Arkham's Asylum

If this makes me a jerk, at least it's in the nicest of ways possible. I was talking with Ben, a friend and the writer of brokenjpg.net. He told me, "There's a legitimate NY comic shop across the street from my legitimate NY agency. I'll be broke in a week"

"But so, so happy," I said, "Let me suggest the comic Invincible to start your wallet emptying."

"I started it with Planet Hulk," he said, "which I only read half of in Barnes and Noble and never found again. So that will hold me for now. I basically wanted to just knock everything off the shelves into a shopping cart starting with the Alan Moore graphic novel shelf."

I said, "Nice. Ooh! and Fables. and Preacher. And...Kabuki. Actually, push Kabuki up to the top of the list."

"I hadn't heard of kabuki," he said, and then paused and looked at me (this was gchat, but I assume he would have looked at me). "Also, stop that. I just spent 40 bucks. Enough that when the woman said 'do you want to open a rebate account- credit for every 100 bucks you spend' it actually sounded like a good idea, and I did so."

"You're not going to like what I do next, then," I said, "It'll take a couple minutes."

So here's part 2 of comics that anyone who claims to like comics must read and should own.

Illustrated by Dave McKean and written by Grant Morrison, if not the very best Batman story ever told, it's certainly in the top 10. Many say it was a large inspiration for the movie Dark Knight.