Bookshelf #9

You can tell at a glance what this shelf is devoted to: Batman, and all Batman.

A major chunk of it consists of collections of the Batman: Dark Knight Detective and Batman: Caped Crusader series, devoted to collecting issues of Detective Comics and Batman from the late '80s through the '90s...comics I could have bought off the racks if I were a) reading comics at the time and b) had more than allowance money with which to buy things. (I did already have many of these comics in single issues, but the collections were still well worth buying...counting those Legends of the Dark Knight: Norm Breyfogle collections there, there are probably some Grant/Breyfogle issues from that era that I have three or four versions of now, I guess).

You'll also note what I think is all of, or at least most of, Scott Snyder's run on Batman, starting with a collection of "Black Mirror" from the pages of Detective Comics and Gates of Gotham and then continuing into his run on the New 52 Batman and some of his post-Batman Batman comics. There's also Grant Morrison's Batman Incorporated, which occupies a decent amount of shelf space. 

I've also got two DC Comics/Dark Horse collections, Batman vs. Predator (of which there were three miniseries) and Aliens. The latter includes the Batman/Aliens crossovers (the first with art by Bernie Wrightson!), the ludicrous Superman and Batman vs. Predator and Aliens (not very good at all, but there's something appealing about the bonkers title and attempt to wrangle all that IP into a relatively short story) and WildC.A.T.S./Aliens (because I guess they had to stick that somewhere). I'd recommend buying both if you can find them, as Marvel currently holding the Predator and Aliens licenses means they are unlikely to be collected again any time soon.

Near the end of the shelf, you'll see 2012's Batman: Earth One Vol. 1. I think of DC's Earth One line of original graphic novels every time I hear how great their Absolute line is, and how well those comics are selling. Though obviously quite different, both were attempts at a kinda sorta "Ultimate" DC Universe. Earth One didn't seem to take, while Absolute did. 

There are probably many reasons for this (one being that, at least of the Earth One books I read, only the Wonder Woman ones were really great comics), but Earth One seemed to target the book market and folks who don't regularly read comic book-comics, while Absolute is very much a line of comic book-comics for comics readers. Is that the main factor? I don't know. The first volumes of the Absolute comics are just now starting to come out in collected form, but I don't have any way of telling what collections might be successful outside the direct market...nor do I have any way of telling what comics are doing well inside the direct market either, other than word of mouth and online anecdotes...

Finally, if you're wondering if these are the only Batman trades I have, as you thought I might perhaps have more, based on how often I write about Batman, well, remember, these shelves only contain books from circa 2012-2024 or so. I'm sure I have more on another shelf in another room that we'll get to eventually.