Today’s comic is Darwyn Cooke’s Batman: Ego. This is a quick read and affordable (if you can find the standalone version). This quite possibly might give you the biggest Batman bang for your buck.

It has one of the most interesting hooks I’ve read in a Batman book (and I’ve read a lot of Batman books), but this one opens with a suicide. You see, in order to catch the Joker and foil his plot, Batman had to shake down one of his men into betraying the him. With the shame of betraying his boss and knowing the Joker would probably kill him for it eventually anyway, he kills himself right before Batman’s eyes.

Batman caused this man’s death, however indirectly and he must suffer with that.

The book carries on into a fascinating psychological drama with Bruce wrestling with the good and bad of what he does. Is he failing the city? Are there more people like this man in the city? Does he have more death and blood on his hands than he realizes?

The book is a fast read, but compelling and sure of itself.

And Darwyn Cooke’s art is always, always, a pleasure to behold. Bruce wrestling with his own bat-shaped ego and trading barbed words with it is a wonderfully inspired idea and this graphic novel is teeming with sharp dialogue and narration that sometimes I think only Cooke could come up with.

This is a good gateway drug for Cooke’s other works, too… Look him up and I guarantee, you’ll be hooked.