This decade had it tough. Why you wonder might I say tough? Because there were some choice material being given to us leading up to Crisis on Infinite Earths by Mr. Moench and others (like Paul Levitz's Huntress back-ups in the Wonder Woman mag), but all that gets eclipsed by 4 little events: The Killing Joke, The Dark Knight Returns, Batman '89 and Year One. We have Alan Moore as his stock was rising, Frank Miller at the pinnacle of his creative height and Michael Keaton proved everyone wrong when he was announced as Batman. Hell, we had a young neophyte by the name of Todd McFarlane doing interiors on the oft overlooked Year Two storyline by he and Mr. Barr.
But don't think that the quality ends after the Miller/Moore stuff ended, we also had some amazing things like Jim Starlin's run on Batman, Alan Grant's phenomenal Detective run (still one of my faves), the Catwoman mini series that fleshed out Miller's short Selina cameo, etc.