Dark Victory

By now I have already gotten used to the dark passageways of this long abandoned mansion in ruins. The dark shadows don’t scare me anymore the way they used to, and the dark statues littered around the hallways don’t bring my heart racing as they did before. But there are still some dark secrets this place has refused to tell me, there are still more rooms to explore. As I open another door I see it in front of me.

Dark Victory

The third book in my series, Dark Victory is a strange one to give any kind of opinions on. Although the book itself is a continuation of the one from Long Halloween, it’s not just an addition of more story to the series, but instead does give it its own sense of specialty. Without further ado, let’s get into the story summary:

The story starts out a couple of months after the events of the Long Halloween. Harvey Dent’s position as the Gotham City’s DA has been taken up by a new character by the name of Janice Porter, who doesn’t like Batman’s methods and despises them despite Commissioner Gordon’s attempts to convince her otherwise. Batman feels guilty about what happened to Harvey, and breaks connections with the Catwoman and Gordon. Albert Falcone is released, and suddenly a new killer appears: The Hangman hangs police officers and staples a game of hangman on their chest, and it’s later revealed that all of the papers that were used for the hangman game were closely related to Harvey Dent. The Gotham police force and Batman both try to figure out the identity of the Hangman, but they of course take until the last issue to truly understand. Before that we have some major plot points, including the appearance of one Dick Grayson, better known as Robin.

Story wise this story arc is so much better than the Long Halloween, mostly because the murders themselves aren’t tied to any specific dates. The constant jumping forward in time confused me when reading the Long Halloween, and that wasn’t really a problem with the Dark Victory. Dark Victory also has a lot lighter approach to the situation which is admittedly very similar to the one in Long Halloween; Batman has to figure out who this mysterious killer is, and what their relation to the Falcone family is. Instead of having everything be real gloomy all the time, it lightens up with some scenes, especially the ones featuring Dick Grayson, who brings in a whole new dimension to the comic.

The art on the other hand doesn’t change much, but then again it didn’t really need to. The art part of the Long Halloween was right on the spot, and the similarity of Dark Victory’s story just begs for a similar art style.

Overall: this book was better than Long Halloween, but unfortunately it’s so deeply tied into its predecessor that I can’t say you can skip that one real easy. So if you’ve already read the Long Halloween and didn’t like it, then I still recommend giving Dark Victory a try.