10 Smartest Decisions In DC Superhero History

2. Everything Is Canon - Grant Morrison's Batman

batman rip zur en arrh
DC Comics

I KNOW THIS LIST HAS HAD A LOT OF BATMAN but just... hear me out, ok. I like me some Batman. Not too much Batman. Just... the right amount of Batman. (As a treat.)

In my mind, "just the right amount of Batman" is Grant Morrison's Batman, which kicked off in 2006 and concluded without the fanfare it deserved in 2013. The writer restored Bruce Wayne to - in their own words - the "hairy chested love god" seen in the O'Neil-Adams run from the seventies, but with one important distinction: everything was canon.

Morrison's love of comics developed pre-Crisis during the Silver Age, and so it's no surprise that a lot of those elements ended up playing into their run on the Caped Crusader - most noticeably in Batman R.I.P., which reimagined the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh as a failsafe backup personality locked in Bruce's subconscious; something he could revert to in the event he was ever placed under intense psychological attack.

Morrison's Bats kicked off what would eventually prove to be one of the character's most creative periods, introducing Bruce Wayne's child with Talia al Ghul, Damian Wayne, and then Batman Reborn following Bruce's death at the hands of Darkseid in Final Crisis.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.