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I don't know about you, but I love a good mystery, and Tom King seems to as well. In celebration of Batman's 85th anniversary, the writer spoke on a panel at Baltimore Comic Con about why The Dark Knight continues to be relevant to today's pop culture landscape. For King, a lot of Batman's staying power rests in his engagement with detective stories. 

"I think probably if you put all the stories written in the past 250 years together, I would bet that more than half of them are murder mysteries. It's the easiest plot to do; you create a world, have a murder happen in that world, have a detective follow the clues to solve the murder. That's the essential plot of those - of most - stories. And they’re structured in a way that keeps the reader turning the pages. So to have a character with [Batman’s] design, who is a detective, and to add in his supporting characters, makes people want to read more and now he is what he is."

King is correct in his observation about mysteries. You could also broaden your scope to include television, and it's difficult to ignore the popularity of shows like Columbo (which had its own resurgence), True Detective, the NCIS show and spinoffs, The X-Files, Twin Peaks, Midsomer Murders, Luther, and literally every British detective show ever. Not to mention classics written by Agatha Christie. While murder mysteries follow a familiar formula, it's their deviations from expected norms that make the best stories of the subgenre so memorable.

He is vengeance, he is the night, he is... one of Popverse's favorite subjects. Learn how to do a Dark Knight movie marathon right with our Batman movie guide, and for the true World's Greatest Detectives out there, dive deep into the heart of Gotham City by getting to know Batman with Popverse.