11 Essential Comics To Read If You Love Batman

8. Strange Apparitions

Steve Englehart may have arrived on the scene a little after Denny O'Neil did, but his run on Batman is by no means any less influential.

In fact, his work - collected in TPB form under the title of 'Strange Apparitions' - is fairly seminal, and really continued where O'Neil left off in shaping the modern vision of the character we know and love today. It features (as the title would suggest) Hugo Strange in a leading role, but by far its most interesting element is its treatment of the Joker, with the famous 'Laughing Fish' storyline getting its debut in the pages of Detective Comics during this period.

Like O'Neil's run, many of Englehart's characters and storylines would make their way into the critically lauded BTAS, and would later, also, form the basis for the modern mythos of the character.

If you're looking to pinpoint the moment where Bats really got nuts, then Strange Apparitions is definitely a series to make note of.