10 Most Messed Up Batman Moments

Beginning in Shadow of The Bat #75 is possibly the most unnecessarily bleak story in the history of comics. 90’s comics are known for many things- violence? Yes. Gargantuan muscles? Yes. Pouches? Yes. But subtlety, it is safe to say, is not one of the era’s strong suits.

In A Long Slow Death, Batman encounters a suicidal man named Walter Smith, who tells Batman his story. It transpires recently dropped his own son, leaving him quadriplegic and mute. Following on from this, Walter is extorted and beaten up by a gang, and kissed without consent by an employee causing an argument with his wife. Just as things begin to look up, his son miraculously regaining the ability to speak, an earthquake hits and kills the entire Smith family except for Walter.

It's unclear what the actual purpose of all of this is. Presumably there is one, but it is not a story that is told well enough to justify multiple readings to analyze what it might be. In fairness, writer Alan Grant was generally much, much better than this, but this story reads like an edgy teenager read Killing Joke and missed the point entirely. For the sheer pointlessness of this gratuitous misery and misfortune, A Long Slow Death takes the number one spot.