Today is Batman Day. Yes, it's a made-up holiday, but DC doing it is no different than Hallmark.

I've been reading comics for over 50 years, and Batman's an interesting conundrum. He's never been my favorite hero -- Superman's inherently more interesting, most of the Marvel heroes have deeper personalities, etc. But he's consistently been the focus of some of the best stories. Maybe it's because he's easier to write -- threats to Superman have to be so powerful -- or because he's got what almost everyone acknowledges it the best rogue's gallery of enemies. But damn, there's some great Batman stuff out there.

My personal five faves (in no particular order):

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns is Frank Miller's imaginary future Batman, an older, retired hero who comes out of retirement in a dystopian Gotham to fight and take back the city. It's been imitated plenty fo times (including by Miller, whose sequels were awful), but this is the best. It's wicked and satirical while still being often brutal. It also pairs well with Miller's Batman: Year One, hitting both extremes of the character's experience.

Tom King's entire run on Batman. King spent five years telling an incredible saga, with twists and turns, appearances from most of the core villains, and developing the Batman/Catwoman romance in a way that made sense. Obviously, you can't pick this up in one volume, but it's still a great read.

The Killing Joke was Alan Moore's take on Batman and Joker, and is arguably the most influential Joker story ever (including the current Joker movies). It's a tiny story compared to the rest, but it's had a lasting impact, especially with the crippling of Barbara Gordon's Batgirl (leading eventually to the character Oracle).

Batman: Strange Apparitions was the book that reinvented and saved the character. Steve Engelhardt returned Bats to his gritty detective roots in the '70s, moving away from camp. We get The Joke back to being maniacally evil, we get crime families, we get Silver St. Cloud, one of his great romances. This probably set the stage for almost every Batman story since.

Batman: The Long Halloween by Loeb and Sale is a yearlong miniseries that's both a story set early in Batman's career, and a hell of a whodunit. It's got all of Batman's villains, and the Two Face story here was used as the origin story in the movie The Dark Knight. Probably the most epic of the stories in this bunch.

There's so many good Batman stories that I won't pretend that these are the only five that can be on anyone's list (and I haven't even touched on movies and tv shows), but they're my personal choices. Would love to know what other folks have enjoyed.