Playing up Mister Miracleis in no way meant to slight the work being done by King and the murderer’s row of artists he’s got working with him on Batman. Mister Miracleis probably a generational book, think James Robinson’s Starmanif itwas as widely read as Watchmen. Batman could have just as easily been at or near the top of that best comics list last year.

Batman‘s baseline is so high. Think about it: 62 issues in now, and maybe the most relatively pedestrian part of the run was “The War of Jokes and Riddles,” a gang war between Riddler and Joker that’s predicated on how neither one gets the other’s schtick that ALSO included a Kite Man story that turned Comics Internet into a blubbering mess. That’s a really high floor of quality.

In the last year alone, we’ve seen Batman and Wonder Woman trapped in an alternate dimension for 10,000 years; the wedding; the Poison Ivy and Booster Gold lead ins to Heroes in Crisis;12 Angry Batmen, the fallout from the wedding with Mr. Freeze; and a KGBeast story. There wasn’t a single time that an issue of Batman came out in the last year where Batman wasn’t at or near the top of my read pile.

It’s an underrated component of this run, but there’s an elegance to the way King works blatant fanservice into the book that makes it so joyful to read. The Superman and Batman “double date” issues from last year had so much from the respective animated series, and the Wonder Woman story felt like a direct call and response to the classic Justice League cartoon, where their relationship felt completely legitimate and earned. And here…hang on.