Bad Company and Halo Jones from 2000AD or Zenith? Loved the early Zenith stories.

Agree with the Dark Knight Returns comment. They kind of got elements of Batman Year 1 in Batman Begins so go to the end of his career. Or The Killing Joke?

There was a Marvel (I think) title called Haywire about an out of control robot which I have fond memories of?

Is the only graphic novel series that I have really enjoyed tbh. It is perfectly suited to the graphic novel format though and perhaps it wouldn’t have the same impact as a film. As mentioned above would depend entirely on how it was translated to film.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Sandman (and indeed most of Gaiman’s work) but I really don’t think it would translate well to film. Stardust (which was a much more straightforward book) was hacked about quite a bit to work, though I guess that was pretty good.