Batman: The Long Halloween

One of my favorite Batman comics hands down!

This ode to Frank Miller's "Year One", itself a noir take on Batman's early career, provides a note-perfect genre piece that should thrill anyone looking for a Batman whodunit. The story has Batman, early in his career, taking on the mob and a serial killer who strikes on holidays. The story is drum tight through thirteen issues (350+ pages), set from Halloween to Halloween, with a poetic pacing and use of graphic tension found only in top-notch graphic novels. Harvey Dent is heavily featured along with a young Jim Gordon. For Batman scholars, Dent's presence alone provides a backdrop of foreboding. The usual rogue's gallery weaves through the book, including a jealous Joker, out to outdo the serial killer, a cornered, yet elegantly neurotic Riddler, and a wildly abstracted, sensual Poison Ivy, along with a little more mind-altering mayhem from the Scarecrow and Mad Hatter. What I appreciated most about Jeph [sic!] Loeb's telling is that the criminals are reduced to their elemental symbols, where a gesture or a glance conveys as much as a panel of narrated text. The clues are perfect red herrings in the grand whodunit fashion. Fans of Batman know bad things are going to happen when a stranger passes a rose to a character who then pricks their finger on its thorns. Similarly, even a hardened Gotham detective shudders upon seeing a murder victim with a smile on his face. My only misgiving about this book is that if a reader wasn't acquainted with Batman and the usual Arkham cast, the subtletly of this telling will almost certainly be missed. On the other hand, this'll be a great place to start an education. Tim Sale's art is compelling. Noir's a difficult effect to convey in comics, and it comes through beautifully in a shadowy, mostly gray and earth tone palette behind strong inking. This cool, muted ground provides the perfect foil against which to contrast the costumed villains, ratcheting up the tension another notch.

The 80s were the times of the Bat. The revolution in the Batman comics, started in the mid-seventies by people like Dennis O'neil and Neal Adams, reached its peak in the eighties, with the works of such brilliant writers as Mike W. Barr, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison and, obviously, Frank Miller. Tim Burton's Batman, possibly the finest comics-based feature film, was also made at that time. The nineties weren't as favorable to the Dark Knight. The artistic barrier was broken, and the spirit of revolution that characterized 80s comics drifted away. With Neil Gaiman and others of his kind becoming the main power in adult comics, Batman was, once again, mainstream. Although some good stories were published, none had the impact and inventiveness of Frank Miller's Batman.Which is why I was very pleasently surprised to read the Long Halloween, a collected mini-series originally published in 1996, which is probably the finest Batman story released since Grant Morrison's masterpiece 'Arkham Asylum: Serious House on Serious Earth' in 1989. It was the first work I've ever read of either writer Jeph Loeb or artist Tim Sale. Loeb's dialogue is extremely powerful, flawless, reminding me of Frank Miller's writing on 'Dark Knight Returns' or 'Ronin'. Sale's wonderful artwork and brilliant use of close-ups, color and page compositions brought back memories of Dave Gibbons' work on 'Watchmen'.The storyline was the best I've seen in years, recreating the story of Harvey Dent, aka Two-Face - in my mind, the most interesting of Batman's many enemies. It's a detective story, very different from the action-packed style of most 90s Batman, with the beautifuly created atmosphere of a film-noir. A family of gangsters and a serial killer are the actual 'villains' in the Long Halloween, but the main idea - the main conflict in the story - is the friendship of Batman, Harvey Dent and Comm. Gordon, and the old question of law and justice; some of Batman's more standart Arkham Asylum residing foes are brought in for short appearences, not stealing the show but giving this extremely long story some energy. Dent's personality is crafted brilliantly, as is the relationship between the three law enforcers, and the story of Dent's fall into crime is more tragic and touching than ever. The Long Halloween is one for the ages.

People always ask themselves the question what is it about the Dark Knight that makes him one of the most enduring and popular characters of our time? This wonderfully scripted trade paperback edition of the Long Halloween points to the answer. The book delves deeply into the criminal elemant of Gotham and bring out the best of Batman, who you see very little of when it come to the action scenes, but a lot of in scenes depicting conversation. The mood is very dark in this comic and reminisces the first Batman movie by Tim Burton. Batman sticks to the shadows and you just can't help but feel intimidated when he slowly walks out. The element of fear has always been the Bat's strongest features and this book really shines through when it comes to that. The coloring by Gregory Wright suits the mood so well that yopu feel as if you're that third person looking at things from behind a lens. Tim Sale is without a doubt one of the most promising talents out there. His soft, smooth approach to the characters makes better than the detailed, cartoony features that have become the norm in this day and age. Jeph Loeb scripts one of his best stories in there and you can interact with the characters and understant their expectations and wants. The story is suspenseful, thrilling with action in just the right places. Loeb brings out half of Batman's rogue gallery and portrays them right without them overstaying their welcome through and through.If you're a fan of Batman, his first movie and the Godfather all put into one, you'll never put this book down (I read it continuously without a break). If you're just a Batman fan, then You'll be seeing the character written at his best.

Long Halloween works on so many levels. I went into this book knowing how it was going to end and it still captivated me. It is both a murder mystery and a story of a fall from grace. The main plotline-the mystery of the identity of a serial killer who murders members of the Falcone and Maroni crime families every major holiday-almost takes a back seat to the tragic transformation of Harvey Dent, who starts out as Batman and Captain Gordon's partner and friend and becomes one of their greatest foes by the end of the story. This series ranks alongside the Killing Joke as an important piece of Batman continuity as well as examining Batman's relationship with his enemies. Loeb's writing is good minimalism, packing so much power into so little dialouge. Tim Sale's artwork is just beautiful. He is one of the most talented pencilers ever, and breaths new visual life to several Batman characters. The series is lenghty but it is also fast paced and can be read in a relatively short amount of time. The pacing of the artwork is near-perfect, save for the unsettling abundance of splash pages. This series also well balances Batman's foes between pyschologically and physically deformed supercriminals and regular human gansters. After reading this and the first issue of its follow-up Dark Victory, one can only wonder why team Long Halloween does not work on a regular Batman title.

The Long Halloween is one of my favorite additions to the Batman canon. It is an intriguing mystery that fleshes out the early years of the careers of Batman, Commissioner Gordon (here Captain Gordon), and District Attorney Harvey Dent. The story focuses on the efforts of these three men of justice to bring down the criminal empire of Carmine "The Roman" Falcone, a character who made his debut in Frank Miller's Batman: Year One. Over the year that the story spans, our heroes are being aided in this endeavor by a mysterious killer who murders a victim of the Falcone family around each of the major holidays. Also during this time, many of the members of Batman's rogues' gallery show up to make plays of their own. The writer/artist team of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale is one of the best currently working in the comics field. Loeb's writing comes closer to letting the reader into Batman's mind than most, but still keeps the distance that the character demands. The Falcone family is portrayed as a pretty stereotypical mafia family. If you are a fan of the Godfather films, you will find plenty of homages/thefts to those works here, right from the opening panel. But they serve the purpose of providing fodder for the holiday killer. It's what Loeb does with Harvey Dent that makes this book. Two-Face, for me, was always an interesting idea for a villain, but always came across, oddly enough, rather one-dimensionally. By having a story that is set before Dent's transformation, Loeb is not constrained by the "Number 2" modus operandi the character is inevitably saddled with. Dent here is more like the Han Solo character. Cocky and unintimidated by anyone, he's so much more fun to read here it almost makes me wish we could throw continuity out the door and pretend he never got that acid thrown in his face. What Alan Moore did for the Joker in The Killing Joke, Jeph Loeb does for Two-Face here. One more thing about the writing: Loeb knows when to write and when to let Tim Sale's beautiful artwork tell the story. So sometimes there are several pages with little or no words. The murders, for example, are all presented in complete silence, which is just as it should be. As for the art, Tim Sale provides some of the best representations of the Batman characters I've ever seen. His work is slightly stylistic on the "normal" characters, and wildly exaggerated on the "supervillains", but without making the characters look like they belong in separate books. Sale's Batman is the definitive one for me, and his version of the Joker second only to Brian Bolland's. Added to this is his expert use of shading and page layouts that look like scenes from movies. Absolutely top-notch stuff. If you only buy comics for the pictures, this book is still worth the money. But I'd recommend reading it too.