Batman: The Long Halloween
| Batman: The Long Halloween | |
|---|---|
 Batman: The Long Halloween TPB Art by Tim Sale. |
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| Publication information | |
| Publisher | DC Comics |
| Schedule | Monthly |
| Format | Limited series |
| Number of issues | 13 |
| Main character(s) | Batman Jim Gordon Harvey Dent Carmine "The Roman" Falcone |
| Creative team | |
| Writer(s) | Jeph Loeb |
| Artist(s) | Tim Sale |
| Letterer(s) | Comicraft Richard Starkings |
| Colorist(s) | Gregory Wright |
| Editor(s) | Archie Goodwin Chuck Kim |
| Collected editions | |
| Absolute Batman: The Long Halloween | ISBN 1-4012-1282-4 |
Batman: The Long Halloween is a 13-issue comic book limited series written by Jeph Loeb with art by Tim Sale. It was originally published by DC Comics in 1996 and 1997.[1] It was inspired by the three Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween Specials by the same creative team. The entire series has been collected in both trade paperback, and as part of the DC Comics Absolute Editions. The series' success led to Loeb and Sale to reteam for the sequel, Batman: Dark Victory, and Catwoman: When in Rome, which parallels the events in Dark Victory.
Taking place during Batman's early days of crime fighting, The Long Halloween tells the story of a mysterious killer named Holiday, who murders people on holidays, one each month. Working with District Attorney Harvey Dent and Lieutenant James Gordon, Batman races against the calendar as he tries to discover who Holiday is before he claims his next victim each month. The story also ties into the events that transform Harvey Dent into Batman's enemy, Two-Face.[2]
In continuity terms, The Long Halloween continues the story of Batman: Year One. It also revolves around the transition of Batman's rogues gallery from simple mob goons to full-fledged supervillains. It also tells the origin of Two-Face, adding along to the story in Batman: Annual #14.
Jeph Loeb has stated that the genesis of the story was influenced by writer Mark Waid, who, when told that Loeb was working on a story set in the Year One continuity, suggested focusing on Harvey Dent's years prior to becoming Two-Face, as that had not been depicted in depth since the original Year One story.[3]
Contents |
[edit] Plot
At a wedding in July, Gotham City mob boss Carmine "The Roman" Falcone tries to pressure Bruce Wayne to help launder money, and Bruce refuses. Bruce begins to leave the party with Selina Kyle, but they find Gotham DA Harvey Dent, who has been beaten by some of the Falcone mob. After helping him, Bruce decides to leave alone.
As Batman, Bruce enters Falcone's penthouse to investigate. He encounters Catwoman, who flees from him. Batman ends the pursuit to answer a Bat-signal. Dent and police Captain Jim Gordon have called him, and the three enter a pact to end Falcone's reign by bending the rules if necessary, but never breaking them.
Later, at a meeting of the board of Gotham City Bank, Bruce opposes the position of the other members in favor of accepting Falcone's money. When he proves unable to sway them, Batman pays a visit to Richard Daniel, the bank president, warning him to keep the Falcone money out. Daniel subsequently resigns from his position and Bruce steps in. In August, Falcone orders his nephew Johnny Viti to take care of the problem. In September, Johnny kills Daniel, gunning him down as he steps out of a theatre.
On Halloween, Johnny Viti is shot twice in the head by an unknown assailant while taking a bath. The perpetrator leaves behind the murder weapon, a .22 caliber pistol with the nipple of a baby bottle used as a crude silencer, as well as a jack-o-lantern. That night Dent, Gordon and Batman discuss the murder, and Dent says he does not care about the death of a mafia hitman. Batman notices that Catwoman is eavesdropping, and she offers to help Batman hit the Roman where it hurts the most: his money. Catwoman's information leads Batman and Dent to a warehouse where the Roman has stockpiled over $20 million in paper cash. They together set fire to the warehouse and destroy the money. Dent returns home and a bomb detonates. Dent and his wife Gilda survive. For months afterward, on certain holidays, the "Holiday killer" continues murdering members of the Falcone crime family.
On New Year's Eve, Batman is forced to put his investigation on hold to stop the Joker from murdering everyone in Gotham Square with his laughing gas. Meanwhile, Harvey Dent's new assistant, Vernon Fields, searches old police files and discovers a connection between Carmine Falcone and Bruce Wayne. On Falcone's yacht in Gotham Harbor, Falcone's son Alberto falls overboard, shot by Holiday.
The murders continue, with Dent's investigation into Bruce Wayne coming to a head when Bruce is arrested on Mother's Day. Thomas Wayne once saved Falcone's life after he was shot, and Dent has concluded that a connection exists between the sons. However, the subsequent trial on Father's Day turns in Bruce's favor. Alfred testifies there is no connection between the two men, with Thomas Wayne's original report of the shooting going by without record due to the police corruption of the time.
Batman tracks Riddler, whom Holiday let live on April Fool’s Day. Riddler explains the Roman hired him to find out who Holiday was but kicked him out when the solutions he gave were less than satisfactory. Batman suspects Riddler was left alive to spread that the Roman was looking for Holiday.
On August 2, Falcone's birthday, Maroni is going to trial to testify against him. Before going to the stand, Fields hands him a bottle of acid that appears to be heartburn medicine. During questioning, Maroni hurls the acid at Dent, hideously disfiguring half of his face. Dent is rushed to the hospital, where he stabs a doctor and escapes. Meanwhile, Viti's mother Carla, investigating the coroner’s files on the Holiday victims, becomes one herself.
On Labor Day, Dent has been hiding in Gotham’s sewers for a month. He crosses paths with Solomon Grundy, who attacks him. Dent is able to calm him. Gordon, meanwhile, has come to the conclusion that Dent is Holiday. Batman refuses to acknowledge it, but Gordon demands to hear the truth from Dent himself. Batman questions Falcone about Dent's location. The Roman accuses Batman of knowing that Dent was Holiday but standing aside. Batman then seeks out Catwoman, demanding to know why she is so interested in Falcone. She refuses to answer, and runs away. Batman ends up at Arkham Asylum talking to Julian Day, the Calendar Man. Batman tells him that they know Dent is Holiday but not how to find him. Calendar Man suggests that, it being a holiday, Holiday is probably heading to kill Maroni.
That night Gordon, at Batman’s request, moves Maroni to a new cell. Holiday surfaces to shoot Maroni twice in the head during the prisoner transfer, and his bodyguard several times in the chest. Holiday turns his gun on Gordon, who discovers Holiday's true identity is Alberto Falcone. The bodyguard, who was really Batman, beats Alberto so severely it almost kills him, but Gordon stops him. Alberto is placed under arrest and jailed.
On Halloween, all of the Arkham inmates except Calendar Man are released by Dent, based on the flip of a coin. Falcone and his daughter Sofia are ambushed in their penthouse by the escapees, Dent (who has now become Two-Face) and Catwoman. Batman intervenes but is unable to stop Dent from murdering Falcone. During the following scuffle, Sofia falls out a window. Dent escapes and kills his former assistant Fields for helping Maroni scar him. Later, Dent turns himself in to Gordon and Batman. As he is cuffed, he tells them there were "two" Holiday killers.
Later Gordon and Batman discuss what Two-Face might have meant, since Alberto has confessed to all the Holiday murders.
Alberto avoids the gas chamber after being declared insane, and is sent to Arkham Asylum, where he occupies a cell across from the Calendar Man's.
On Christmas Eve, Gilda is packing up boxes for her move away from Gotham, but before she leaves, she takes a box down the basement furnace. She describes aloud to herself how she read in Dent's case files about the removal of the serial numbers of guns and how baby bottle nipples could be used as silencers. She then removes from the box a .22 pistol and drops it into the flames of the heater, along with a familiar-looking hat and coat. She claims that she took it upon herself to start the Holiday killings, in an attempt to end the Roman’s hold on Gotham and thus lighten Dent's caseload so that they could have a child. Her belief is that Dent took up the killings on New Year’s Eve and that Alberto is lying to the police with his confession. She also says that she knows Dent will eventually be cured and that they will reconcile, because she believes in him.
[edit] Critical reaction
Critical reaction to The Long Halloween has been mainly positive.
Hilary Goldstein of IGN Comics praised Loeb's story as "tight, engrossing, and intelligent writing that never betrays the characters", adding that he "mixes Batman and Bruce Wayne's lives as well as anyone has, and brilliantly demonstrates the bond of brotherhood shared by Batman, Jim Gordon and then District Attorney Harvey Dent."[4] Goldstein later ranked The Long Halloween #5 on a list of the 25 best Batman graphic novels.[5]
Yannick Belzil of The 11th Hour said that "Jeph Loeb has crafted a story that is unique to the characters. It's a complex murder mystery, but its also a Batman story." Belzil added: "Buoyed by a film noir-ish plot that features a Gothic twist on the gangster/murder mystery plot, terrific character-based subplots, and beautiful, cinematic art, [The Long Halloween is] an addition to your collection that you won't regret."[6]
[edit] Continuity
The Long Halloween begins in June, approximately six months after Batman: Year One, which ends in December. This six-month gap accounts for the fact that the villains in Batman's rogues gallery are already established in The Long Halloween. However, since there are a multitude of Batman stories set in this time period, The Long Halloween may possibly begin, not in the following June, but possibly a year-and-a-half after Batman: Year One. Several stories definitely take place in between Year One and The Long Halloween, including Batman and the Monster Men, Batman and the Mad Monk, and Batman: The Man Who Laughs, the last of which tells of the first encounter between Batman and the Joker, following up on the events of Year One.
[edit] In other media
The Long Halloween was one of three noted comics that influenced the 2005 feature film Batman Begins, the others being Batman: The Man Who Falls and Batman: Year One.[7] The film's sequel The Dark Knight adapted many elements of this story, the setting of Batman, Gordon, and Harvey Dent talking on the roof of the Gotham City Police Department is taken from this story and used in The Dark Knight, as is Gordon's line "he does that" to Dent when Batman disappears from the conversation in the middle of Dent's sentence. In the comic, Harvey Dent has acid thrown on his face during court, but in the film a witness draws a gun on him (though this is not how he becomes Two-Face in the film). The comic also depicts Dent and Batman discovering mountains of cash and destroying it, while in the film it is the Joker who destroys a pile of the mob's cash. Similar to the scene where the Dents have their house blown asunder, the Joker is behind setting up explosives for Harvey and his loved one in the movie, with the role of Gilda replaced by Rachel. Harvey Dent succumbing into the tragic fate of "Two-Face", his obsession with the mob, is taken directly from the book and adapted onto screen. In the book Sal Maroni is responsible for Harvey's facial scars, in the movie the Joker is responsible. But Maroni is also considered the culprit as he 'unleashed' the Joker. This is the version Dent chooses to believe, as he is later seen confronting Maroni, holding him responsible for the Joker's actions. The scene where Batman disguises himself as a helmeted bodyguard to ambush Holiday is mirrored in The Dark Knight, with the decoy bodyguard being Gordon, the 'transfer' being Harvey instead of Maroni, and the target being the Joker instead of Holiday.
In the 2011 video-game Arkham City, Catwoman's third DLC costume portrays the one in Long Halloween.
[edit] References
- ^ Manning, Matthew K.; Dolan, Hannah, ed. (2010). "1990s". DC Comics Year By Year A Visual Chronicle. Dorling Kindersley. p. 275. ISBN 978-0-7566-6742-9. "The acclaimed team of writer Jeph Loeb and artist Tim Sale reunited to chronicle a dark year of the Dark Knight's past with Batman: The Long Halloween, a thirteen-part limited series."
- ^ Beatty, Scott (2008), "Batman", in Dougall, Alastair, The DC Comics Encyclopedia, London: Dorling Kindersley, pp. 40–44, ISBN 0-7566-4119-5
- ^ Mark Salisbury. Writers on Comics Scriptwriting 1999. Titan Books. Pages 152-165.
- ^ Batman: The Long Halloween review, Hilary Goldstein, IGN, June 1, 2005
- ^ The 25 Greatest Batman Graphic Novels, Hilary Goldstein, IGN, June 13, 2005
- ^ Comic Reviews - Batman: The Long Halloween, Yannick Belzil, The 11th Hour
- ^ This is mentioned inside the front cover of the Batman Begins mini digest comic book that reprints portions of these three stories that comes with the DVD.
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