This is a guest post by Quinn Rollins, a man who loves all things geek but especially muppets and lego. You can find him on twitter @jedikermit.
This post is the first in a series where Quinn looks back at some of the best of Batman and a great place for new readers to jump into the world of Batman.
“I believe in Gotham City.”
This one line, the first in the book, is uttered by Bruce Wayne, and this line drives the following 370 pages. An homage to “The Godfather,” it’s without the irony that it has in that great film, because Bruce Wayne really DOES, really NEEDS to believe in Gotham City…that through his efforts as Bruce Wayne and Batman, it can be redeemed.
“The Long Halloween” was first published in serial form in 1996-97 as a year-long special series, and was later published as a compilation in a hardback, and then a paperback. I own the hardback, one of only three “comic books” I own in that format. The other two are “Kingdom Come,” and “The Dark Knight Returns.” Someday I’ll pick up “Watchmen” in hardcover too—but it hasn’t happened yet.
“The Long Halloween” takes place early in Batman’s career as a crime-fighter, and he’s only recently won the trust of Police Captain (later Commissioner) James Gordon. Gordon is the One Honest Cop in Gotham. He has a wife and son and is struggling to balance family and career. He’s only recently installed the “Bat-Signal” on the roof of police headquarters, and it’s here that he will meet and confer most often with Batman.
The third player on the side of justice is District Attorney Harvey Dent. We know Harvey Dent as one of Batman’s worst enemies, the acid-scarred master criminal known as Two-Face. At the time of this story, Harvey is one of the good guys, helping Gordon and Batman as they try to fight crime on several fronts. We see the seeds of evil and obsession in Harvey…several times he wants to cross the line of what a D.A. can do…and he’s continually frustrated that Batman, as a Masked Vigilante, can do things he cannot.
The crimes these three conspire to thwart are several: there are two warring mob families in Gotham at this time, the biggest is the “untouchable” Falcone family, headed by “The Roman.” A second family is the Maroni family, relative newcomers, but violent, and wanting control of the city. Outside the mafia, we have the Freaks of Gotham City. These, like Batman, have only been on the scene for a few years, but are already beginning to force the mafia out and dominate the Gotham Crime Scene. Among the notable Villains we see in this series: The Joker, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, the Riddler, Scarecrow, and the Mad Hatter.
Now a new master criminal has joined their ranks: Holiday. Holiday, like most of Batman’s villains, has an obsession–Holiday’s is killing people on holidays. It begins on Halloween, and ends on Halloween the following year (hence the title “The Long Halloween,” and Holiday is killing members of the Falcone’s famiglia on every holiday in between. Once a month, another Falcone turns up dead.
This is a genuine, Film Noir-esque mystery, and there are so many red herrings that turn up empty that even I, experienced comic book reader and mystery movie connoisseur, was stymied until the final pages, when the shocking identity of Holiday was revealed. Each issue of the original series focused on a different classic Batman villain, so we get to see Loeb and Sale’s interpretation of each.
The artwork in this book is beautifully dark–using light and shadow to their best effect in every case. Tim Sale, the artist behind the book, is wonderfully creative, and he lights each scene differently. A case in point is the character of Harvey Dent. We all know that he will one day become Two-Face, whose face is half “normal” and half hideously scarred in symmetrically dividing axis up and down his face. Sale lights him in nearly every scene so we only see half of his face at any given time, prefiguring his eventual destiny. It’s always subtly done, never heavy-handed, and in fact, because all of the other characters in the same frame are lit the same way, it may not even occur to you to notice it.
Sale has also done a radical redesign of some of the traditional Batman villains, bringing a new “ultimate” form to them. My favorites are probably Poison Ivy and Scarecrow–Poison Ivy, instead of her trademark fiery red hair, has her hair completely replaced by a mass of ivy vines and sweeping tentacles….reaching out impossibly far from her body, seductive and lethal. She’s become part plant, and is made all the more beautiful by the alien parts of her body. Scarecrow, a second-tier villain who uses pathogens to heighten the fears of his enemies, has been made unbelievably creepy by Sale…he’s never been physically intimidating, but his nursery rhyme dialogue mixed with his sewn-shut mask and filed teeth finally make him the thing of nightmares.
The other villains are also beautifully rendered–everyone from Catwoman to Joker to Riddler gets a makeover; and they all benefit from it. The heroes have minimal makeovers, but as with most Batman books, the villains are really the stars of the piece.
Christopher Nolan and David Goyer cited The Long Halloween as their inspiration for much of the plotlines and characterizations in their Dark Knight Trilogy, and there’s good reason for it. The book is an ultimate expression of Batman and his intriguing world that invites us into the minds and mayhem of his greatest allies and worst foes. If you’re a fan of that movie trilogy, you’ll recognize some of the threads of tapestry taken from Loeb and Sale, woven into the films.
The Long Halloween is a book that works on every level; emotional, visual, as a crime thriller. Whether you’re a Batman fan or not, you’d probably appreciate the story and visuals of it. Look it up at the library–they’ve probably got a copy of it that you could check out instead of buying it. If you’re a comic book fan of any kind, you couldn’t go wrong buying it. It’s an amazing book, one you’ll be glad to have on your shelf or coffee table…and a story you’ll never forget.