Highlights
- Batman's dark and brooding character has helped him become one of the most popular and enduring comic book characters of all time.
- A Death in the Family and Night Cries explore controversial and brutal themes, delving into the depths of Batman's psyche.
Batman is one of the most enduring comic book characters of all time. He was created for DC Comics in 1939 and has managed to only endure and become more popular each year since his initial appearance in Detective Comics. Batman is a household name, and instantly recognizable.
All of this is an incredible feat, and part of what kept Batman popular all that time is the way he has been reinvented to become a much darker character than he was initially. Through a variety of much darker tales than comics were used to, Batman has helped change the medium and become known as one of the darkest, brooding characters in all comics.
7 The Dark Knight Returns
To begin talking about dark Batman stories, it should first be understood where the idea of dark Batman stories came from at all. Frank Miller reinvented Batman, and the entire superhero genre really, with his 1986 miniseries The Dark Knight Returns. It was this series that pit a dystopian DC world against an aged Bruce Wayne, forcing him to end up fighting Superman.
Though this is no longer regarded as the darkest Batman story, the depressing way this world was built and the intervening events, such as Jason Todd’s death, were described made it easy for other writers, and even Miller himself, to follow up on a tale such as this one with some truly gruesome Batman stories.
6 Arkham Asylum: A Serious House On Serious Earth
Arkham Asylum has always been a source of potential stories, being a terrifying place filled to the brim with insane criminals. The darkness of that place has always been apparent, making it no surprise that one of the darkest Batman tales is set there. Delving deeper into the psychological problems of the best Batman villains like the Joker and Two-Face, this is a truly dark graphic novel.
Grant Morrison has to be one of the top Batman writers of all time, and this tale where Batman is called to the Asylum to stop the rioting inmates has been listed as the definitive take of any writer on that particular building, helping inspire the idea of using it to launch an amazing Batman game series.
5 The Killing Joke
The Killing Joke isn’t a storyline so much as it is a single issue, but that issue is one of the most revered one-shot comics in history. This is a story about the Joker, and how he decided that it was time to go after Barbara Gordon after learning that she was the secret identity of the Batgirl.
The Joker has always been the most terrifying and twisted of all Batman villains. But seeing what has become his definitive origin story here, alongside his shooting of Barbara Gordon and subsequent torture of her father makes for another level of horror. Truly a complete tale and an impressive way to showcase such a villain in a single issue, The Killing Joke has become known as one of the greatest individual comic issues ever.
4 A Death In The Family
Another showcase for the Joker’s madness, A Death in the Family was one of the pinnacle works of Jim Starlin, another great Batman writer. A Death in the Familystoried Jason Todd, as Robin, attempting to find his birth mother in a globe-trotting adventure where he and Batman attempted to stop the Joker from becoming an international terrorist.
The dark run included Todd breaking up exploitation rings, dark secrets about his shady birth mother’s past, and eventually his birth mother selling him out to the Joker, leading to Jason Todd’s death in the most brutal and surprising moment in comic book history.
3 Night Cries
A lesser-known classic, mostly not as infamous due to the controversial topics it deals with, Night Cries is a Batman one-shot from 1992 that deals with Batman investigating a string of murders in proper detective fashion. All the victims of the killer are child abusers, making the whole nature of the story feel much more like a dark crime movie than a comic book.
The storyline went on to reveal more about Commissioner Gordon, including that he had an abusive father and came close to treating his son in the same way that his father treated him. All of this made for a brutally dark storyline that stuck in the minds of comic book fans forever.
2 Batman & Dracula
Despite sounding like a quirky Elseworlds crossover story, Batman & Dracula was one of the darkest tales about the Caped Crusader ever seen. Instead of facing off against Dracula with his skills, this version of Batman became a vampire himself to find the strength to fight the villainous vampire.
This led to Batman becoming embroiled in a bloodlust he couldn’t control. He ended up killing the Joker, getting staked by Gordon and Alfred, and then coming back to destroy utterly most of the villains from his former life.
1 All-Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder
One of the most bizarre re-imaginings of the Batman world and mythos, All-Star Batman & Robin was developed by Frank Miller from 2005-2008 as an irregularly released series that ended up receiving horrible critical responses. Batman was brutally cruel in this series, forcing Robin to eat rats in the Bat Cave, uncaringly murdering and eliminating anybody who got in his way, he and Robin even entrapped and attacked Green Lantern at one point.
The entire series made Batman seem like a true dark vigilante, and rarely did it present him with an actually heroic moment. At some point, a bunch of different known characters are left on the brink of death, and Jim Gordon is dealing with his alcoholic wife while trying to help Batman. Black Canary, with whom Batman has an on-off relationship within the series, even sets a group of criminals on fire, the entire series is a bizarrely brutal run.