Reddit reviews Batman: Gates of Gotham Deluxe Edition
We found 3 Reddit comments about Batman: Gates of Gotham Deluxe Edition. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Reddit reviews Batman: Gates of Gotham Deluxe EditionWe found 3 Reddit comments about Batman: Gates of Gotham Deluxe Edition. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
These books, probably in this order, make for a really good intro to Batman comics and also fit with the general feel of the show, either setting up origins or focusing on the city as a character:
Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One - Classic. Big influence on both Gotham and Nolanverse.
Jeph Loeb’s [Long Halloween](Batman: The Long Halloween https://www.amazon.com/dp/1401232590/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_f4FqDbZZ35GEQ) and Dark Victory which are kind of a Year Two and Year Three (don’t read the books called Y2 and Y3 though)
Chuck Dixon’s Robin: Year One - What it sounds like—Robin’s first cases, not his origin. Robin faces off against Mad Hatter, Two Face, and more. The copy I linked also has Batgirl: Year One which is pretty fun.
Jeph Loeb’s Batman: Hush - A great intro to all of the villains as Batman faces off against each one, ultimately revealing a new villain rooted in his past.
Paul Dini’s Heart of Hush and Streets of Gotham (it has 3 volumes—good to know that midway through, Bruce “dies” and is replaced by Dick Grayson as Batman, but it’s still accessible without reading all of that) - HOH is a sequel to Hush and has a lot of Bat/Cat. Streets focuses on the life of the Gotham underbelly, with characters like “the Carpenter” who builds all the booby traps for the villains and the realtor who finds their hideouts. Also acts as a sequel to Heart of Hush.
Scott Snyder’s Gates of Gotham - also has Dick as Batman but delves into cool Gotham history
Scott Snyder’s Black Mirror - again, Dick is Batman. Takes place before Gates but Streets goes into Gates more fluidly. This book is creepy AF and gets into some of the Gordon family history.
Scott Snyder’s Court of Owls - Though this can be read without any of the others as it was designed as an entry point for new readers. It’s also probably the best book on the list. REALLY good.
Peter Tomasi’s Batman and Robin - The issues collected here are a great storyline that are about Bruce and his 12-year-old biological son Damian, whose mother is Talia al Ghul (daughter of Ra’s and sister of Nyssa).
If there’s a particular character or aspect of the show you like, there may be others as well but these are a good core starting set.
(You can also check your library for these—many have graphic novels on the shelves but some also have a subscription to something called Hoopla which lets you “check out” digital versions of comics/graphic novels.)
Links:
It's still kinda lame that some decent series like Aquaman (Rebirth) haven't gotten the Deluxe treatment yet. Maybe we'll get Omnibuses like RHaTO instead?
Ok, so for Dick, the majority of his time as Robin was told in pre-crisis Batman tales, and many modern fans haven't read anything pre-crisis. That being said, I have read Batmanga, which stars Batman and Dick Grayson as Robin. I like Batmanga because it tells a Batman tale in a similar era as Silver age Batman, that has just as much curiosity about e.g. science, technology and the future, different cultures, their practices and mysticism, yet given that it was made in Japan instead of America, it doesn't have the same moral obligations that American comic books of the time had in regards to something like the comic code authority. So, it isn't afraid to have the villains be killers or show death, and because of that, you can have really interesting action scenarios with stakes you didn't get in the Silver Age of Batman comcis. That being said, it's not like the series (or at least what I've read of it so far) is making a close examination say on the nature of the relationship between Bruce and Dick as Guardian and Ward, Father and Son, or the like. But it is an interesting Batman action series that utilises the classic Dynamic Duo in telling its tale.
So, that's the only pre-crisis reading I've done, so, on to modern re-tellings of Batman and Robin. Because Post-crisis Batman was written in an era that already had moved past an established Dick Grayson Robin, in an era where Dick was already working as Nightwing and Batman was raising Jason, most Batman and Dick Grayson stories are re-tellings. Following Year One (which is just Bruce starting out as Batman), there were in canon follow ups in the forms of Year Two (that didn't have Robin), and finally Year Three, which told the story of Dick Grayson's beginnings as Robin. Year Three is collected in the Caped Crusader volume 2 trade collection. One problem is though that for the longest time, Year Three was not collected, so many fans are just unaware of it, and it's just not very popular (also maye why it wasn't collected for so long). In fact, that was all because it was overshadowed by a much more popular take.
So, just as Year Two and Year Three aimed to re-tell the beginning years of Batman's life, so too did The Long Halloween (not a Robin story, but needed to understand ..) and Dark Victory. These last two were not canon when they first appeared, yet were so popular that DC made the choice to allow Years Two and Three to slip out of canonicity so that they could declare Long Halloween and Dark Victory as canon. And if you wanted a series specifically looking at Batman and Robin's (Dick Grayson's) relationship, then Dark Victory would be an excellent choice!
So, these are not the only modern retellings of Batman and Robin as Dick Grayson. Just as Year One served as the foundation for later canon stories, like Year Two and Three, and also served as the foundation for Loeb and Sale's series, it also also served as the foundation for Miller's "Millerverse" of Batman. He did retell the origin of Dick Grayson as Robin in his atrocious All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder, but it is so terrible that people only have an ironic enjoyment over it, and it does not well represent the relationship between the two. To make this clear, don't get ASBAR if you want a good Robin story, I just thought I would mention it, so you know what to avoid, too.
There are other glimpses that other authors have made of Dick's time as Robin. they are not re-tellings of his origin, but rather just show what crime fighting was like between the two. An event called Zero Hour happened, that as the name implies had lots of time shenanigans. There is a collected Batman: Zero Hour trade, that collects all the Bat-titled tie-ins. The Robin tie ins specifically have Tim interact with a time-displaced Dick in a two chapter arc that I found fun, and showed the differences between the two. This was, however, an arc done without either's interaction with Batman. In this trade however, there is a lot more non-Robin chapters then there are Robin chapters.
Morrison also had a few glimpses of Dick as Robin. In his Batman: RIP arc, specifically his Last Rites/The Butler Did It chapters, he shows a re-telling of Batman's whole career to that point, including a good chunk looking at his time with Dick as Robin. His Time and the Batman arc, also featuring time shenanigans, as the title suggests, again had Bruce working with Dick as Robin in their prime. Both however are better experienced being read as part of Morrison's run on Batman, rather than individually to see just the Robin moments.
This is all I have read of Batman and Robin, featuring Dick Grayson as Robin. The only Tim Drake Robin stories I've read I didn't like, but they include A Lonely Place of Dying and Knightfall. Drake had a ton of stuff as Robin though, so hopefully someone with more experience with his tenure will be able to help you with that.
A few more ideas I have though. If you do just want to see Bruce's relationship with Dick, or maybe Dick and Tim's characters, maybe see the post-Knightfall Prodigal arc. It features Dick as Batman, working with Tim as Robin. Also, you get to see closure between Bruce and Dick at the arcs finale. Another suggestion is Dick's later tenure as Batman again. I think Gates of Gotham did a great job showing the whole Batfamily at that point. Dick is Batman, and he works with both Damian and Tim, if I recall, as Robin and Red Robin, respectively. Black Mirror focuses more on Dick as a solo Batman, though he does work alongside Tim for a bit, but more so Barbara.
So anyway, this is at least my experience with Dick and Tim as Robin stories. I hope this helps!