The Long Halloween

The door of the gothic mansion creaks loudly as I push it aside, revealing the long, dark passageway in front of me. I’m not sure of what awaits me here, but I do know it’s different from what I’ve seen so far. This time it will be more serious. More gothic. More artsy, you might say.

The Long Halloween

The Long Halloween is the second of the series of Batman comics I was recommended to read first. After reading it, it’s clear why it was recommended; some of the things the Long Halloween tells about are quite canon for the Batman series, as some of the more recognizable villains emerge in this story arc.

But first, let me quickly summarize the story in Long Halloween. I suggest you skip this paragraph if you haven’t read the series yet, and want to keep from some of the spoilers.

The book starts off in a very familiar setting to anyone who has seen the new Batman movie trilogy, with the Falcone crime family in control of Gotham. To combat this, as in the movie, Batman, Harvey Dent (the DA) and Jim Gordon make a pact to stop the Falcone and restore peace to the streets of Gotham. However things don’t go nearly as smoothly as the trio expected; a killer appears, setting the tone for the rest of the story arc. See, this story isn’t nearly as much about building Batman’s character as Year One, but rather focuses on the “World’s Greatest Detective” part of his title. This killer, nicknamed Holiday for only killing on holidays (much like the Calendar Man), uses a signature set of weapons, only seems to kill people from the competing crime families of Gotham, and is very hard to catch. This whole Holiday business upsets the balance of organized crime within Gotham, and Falcone tries to restore this balance by using the ‘freaks’ of Gotham as his aid. Will Batman find out who the Holiday killer is? What happens to Harvey Dent? Will the Falcones be taken down by the Terrific Trio?

Although the Long Halloween is adored by many Batfans, it’s not nearly as good story wise as everyone makes it out to be. The core mystery itself is very interesting and gripping, as Batman hunts for clues about Holiday’s identity, but the progress on this part is slooow. The clues themselves are drip-fed, and a lot of the books in the story arc don’t really have anything to do with the rest of it other than the obligatory Holiday killing. And I think that strikes at the heart of why this one didn’t work out nearly as well as it seems to on paper; the story itself requires Holiday to commit a murder on each holiday, and they just had to include all of them. This gives a lot of the books a feeling that they were just added as a filler, and it feels like a lot of the characters just needed something to do in those filler books. I lost interest in the story quite a few times, and it was hard to recover from those lows.

The art on the other hand. The art. The art in this story arc is amazing. It’s visually clear, and the reader can always see exactly what the artist wants the reader to see, while still creating a sense of atmosphere and presence. The art is dark, but still manages to convey meanings other than “I’m Batman, I’m dark and brooding so I’m awesome”. A good example of this is the composed, with each of the shots intricately designed, either to convey a plot point or to symbolize the relationship between two characters.

That brings me to characters. Although most of the characters in the Long Halloween are the usual stock-Batman, acting as they normally do, there are a couple of exceptions. The most notable of these are probably Catwoman and Joker. Catwoman is superbly presented, and acts in the way she is “supposed to” act while giving herself some quirks and mannerisms that raise her character even further than in any other Batman comic I’ve read. As a polar opposite of Catwoman is the Joker, who is presented in the worst possible way I can imagine. Instead of being over the top crazy, doing anything for a good laugh, the Joker is given more sanity and then used as a hit man by the Falcone family. This just seems so far out of character to the Joker, and just adding that little bit of seriousness to his character makes him bland and uninteresting.

Overall, it’s not the best book I’ve ever read, but it is still worth a read for the terrific artwork and some of the more canon stuff that happens in the books.