One of the big problems if not the biggest was that it was published alongside Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee’s Hush. This story should have had the same recognition as tales like The Long Halloween or The Court of Owls but it wasn’t meant to be. It involved almost the entire rogue’s gallery and felt like a classic hardboiled mystery but with a Superhero slant. This six-part story was excellent and one of the best Two-Face stories of all time. As Batman investigates it’s revealed that the killings are liked to a plot years earlier by the villains to take out the dark knight once in for all that never came to fruition and involved an actor standing in for Two-Face. Two-Face is the obvious suspect but he has been locked up in Arkham during this time and killing off other villains isn’t his MO. The story focused on Batman pursuing a killer who is targeting various members of the rogue’s gallery while leaving behind a double-sided coin with both sides scratched. His run opened up with the six-part story Dead Reckoning which really should have earned classic status.

Brubaker’s hard-boiled style of writing along with his affinity for crime fiction fit Batman and his world perfectly and as great as his run on Batman was I feel that these stories are even better. Both stories saw different artists and revolved around mysteries and really focused on the detective aspect of Batman. This is a shame because though his run on the title was short these were some of the best issues of the decade.Īll total Brubaker’s run was 9 issues and consisted of two story arcs. Luckily DC corrected this and put out a two-volume trade that collected the stories in Batman however his Detective work remains out of print. For a long time, his work on both Batman and Detective Comics was left uncollected and seemingly forgotten about. That’s fair as that series was easily one of the best books of the 2000s but I feel like his work on Batman proper gets overlooked. Most fans would say that his signature work for DC was his collaboration with Greg Rucka and Michael Lark on Gotham Central. Ed Brubaker is one of the most celebrated writers in comics.

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