@Kwek00 A bit of personal background. We migrated to the UK, from Cyprus, when I was five years old. By the age of seven, I was struggling to read what, to me, was a foreign language. We lived in a large Edwardian house packed to the gills with other immigrants like ourselves. On one of the floors were three young guys that I looked up to. They were cool and trendy and, joy of joys, they owned a TV.

One of these guys introduced me to comics. I didn't realise it at the time but that was his way of helping me to read. He had a massive collection of mostly DC comics. I loved Batman, Superboy (Superman as well but mostly Superboy), Daredevil and Thor. I think that I liked Thor because he reminded me of Greek mythology. Even at that young age Wonder Woman bugged me because the comics were fundamentally wrong about the origin of the Amazons and of Ares. My young self quickly railed against the idea that Ares was a badie. He was an Olympian god! It was he who created the Amazons to help humanity fight evil.

Anyway, this guy's collection went back to the 60's so I was exposed to early Batman all the way through to the late 70's.

By the time I hit my teens, I was developing my music tastes which centred around black music. They still do. Coincidentally, I also discovered The X-Men at the same time. The racism allegory inherent in The X-Men comics hit me like a ton of bricks.

Probably because there were so many spin-offs within The X-Men franchise, I read less and less of Batman and of DC comics in general. Having said that, I continued to collect some of the graphic novels and really enjoyed the Dark Knight persona in the later comics.

By the time I reached my late twenties, I had amassed quite a collection. A collection that I couldn't maintain or indeed keep. I sold some of it but gave the bulk to a younger cousin. He is now a married man in his thirties with two young children. He's still got those comics, and the ones that he added to the collection. Something that his wife is constantly pissed off about😂😂😂

@Kwek00 btw, I don't see a discussion as something which is intended to establish who is wrong and who is right. For me, both discussion and debate are (or they should be) an exchange of ideas, of thoughts, of opinions.

@room101 I grew up with Belgo-Franco kids commics. And when I got older, friends introduced me to to more young-adult and mature stuff. But I never really got into the american stuff. I was exposed to American commics by animated series. I watched a lot of animation. And then we are talking:

- Batman TAS
- Justice League TAS
- Spiderman TAS
- X-men TAS

All 90s and early 2000s products.
... and before that HE-man and Transformers.

But again... didn't read the commics. And even though I like a movie and an animated series, I'm really not into the superhero genre that much. But I do have a weak spot for Batman and Hellblazer. But Hellblazer is difficult to collect, so I only do Batman. I do have the mid 80s - late 90s run of X-men (or at least, everything that is collected in omnibusses). But I would take Batman over X-men any day of the weak. And I'm kinda sad that I collected X-men and not Spiderman or Conan. Both characters that I would enjoy a lot more.

There is a lot social criticism in commics. People that complain that commics today are "woke" really haven't read the older stuff. Because, as you rightly pointed out, X-men has to do with racism (or at least xenophobic behavior to that what is diffrent) and don't forget that Superman is an immigrant. But a lot of these sharper tones are more prevalent in the late 70s and 80s. X-men however is constant, because the entire framework was build like that from the very begining.

I have a collection of European, Japanese and some American commics. The best American stuff that I have, doesn't really have the super hero stuff going on for it. But I do have a really weak spot for Batman, espescially everything from the bronze age till now. And Batman has some really good runs, I think, partially, because it's a fairly easy character and he has the best rogues gallery in superhero-commics imo. But some of his villains are too smart for the authors, and thus it becomes difficult to use them. One of those characters is the Riddler. Because the riddles need to be intresting and people don't have to get them right away. Everything needs to be cryptic but solvable. It's way easier to write a Joker story, because he's just a psychotic murderer. You just need to make sure that the plot can be perceived as a joke. While Riddler needs a lot more homework before you can work it out.

@Kwek00 which was the first?

@Ferric67 The Dark Knight (TDK) by Christopher Nolan is my fav for the moment.

But when this movie comes out on BlueRay, I'll purchase it for my Batman collection. Then I can watch it again next to the other one and see what I think is the best. But at the moment TDK is still valued a bit higher.