2 Greatest Batman Stories: #1-2

In honor of the seventy-fifth anniversary of Batman, we’re doing four straight months of polls having to do with Batman, culminating with the official 75th anniversary of Batman on July 23rd. We’ve done Batman covers, Batman characters, Batman creastors and now, finally, Batman stories!
You all voted, now here are the results of what you chose as the 2 Greatest Batman Stories!
Enjoy!


NOTE: Don’t be a jerk about creators in the comments section. If you are not a fan of a particular creator, that’s fine, but be respectful about it. No insulting creators or otherwise being a jerk about creators. I’ll be deleting any comments like that and, depending on how jerky the comment was, banning commenters.
1. The Rupert Thorne Saga (Batman #339-346, 348-356 and Detective Comics #507-512, 514-522)
This storyline was Gerry Conway’s first epic tale during his run writing both Batman and Detective Comics in the early 1980s. It was a continuation of the Rupert Thorne/Hugo Strange haunting from Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers’ stint on Detective. It was a sprawling tale that worked in a number of plots, from Thorne manipulating Gotham City’s elections to Vicki Vale returning (after being gone for about a gazillion years) to try to learn Batman’s secret identity to Robin returning to be Batman’s partner once again (and the two not exactly getting along) to Batman dealing with vampires to Batman being OUTLAWED in Gotham City, a whole lot of stuff happened on top of finally seeing the resolution to Thorne’s haunting by Strange. Guest stars were used wonderfully, as well, in this epic, as Conway embraced the whole DC Universe, using the Human Target, Jason Bard AND Dr. Thirteen well.

 
The whole thing was beautifully handled by a variety of artists, most notably Gene Colan, Don Newton (who drew the featured pages here with inks by Alfredo Alcala) and Irv Novick.


2. “The Lazarus Affair” (Batman #332-335)
The Lazarus Affair was a rollicking action-packed international adventure that worked sort of like a big budget James Bond-like blockbuster, only starring Batman. It was drawn by Irv Novick and Frank McLaughlin and written by Marv Wolfman, who spun it out of his back-up stories during Len Wein’s Batman run.
Wolfman used Talia, Catwoman, Robin and King Faraday as supporting players in this tale that zigged and zagged all across the globe, ultimately leading to one of the top Ra’s Al Ghul/Batman battles.
Along the way, we got scenes like the following
 





Bad guys on skis with lasers!! Awesome!