Batman and Detective Comics Relationship

Hello all, I wonder if anyone could explain to me the relationship between Batman runs under the Batman title (e.g. Batman by Grant Morrison or Batman by Scott Snyder) and the Batman runs under the Detective Comics title. Are they completely separate story lines? Do they overlap in some way? If they do relate to each other in some way, how do they relate to one another? In case this relationship has changed over the years, I will add that I am new to comic reading and intend to start with the “New 52”.
Thank you in advance!

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It’s overlapped in the past – most notably in the 70s/80s when writers like Gerry Conway and Doug Moench were on the book, but most of the time they’re different stories. The distinction is often that Batman is where you have the big, bold superhero stories and Detective is where you get the more grounded mysteries.

Also, Detective is the book that often gets different focuses, like when Batwoman was the star of the book for a year, or James Tynion’s Detective run, which was basically an X-Men team style story in a Batman book.


Batman started off as a spin-off of the series of Batman stories that would appear in Detective Comics. Until 1987, Detective Comics would feature more than one story, and Batman would appear in the first story. Since then, the two books have been basically interchangeable, and they sometimes have crossover stories.

It’s the same way with Action Comics and Superman.

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