Reading a lot of pre-2000's Batman (Shadow of the Bat, Batman Adventures, Dark Knight Detective, Tales of the Batman etc.). I think what makes them work so much better for me than modern stuff is that they are stories WITH Batman, and after 2000 we get stories ABOUT Batman

Grant Morrison CAN do that kind-of self mytholigizing stuff (and I'd argue that even he bites more than he could chew), but pretty much everyone else who tries the "what it means to be Batman" stuff fail to pull it off.

Partly it's because Batman isn't deep enough to make this kind of exploration interesting (he's an icon - he's broad rather than deep), and partly because it stops the stories dead: They're no longer about the world, they are about your notion of this fictionalized character.

you can say that, for example, a lot of Alan Grant's stuff is too honest. Or that Goodwin's social conscious stuff is too naive. But they try to engage with the world around them, not with the mythology people built before them.

is Batman your vehicle or your destination? if he's the latter - once you got him you've got no place to go; you're just spinning your wheels.

(and let's not get TOO stuck on the notion of a golden age - these stories had their own issues)