The Court of Owls is the most original and long-lasting villain created for the Batman mythos in years, and its indoctrination into the culture of the character was almost immediate. It's grounded while fantastical, a Batman story while inextricably linked to Bruce Wayne, and character-driven while featuring some action-packed comic book bonanzas. The first half of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's Batman might be the best the character's ever been written. My reviews for each story arc can be found below.īatman, Volume 4: Zero Year - Secret City #23.2 is the Riddler story and #28 is the lead-in to Batman:Eternal. Issue #23.2 and #28 are presented at the end of the book as they are completely stand alone stories that would have interrupted the longer story had they been inserted in publication order. Those stories read much better in order as there are subplots running through the book. The original trades cherry-picked out the smaller 1 and 2 issue stories collecting them in Batman Vol. I thought the story was more fluid when presented in publication issue (except for issue #28 which I'll get into). It held up just as well going back to read it in this omnibus edition. Snyder and Capullo are both at their creative peaks. It's one of my favorite runs on Batman of all time.

I read Snyder and Capullo's run in trade when it was first released.

Batman snyder omnibus vol 1