Review: The Long Halloween

Batman: The Long Halloween is a followup to the Haunted Knight stories I reviewed a couple weeks ago.  Where Haunted Knight was a collection of unrelated short stories, The Long Halloween was a monthly special that ran for one year, from October 1996 to October 1997.  It follows the same continuity as Haunted Knight, but it stands mostly alone as its own story.  The main story is that Batman, Gordon, and Dent are all working to find a serial killer in Gotham who kills on holidays.

The Long Halloween is often praised as one of the greatest Batman comics of all time, and with good reason.  The themes of the story (though not much of the plot itself) are very strongly felt in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight movies.  I wanted to link somebody else describing all the similarities, but shockingly, I can't find anyone who has gone through and done that.  Come on, internet, get your act together.  I may come back and do that one of these days.   But not today.  Today I'm just going to talk about what I liked, what I didn't like, and how the book fares overall.  I will avoid major spoilers for this story, but I will mention plot points that are common in the Batman universe (ie, Harvey Dent becomes Two-Face, etc)

I feel like the art is even better than in Haunted Knight, even though it is the same artist.  I guess a few years of practice makes a difference.  The uses of shadow and blocks of solid color that I liked so much in Haunted Knight are more pronounced here.

I love beleaguered, haggard Gordon in his dark office

And they are used well for foreshadowing.  For example, Harvey Dent's face is often shown in half-shadow, hinting at his later transformation into Two-Face.

The book has some very interesting themes, both for the good guys and the bad guys.  On the bad-guy side, it talks about the transformation of Gotham from a mob-run town to a super-villain-run town.  The old mobsters are shown trying to deal with the influx of "freaks" into Gotham, and trying to hold on to their power and influence in a changing world.

On the good-guy side, we see the unsteady alliance between Gotham's police force (Captain Jim Gordon), prosecutor (District Attorney Harvey Dent) and Batman (Batman).  Each of them suspects the other two of being the villain (for reasons that are believable and well written, I might add), but has to rely on them anyway.  This theme of unsteady, forced trust makes for a surprisingly thought provoking read.

Now, for some of the bad.  One problem stems from the way this story was told (13 "chapters" released as 13 separate comic books over the course of a year).  There is a single story running through the whole thing (an unknown serial killer in Gotham), but each chapter has its own story as well.  And each chapter's individual story is about a different villain from Batman's Rogues' Gallery.  The first time I read this, it didn't bother me, but this time through it felt a bit forced.  In January, Batman investigates the Holiday Killer and faces off with Joker.  In March, Batman investigates the Holiday Killer and faces off with Poison Ivy.  Every month could be summed up that way.

Though this does lead to some pretty cool cover art for the different months

This could be explained away as "Batman is crazy busy, and even when he is in a long, drawn-out investigation there are always other fires to put out," but it just didn't feel that way to me.  Like I said, not bad, but a little forced.  I don't like when I can see what's going on backstage in the author's head.

Another problem is with the story itself.  I enjoyed it right up to the end, when it felt like Jeph Loeb traveled 15 years into the future, watched the LOST finale, and said "man, what a great way to end things!"

What if the whole thing was just a dream the polar bear had?

The big surprise ending was kind of dumb.  Like the villain-of-the-month problem, it just felt forced, like the publisher really really wanted a surprise, but the writers hadn't planned on one.

The last criticism I have will be a bigger problem for some than others.  That is that this book is not as accessible as it might me.  There were a few times reading it when I thought "if I didn't know a lot of Batman mythos, I'd be lost here."  So, not a bad book by any means, but probably not the one I'd recommend as someone's first book to read.

All in all, a very satisfying read (even if the ending was marred with a dumb, dumb twist), with beautiful art and a good story.