The opening arc of "Night of Owls" is excellent, as are "Death of the Family" and the Red Hood arc of "Zero Year", and all three are warmly recommended to any Batman fan. I found the rest of "Zero Year" a touch more uneven (and also way too bombastic to ring true as happening in Batman's first year in Gotham), but still quite solid and with a brilliantly written Riddler (notoriously hard to do), as were the various standalone issues between and following the three arcs. The only major flaw of this enormous collection -- beyond the utter lack of any commentary or bonus features beyond a cover gallery -- is that due to Batman having so many parallell titles, huge events that impact the narrative happen off-screen between arcs and are never explained. I realise they can't include every Batman title, but selected pages from vital events (such as the death in Batman Inc. #8, or Joker's disappearance in Detective Comics #1) would have helped a lot, or even a text-only summary to catch the reader up. That aside, though, this is a great book, which I'm happy I bought, even at the very steep price tag. ( )