@NekuSakuraba: Tower of Babel? Yes, it does that.
I understand if the comics seem convoluted. Before you read the comics they can look massive and labyrinthine. It helps if you realize that there is no bat-canon. There was never a Lee+Kirby run that set the base pattern for the character. Batman is a outsider art collage done by wonderful men who clearly disagree with each other.
I don't want to add to the (excellent) suggestions. Choice overload is a disorienting thing to see, that doesn't really clear up choice overload. I thought I might be helpful some publication history:
GOLDEN AGE:
The defining characteristic of the earliest comics was naivete. Bob Kane and Bill Finger hadn't really figured out what Batman was yet. Bob Kane initially drew Batman like a demon with block-print da Vinci wings. He drove around in a red sports car with his revolver and his silk rope beating the malarkey out of gangsters, dogs, mad scientists, and monsters.
You can't really find a graphic novel of this stuff, and the originals are impossibly expensive. If you want to check it out the BATMAN CHRONICLES. One of the more interesting early stories began in Detective Comics 31. It was this totally nutso story where batman tracked a “vampire” to his (quite beautiful) castle.
SILVER AGE:
In the early sixties Batman began doing very strange things. DC couldn't publish comics with guns, or too much murder, or realistic crime, or vampires; so stripped of his guns and convertible in a world without mobsters Batman traveled into space, moved through time, got a bat-dog, went into a trance, and fought the rainbow monster.
The silver age stuff is reprinted in BATMAN CHRONICLES and a few really out there stories are sold as The Black Casebook.
DARK AGE:
In the 70's Batman got darker, closer to what most people think of as Batman. Neil Adams and Steve Engelhart brought a lot of noir back into the character. In the eighties Frank Miller, Grant Morrison, and Alan Moore all took a swing at Gotham with a quite bloodied bat. It's also when Robin was killed off (A Death in the Family) based on a phone poll.
A lot of Neil Adams work was written as one shots, so you'll find it in collections of random comics, rather than large graphic novels. One notable exception is Batman: Tales of the Demon. This is his OG work on Ra's collected chronologically. The same goes for Steve. Strange Apparitions collected some of his better dark Joker stories. Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns was amazing and really established the dark Batman. Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious earth was pretty crazy. It established the idea that Batman villains are personifications of our worst thoughts, and Batman is the “self” locking them up in Arkham (the subconscious) and it's sort of the inspiration for the game. Alan Moore's the Killing Joke defined the joker in the same way that Frank Miller defined Batman.
MODERN:
I don't know a better word for this era. With Miller, Moore, and Morrison in comics, Tim Burton on film, and Timm on the Batman animated series Batman was largely defined. Most of the recommendations you'll get are from the period after we knew who Batman was as a character. Hush, The Long Halloween, Hush, Court of Owls, Batman RIP, Knightfall, Tower of Babble, The Man Who Laughs, and Batman: Year One.
Many ideas are shared throughout them, but many aren't. If you want to check out Morrison's Batman start with The Black Glove or The Resurrection of Ra's. If you want to start with Brubaker and Miller you can check out Year One. If Snyder's Batman is most interesting then check out Court of Owls, the New 52 Batman.
MANGA:
The manga was based off of the Adam West show, which was really popular in Japan. The Joker apparently was too odd even for them, so the guy who did Eight Man, wrote a manga that has no direct link to any of the American/British comics.
BLACK BAT:
A pulp character from the early days. He never appeared in a comic. Apparently his creators and Batman's creators accused each other infringement. They threatened to sue, but instead decided they'd all be better off if they just openly ripped off each other characters and got rich. It's a happier story than any of the Black Bat's stiffly written fictional ones.
Good luck,
Robert Jones
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