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Batman: The Long Halloween - Great detective/crime/whodunit type story. The resolution reminds me of And Then There Were None. The only possible gripe I have is that there's not enough Batman; a great deal of time is spent focusing on supporting characters as well as the Falcone family. This gives greater depth to the story though, so it's worthwhile. One of my favorite Batman books.
Batman: Year One - Went back and read it again after watching Batman Begins... The book told everything in a better way than the movie, of course, but the book is much darker. People often describe the Tim Burton Batman as "dark," but what they're really talking about is the art direction. Frank Miller's Batman is "dark" to me in that there's a great deal of moral ambiguity in Gordon. Ironically, Batman seems purer, more idealistic than he's been portrayed even recently in the comics. I think my favorite scene is where he saves the stray cat from the corrupt SWAT team. First person narrative is also something I miss a lot in comic book movies, I guess because it's generally considered a bad cinematic device. Spider-Man had a little, but nowhere near what a comic would.
Birds of Prey: Of Like Minds - Gail Simone's writing, Ed Benes is drawing, I can't ask for much more.
Birds of Prey: Sensei and Student - Same fare as the above... That is, great plot, character interaction, dialogue. Lady Shiva shows up, but you end up seeing her more human side, if there is such a thing.
Crisis on Infinite Earths - Finally sat down and read it. It's incredibly dense, every panel is so FULL. There's like 10 heroes and a paragraph of dialogue in every scene, and it all takes time to parse. The story is classic, though I did notice a few gaps in the narrative. The deaths of Supergirl and the Flash (omg spoilar?!) were well done and appropriately emotional. Crisis attempts to be spanning and epic, a story where heroes are born and heroes die, sort of an Iliad of the DC universe. It succeeds, though others have tried to replicate and force similar stories since then, and they've failed like the shallow marketing opportunities they are. The upcoming Infinite Crisis from DC looks to be different-- even though they're pumping out tons of cross-over series and whatnot, they've put good talent on the books so they're worth reading. And for God's sake, please let it lead to more good Wonder Woman stories.
Justice League of America: New World Order & American Dreams - These are decent, but fairly generic. I'll keep looking for more good Justice League.
Justice Society of America: Justice Be Done - Actually really good. JSA has like 10 trades out, and just about everyone will agree they're consistently good. That's good to know, since I enjoyed this quite a bit. The idea of Dr. Fate has always interested me, and they basically bring him back in this storyline and re-form the JSA. A lot of times team books will gloss over the individual character interactions and personalities in favor of telling whatever story they need to (JLA has suffered from this before), but this doesn't happen here.
Meridian - Already reviewed this in another entry. An original fantasy set in an original world, I really like this. Out of print, unfortunately, but I managed to find copies.
Sojourn - I think I reviewed this as well. It's more recognizable fantasy with characters who fall into the archer, rogue, etc. archetypes, and the story's premise is your basic quest (except instead of "man with murdered family seeks to unite lands and get revenge", it's a woman) So it's entertaining swashbuckling type fare. Greg Land's artwork is spectacular.
Supergirl: Many Happy Returns - I never found that I was into the Linda Danvers Supergirl because I read the Death of Superman novelization, and she struck me as kinda stupid (I love Lex Luthor, you've just never given him a chance to reform, Superman!) But that's a product of poor writers, not something inherent to the character. Peter David is an excellent comics writer, having written great Hulk stories for 10 years, only leaving because the editors demanded he make Hulk "dumb" again and about smashing things. This storyline is the last Linda Danvers one, the book was being canceled due to poor sales, which is a shame because I was surprised at how good it is. The new Supergirl (the one from Krypton) debuted in her own book yesterday, but I've yet to see it be interesting at all. I'll need to read through it at some point, since I flipped to a random page, and saw Barbara Gordon as Batgirl, and did a double take.
Ultimate Spider-Man Vol. 1 - Everyone who is interested at all in Spider-Man should read this. It doesn't require any knowledge of some convoluted continuity, keeping up-to-date with anything, etc. It's a re-imagining of Spider-Man done from scratch, in the present (Peter Parker being in high school in the 2000s). There are small changes here and there (Peter becomes the Daily Bugle's webmaster instead of freelance photographer), but it remains faithful to everything that makes Spider-Man what it is.
Dark Phoenix Saga - Classic, and often remembered as the best X-Men story. I remember Brendan showing it to me a long time ago, but I think my interest in X-Men was waning at the time.
Whew! That's about all for now, I think I'll make one more run at buying trades (from www.instocktrades.com) after I put that on hold for a while =) I've been considering The Ultimates, Runaways, Constantine/Hellblazer: Good Intentions, Joss Whedon's X-Men, and the Batgirl stuff.