Batman: The Long Halloween

Jeph Loeb's writing is keenly aware that Batman is a detective, and Tim Sale portrays a Gotham that is a fertile breeding ground for corruption and madness. Here, Batman is coming to terms with the potent image he projects and the madness it attracts. There are many fine Batman stories, but the ones that capture the spirit with extreme clarity are few. On this alone, The Long Halloween comes highly recommended. Masterfully executed, this is an excellent chance to revisit the world of Batman as fresh as in the summer of 1939. --Danny Graydon

Product Description
It's refreshing when you find a Batman story that both is epic and successfully explores the core of a resolutely explored character. Taking as its catalyst a sub-plot from the seminal Batman: Year One, the story revolves around murders occurring on national holidays, the victims connected to Mob boss "The Roman." Dubbed "Holiday," the killer uses an untraceable handgun and leaves small trinkets at the scene. Plenty of suspects are available, but the truth is something the Dark Knight never suspected. This series scores two major coups: it brilliantly portrays the transfer of Gotham rule to the supervillains and charts the horrific transformation of Harvey Dent from hardened D.A. to the psychotic Two-Face. Both orbit around the sharply portrayed relationship between Dent, Commissioner Gordon, and Batman: a triumvirate of radically different perceptions of Justice. It is always great to see the formative incarnation of Batman, drenched in noir here.Jeph Loeb's writing is keenly aware that Batman is a detective, and Tim Sale portrays a Gotham that is a fertile breeding ground for corruption and madness. Here, Batman is coming to terms with the potent image he projects and the madness it attracts. There are many fine Batman stories, but the ones that capture the spirit with extreme clarity are few. On this alone, The Long Halloween comes highly recommended. Masterfully executed, this is an excellent chance to revisit the world of Batman as fresh as in the summer of 1939. --Danny Graydon

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.


Not bad, not great   December 9, 2005
 29 out of 46 found this review helpful

I finally got around to reading this one, having long heard it touted as a worthy follow-up to Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's stunning masterpiece, _Batman: Year One_.

It's a follow-up, all right, but I'm not persuaded that it's a completely worthy one. Jeph Loeb gets some of it right, but he fritters away Batman's second year in business with quite a bit of silliness. Are we, for example, to believe that Batman encountered this much of his "rogue's gallery" during this one case? The only one that gets any real "screen time" is Catwoman, and she's well handled for the most part. But the rest are just trivialized away. And was Batman out of commission for the entire time he was under Poison Ivy's influence? If not, what did he do during that time?

I'm also not a huge fan of Tim Sale's art. Some of the panels are very nicely rendered, but what's up with e.g. the Joker and his eighty-eight five-inch teeth?

What made Miller and Mazzuchelli's masterpiece work was its utterly consistent aura of gritty realism. Loeb and Sale have pushed Batman back in a more "cartoony" direction -- with a somewhat noir-Gothic edge, but without the crisp, economical storytelling that made its predecessor such a resounding success and certainly without the same earthy approach to Batman's origins and capabilities.

To make matters worse, the world's greatest detective doesn't even successfully _solve_ the mystery at hand. Despite the good-on-the-whole handling of Harvey Dent's transformation into Two-Face, the central story -- the mystery itself -- is bungled by both Batman and the author, who hands the reader (and not Batman!) a totally gratuitous "surprise" payoff with essentially no basis in the storyline to that point.

It's pretty good on the whole, but it's far from great. I'll follow up by reading _Dark Victory_ and _Haunted Knight_ just to see whether they improved. But I don't like this stuff anywhere near as well as I liked Denny O'Neil's 1970s-era Batman, let alone Miller's brilliant work.

By the way, _Batman Begins_ fans will also want to read this as one of the sources Christopher Nolan and David Goyer consulted for their excellent screenplay. Just don't expect this to be of the same quality as the movie.


Incredible Story with Compelling Art   July 18, 2000
 20 out of 24 found this review helpful

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.


Fantastic early-career Batman story   November 1, 1999
 14 out of 15 found this review helpful

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.


Maybe I just don't see it, but....   September 18, 2001
 13 out of 20 found this review helpful

This book is not great. Maybe you like the art.. OK, that's one thing. Personally, I don't. But even if I did, I'd like some writing to go with it.

People compare this to Frank Miller.. which I think is a very valid thing to do since it's intended as a direct follow-up to Miller's little masterpiece, "Year One". First off, I should say that I think Miller's Batman stories are really works of literary genius, as good as many great novels. The Long Halloween can't really be a work of literary genius as there's barely even any writing in it. The whole book can be read in no time flat. Most of the supporting characters get no time at all, and I'm still confused as to why any of Batman's usual roge gallery was included since none of them are really used well, and since their presense begs for questions about their origins, all unexplained here. This is a follow-up to Year One, so where did all these people come from? From the laziness of the writers, that's where. The story of Harvey Dent is handled horribly as well. There's a huge gap between his story in Year One and where we pick up here, and we see almost nothing of him after his trasformation, and we don't get too deep inside his head during the actual transformation, because I guess thought balloons would muddy up the "artwork". So what this leaves us for drama is basically just the moment where he gets acid thrown in his face. It's sad.. so's roadkill. So's this waste of nearly 400 pages. Almost as shameful is the endless parade of Godfather references trying to act as if they're homages when all they are is further excuses for new creation. My main problem with this all can be summed up in one word: Density. As in total lack thereof. Miller would have used about 3 pages to tell this story, and then taken us inside Harvey's head for the rest of the book, and then ended it in a way that reinforced the genius of his allegory. This book ends with Batman punching people. Even if you don't expect this to be a masterpiece like Frank's work, which I (perhaps foolishly) did, it's still just not very good.

To compare this with Frank Miller is just nuts.. He usually has more than 3 words on a page, for one thing, and his characters usually do something. To compare the art to Watchmen.... well, lets just not even go there.

This is the only Batman book I've ever been sorry I bought.