Meanwhile, the briefly touched-upon thread in The Dark Knight of Gothamites suspecting that Harvey Dent might be under the mask of Batman had its genesis here – as it was Miller who first delved into the background of a pre-Two-Face Dent, making him the third spoke in Batman and Gordon’s crusade against a corrupt Gotham. Although Harvey’s accident doesn’t occur in the pages of Year One, the way he’s presented in the story makes the knowledge of his eventual fate that bit harder to bear – just as it does in Nolan’s film.

You’d expect that a book about Batman’s first year of operation would have little to offer a film about his final days – but in fact, there’s a final legacy present in Rises. Although Juno Temple’s character is never actually named onscreen, the young friend of whom Selina is fiercely protective is clearly a version of Holly Robinson, the teenage prostitute created by Miller for Year One. The characterisation of Selina herself, meanwhile, comes from many sources, but this is certainly among the most noticeable.

Batman: Year Two (1987)

After the huge success of Miller and Mazzuchelli’s Year One, it was unsurprising that DC would follow up with a Year Two. Published in the pages of Detective Comics, writer Mike W Barr’s story was a disappointing sequel, however (although it’s worth pointing out that it had originally been written as an “early years of Batman” story a few years earlier, and dusted off and repurposed following the success of Miller’s opus). We mention it here largely because, once again, the notion of Batman using a gun in his early days is toyed with, before he quickly decides it’s not his way – so this could, perhaps, be another potential origin for that brief piece of development in Begins. Also, while it perhaps seems unlikely that there’s any intentional connection with Rachel Dawes, this is the only story we can recall where Bruce has a love interest with that first name.

The Killing Joke (1988)

Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s controversial graphic novel about the Joker doesn’t really lend anything in the way of direct plot to Nolan’s films – but thematically, it’s something of a biggie. Aside from the characterisation of the Joker – and his assertion in the book that “If I’m going to have an origin story, I prefer it to be multiple choice” being directly reflected by The Dark Knight’s various “how I got these scars” stories – the book tries to examine whether Batman himself is just as strange and insane as his mortal enemy. Furthermore, the Joker spends the book attempting to prove that “one bad day” can drive anyone mad. In Moore’s version, it’s Jim Gordon, and he fails – but Nolan seems more willing to prove the villain’s point, as Harvey Dent is driven to become Two-Face as a direct result of the Joker’s chaotic actions on one such day.

The Late 1980s

The regular Batman titles in the late 80s saw a somewhat up-and-down period of sales and critical success – with a mixture of both memorable and uninspiring stories. A particular standout of the period was the controversial Robin-killing A Death In The Family. This was characteristic of the stories of the time, which tended to focus on the psychological effects that Bruce’s life as Batman had both on himself, and on the people around him – and it’s this that is, perhaps, the largest tonal influence that Nolan’s films drew from writers like Alan Grant and Doug Moench.