Read Batman: The Killing Joke

Retired vigilantes in a 1985 with Nixon still president; the graphic novel that made comics grow up.

A 55-year-old Batman comes out of retirement to fight Superman; Frank Miller's 1986 reinvention.

Bruce Wayne's first year and Jim Gordon's; Miller and Mazzucchelli's crime comic.

A masked anarchist against a fascist Britain of the 1990s; the Guy Fawkes mask comes from here.

Superman has a year to live and does twelve impossible things; Morrison and Quitely.

An ageing Justice League returns to stop a new generation of reckless heroes; Alex Ross's paintings.

Jack the Ripper as a royal conspiracy, with 40 pages of footnotes; Moore and Campbell's Victorian London.

Burton's Gotham, Nicholson's Joker and the film that made superheroes dark.