Nolan's revisiting of Batman is not a re-invention but a reclaiming of the myth, a grand syncresis that draws upon the whole history of the character.

The exciting thing about Mark's writing [...] was the feeling that he was on a journey: the ideas were going somewhere, a gigantic edifice of thought was in the process of construction. You sensed, with mounting awe, that Mark was building a system. There was a feeling too that while the work was rigorous and deeply informed, it was not academic, either in terms of its intended audience or as an exercise done purely for its own sake. The urgency in Mark's prose came from his faith that words really could change things. His writing made everything feel more meaningful, supercharged with significance. Reading Mark was a rush. An addiction.

I encountered him almost entirely in the rarefied realms of discourse