So let me say, this trade paperback contains more than just Batman Dark Knight, Dark City. I personally was not aware of that when I bought it, so it was a nice surprise to find that the volume was thicker than I expected. In terms of issues you'll get Batman 452-454 (Dark Knight, Dark City) and Detective Comics #629-633. Though they named the trade after the first story in the volume, which undoutedly the most famous of the lot, they really could've just called this the Peter Milligan collection or grouped it with even more stories, since every issue here was written by Milligan. In terms of placement, these issues are all taking place before the Batman Knightfall event (Which began with Batman #492). You know people look back on the 90's as a bad time in comic book history, as if every story from that era were trash. And with blunders like Marvel's Clone Saga for Spider-Man that's somewhat understandable. But this collection, with stories written in 1990 and 1991, really serves to do away with that idea in my opinion. Though Dark Knight, Dark City is really the best of the collection and the big reason to buy this trade, I found every story in here to be interesting, featuring Batman dealing with unique opponents that weren't necessarily just Two-Face and Joker, who we've seen him face coutnless times before.So on to the stories. Dark Knight, Dark City is special to me because it has the Riddler as the main villain, which isn't something we really see all that often. Furthermore, he is completely off the rails in this story. Throwing aside his typical MO he is presented as far more brutal than he has previously been, with even Batman noting this within the comic. He proceeds to lead Batman through Gotham as he commits various crimes. Batman is not chasing him however, but falling into his trap as he commits specific actions that will suit the Riddler's plan to summon and control the Bat-Demon Barbatos. At the same time that this is going on we are able to see past events where another group of men summoned Barbatos, what happened during the summoning, and the aftermath of it. This really serves to tie the past to the present, leading us to an interesting conclusion in which we learn a little bit more about the dark city of Gotham. This isn't the best story that i've ever read featuring Batman, but it is a good Batman story and more importantly it is a creepy Batman story. The writing, the artwork, the speech, and the overall tone of the work really do make this story come together. And fun fact for any big Batman fans, or fans of Grant Morrison, this story, specifically the Bat-Demon Barbatos, would be retooled and used as an influence for Morrison's run on the character from a few years back.None of the other stories in this volume compare to the first one, but they are still enjoyable nonetheless. Not going to go in-depth into these other stories, but I will say that they have a similar feel to the first one. You can tell that they were all written by the same person. There's a certain kind of supernatural/dark element that Milligan likes to write into his Batman stories and it's very easy to see here. At the same time, this is still Bruce Wayne. This is still the Batman we all know and love, fighting the good fight, even if he may struggle along the way. I think that if you're going to pick up any random volume of Batman stories that you couldn't possible go wrong with this collection.