Another anniversary is on the horizon. Batman day is once more upon us (on September 15). In honor of the event, DC announced that they will begin streaming their online platform ‘DC Universe’. There might also be free (I’m guessing Batman-themed) comics available at your LCS for the day, you can look it up, here.

This is, in general, a day to celebrate the Dark Knight Detective.

In honor of Bruce Wayne and his alter ego the Batman, I want to discuss what are, in my humble opinion, some under-rated Batman comics from the past 79 years. Don’t worry I won’t actually go that far back. The problem with listing Batman comics, whether note-worthy or not, is the sheer quantity of them currently at our disposal.

Batman, at this point, is like an institution or national myth. More precisely an internationally recognized pop culture myth, and amongst the voluminous output that is the Batman’s back catalogue there is, surprisingly, much more good than bad.

My goal today, therefore, is not to list or give an overview of every single Batman story or major plot-twist, not even to give the best Batman comic from each era or epoch (even that would be too much), instead I merely want to list three modern Batman appearances in Detective Comics that I think currently have room to grow (in terms of return on investment) and/or may gain in value as time goes on.

In years to come, as people start looking for other Batman keys to invest in outside of the obvious or largely unaffordable existing usual suspects (I’m looking at you Tec #27). Which modern Batman books should we keep in mind?

Detective Comics #880 (July 2011)– Scott Snyder Run with a Mark ‘Jock’ Simpson Cover

It is very likely that, in the future, Scott Snyder’s run on Batman will be viewed as the definitive early 21st century take on the Bat. Snyder’s Batman stories all began with ‘The Black Mirror’ story arc that was launched in Detective Comics #871. After his success there he was given free rein to write Batman in 2011 on the New 52 relaunch. Of the early Snyder run, a standout issue is Detective Comics #880. This comic has been discussed recently by my colleagues here at the GoCollect blog, but it really is a comic to look out for. With its low print run and solid returns on all grades (currently a 9.8 graded copy carries an impressive fair market value of $625.00) it was the beginning of a stellar Batman run that will certainly be looked back on as a classic.

Detective Comics #575 (June 1987) – Batman Year Two Event

Often overshadowed by Frank Miller’s (rightly) celebrated 'Batman: Year One' (Batman #404-7), this comic was actually the inspiration for the character of ‘The Phantasm’ in the excellent DC animated film 'Mask Of The Phantasm'. Mike Barr’s vigilante outlaw ‘The Reaper’ (illustrated by Alan Davis) gives Batman a run for his money in this excellent follow up to ‘Year One’. At the time, people protested that this was a bad Batman story since Barr has Batman use a gun. However, Barr’s narrative provides more than ample rationale for why a young and inexperienced Batman believed the use of firearms was necessary and, what’s more, the original Detective Comics stories from 1939-1940 not only showed Bat’s using guns, he also killed criminals. Detective Comics #475 is the first part of 'Year Two' and is definitely under-rated. Other than upsetting some Batman fans, this comic features the first appearance of Jason Todd and the first cameo appearance of Killer Croc. That’s probably the reason why, even after being rendered non-canonical, prices on this issue of Detective Comics have been gradually rising. Today a copy of Tec #575 is worth $80.00 in 9.8 graded shape and there have been 35 sales in the last ten years, but best returns have been on 9.6 at positive +20% return on investment over the last ten years.

Detective Comics #471(August 1977) - First modern appearance of Hugo Strange

It’s hard to believe that Steve Englehart, Walt Simonson, Al Milgrom, Terry Austin and Marshall Rogers only managed to produce eight consecutive issues of Detective Comics together (issues #469 – 476). This creative team basically took Batman from campy Adam West children’s show fare to edgy Christopher Nolan style depths and, for me and many others, that makes their brief collaboration on Detective Comics a definitive and game changing run. Detective Comics #471 was the third issue in their brilliant run and it reintroduced Doctor Hugo Strange. An under-rated key but not unappreciated, and although there are only 119 CGC copies on the Census, returns are strong on higher grade copies. A 9.8 graded edition will cost you around $300.00 at current fair market value, but that grade shows positive (+5.1%) return on investment after 12 sales in the last nine years. 7.0 graded copies are even more positive +185.3% on returns after only two sales. This one has lots of room to grow.