I’d been told that traditionally Detective was the crime title while Batman was seen as the superhero book. So yes, the relatively clean slate provided an opportunity to bring Batman and Bruce to a more psychologically healthy ground zero than some previous portrayals of Batman as borderline unhinged, paranoid and humorless. Morrison: I’d laid the groundwork for my Batman in the 52 series where we go through the whole process with Bruce Wayne facing the 10-Eyed Men and undergoing the thogal ritual in Nanda Parbat to simulate the experience of death. Coming off the events of 2005's Infinite Crisis crossover and the chaotic but critically acclaimed weekly series 52, Morrison was presented with a blank canvas on which they could present a radically different take on Batman. 2006's Batman #655 kicked off what eventually became a massive superhero epic spanning multiple titles and adding fundamental new characters and ideas to the franchise. But that proved to be anything but the case. Readers could have been forgiven for thinking Morrison had said all there is to be said about the Dark Knight by the end of the '90s. Morrison later made Batman a focal point of their critically acclaimed JLA series, a book that painted the Justice League as godlike beings defending humanity from threats across time and space.

Early Bat-tales like Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth and Batman: Gothic helped cement Morrison as one of DC's rising stars in the early '90s.

Morrison was certainly no stranger to Batman by the time they took the reins of DC's flagship series in 2006.

Batman by grant morrison