10 Essential Batman Stories For New Readers

7. The Man Who Laughs

Of course, if you wanted a little more backstory on that decades-long relationship between Batman and his oldest foe, we've got you covered.

Ed Brubaker, who later went on to write the excellent Gotham Central about the cops in Batman's city, and artist Doug Mahnke put together this one-shot graphic novel which retold the pair's first encounter, which originally appeared in 1940's Batman #1 (not actually the first appearance of the Dark Knight, but we'll get to that in a bit).

Updating and expanding the story for a modern audience and setting, Brubaker and Mahnke get as close to a perfect depiction of the Joker as anyone ever has. Not only does The Man Who Laughs show us the early days of the Joker's one-man crime wave, but it also brings in core parts of the Batman mythos like Arkham Asylum (the prison for the criminally insane where all of his villains end up), the Batcave, Alfred and - at the story's end - the Bat Signal, which Commissioner Gordon plans to use to call the vigilante up whenever another supervillain of the Joker's ilk rears their ugly head. And even a rookie comic reader knows it wasn't long until that happened.