past decade of being a fan, but McKeever’s read is truly one-of-a-kind, heartfelt and heartbreaking and badass all at once – with art I would’ve loathed in literally any other story, but which is indispensable to this one.
Of course, there’s the small niggle that this means literally every other B:B&W story now has the toughest act in the world to follow, but ehhh, that’s comicbiz…