Batman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, Volume 2

The second volume of this on-going series collects ten more stories of the Batman, ranging from 1940 to 2003. I had read several of these before, either in their original appearances, in the case of the ones from the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties, or in other reprint volumes. They’re all entertaining, although none of them would be among my picks for the greatest Batman stories ever told. (As I think I’ve said before, those would be “Night of the Reaper” by Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams, and the Batman/Enemy Ace crossover, also by O’Neil and Adams, the title of which I can’t recall at the moment.) This volume features the extra-long story in which Jason Todd first became the infamous “second Robin”, a character so despised by the fans that he was eventually killed off. I’d consider this collection worth reading, since almost any story about Batman is going to be pretty good, but it’s a bit of a letdown after the excellent first volume in the series.