Complete Frank Miller Batman Reading Order

For most contemporary comic readers, Frank Miller is an image of a rise and fall from the distant past.  Coming in with classics from Daredevil, smashing open the barriers of Supherodome with the Dark Knight Returns, and challenging everyone with works like 300, Ronin, and the Sin City epic.  This begins to fall short with panned books like the offensive and Islamaphobic Holy Terror.

Now, if you ware watching the solicit, you see that he has a third chapter of the Dark Knight trilogy, called The Master Race.  This brings him, along with Brian Azzarello, back to the original future story that takes Batman into a place as a reactionary and violent revolutionary.  Miller’s Batman stories take place somewhat outside of the regular Batman continuity, save books like Batman: Year One.  While there may be some thematic and event crossover with other continuities, he has declared his books to having their own continuity.

So if you are intending on getting prepared for The Master Race by reading up with his entire canon, there actually is a preferred order to pick up on it from.  We are starting with the reading order from The Centre Cannot Hold, and then adding and subtracting and modifying.  You will notice that the order is put into the continuity of the characters themselves, rather than when they were released.

Batman: Year One

Reprints Batman #404-407 (February 1987 – May 1987).
This volume holds the unusual distinction of also being canon in the Post-Crisis DC Universe.

All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder

Reprints All-Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder#1-9 (September 2005 – April 2008).

Spawn: Batman

Original graphic novel (January 1994).
This story is also canonical in whatever universe it is that Spawn inhabits.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns

Reprints Batman: The Dark Knight Returns #1-4 (February 1986 – June 1986).

Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again

Reprints Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again #1-3 (November 2001 – July 2002)

Batman: The Master Race

Begins late 2015 w/ Issue #1

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