The Batman Movie: 10 Comics Matt Reeves NEEDS To Adapt

6. Private Casebook

Batman Private Casebook Zatanna
DC Comics/Dustin Nguyen

Paul Dini is a name most will recognise from Batman: The Animated Series. The writer penned some of the most notable episodes from that show, including Harley and Ivy, Almost Got 'Im and Joker's Favor, and later presided over several Batman comic books in the years following.

Perhaps the writer's most overlooked series, however, came during his stint on Detective Comics and Streets of Gotham towards the end of the last decade. Together with Dustin Nguyen and Derek Fridolfs, Dini presided over his own little corner of Batman's world and told some seriously brilliant tales in the process, including Heart of Hush. However, for the purposes of this list, it is Private Casebook that deserves special attention.

An anthology comprised of several unique one-shots that showcase Batman's investigative prowess, Private Casebook is not only a great book to newcomers but also one for longtime fans of the character. It features a fantastic couple of team-up stories with Zatanna, where both are forced to confront the Ventriloquist, and several others that spotlight various mysteries involving villains like the Wonderland Gang, the Riddler, and a figure known as the Lilly Killer.

It's a fantastic collection, and even if just one mystery ends up inspiring an element of Reeves' film, it'll be all the better for it.

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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.