Batman: The Long Halloween

AUTHOR: Loeb, Jeph

ARTIST: Tim Sale (illustrator); Gregory Wright (colorist); Richard Starkings (letterer)

PUBLISHER: DC Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1996-1997

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1998

Publication History

Originally published as a thirteen-issue maxiseries, Batman: The Long Halloween was created as a follow-up to the popular Frank Miller series Batman: Year One (1987). Before beginning work on The Long Halloween, Jeph Loeb wrote almost exclusively for Marvel Comics. During this time, Loeb teamed up with artist Tim Sale for a three-issue run on Legends of the Dark Knight for DC Comics. The popularity of the team’s issues prompted editor Archie Goodwin to ask Loeb and Sale to collaborate on a story that took place during Batman’s early career and use the characters introduced in Batman: Year One.

Taking inspiration from works of noir pulp fiction as well as The Godfather (Mario Puzo’s novel, published in 1969, and Francis Ford Coppola’s three films, released in 1972, 1974, and 1990), Loeb and Sale crafted their story that focused on the often-confusing origins of the villain Two-Face.

Plot

Batman: The Long Halloween recounts the yearlong killing spree of the “Holiday Killer” and the attempt by Batman, James Gordon, and Harvey Dent to stop the murders and loosen the Falcone crime family’s stranglehold on Gotham City. The Long Halloween opens with the wedding celebration of Carmine “The Roman” Falcone’s nephew, Johnny Vitti. The wedding is attended by Gotham’s powerful and wealthy, including Bruce Wayne (Batman). Also in attendance, but not invited, is District Attorney Harvey Dent. Instead of celebrating, Harvey writes down license plates in the parking garage below the celebration, hoping to learn the identities of Falcone’s guests and associates.

To prevent such meddling, Falcone sends his men to attack Dent. However, the men are stopped by the arrival of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle (Catwoman) as they are leaving the wedding. This attack convinces Dent that in order to stop Falcone, he must form a pact with Batman and Captain James Gordon, of the Gotham City Police Department, to take down the Falcone crime empire. They agree to do whatever is necessary, within the confines of the law. The three men spend the rest of their summer attacking Falcone and his assets.

Because of the unceasing attacks, Falcone hires a team to deliver and detonate a bomb at Dent’s house on Halloween night; the resulting explosion hospitalizes Dent’s wife, Gilda, and destroys their home. Halloween night is also when the villain called Holiday strikes for the first time, killing Johnny Vitti. For the following twelve months, Holiday commits one murder each month, always on a holiday. In order to further make a mark, Holiday leaves an item to signify the specific holiday, a .22 pistol, and a baby-bottle nipple at the scene of the crime.

Initially, the murders target members of Falcone’s crime family: the hired bombers on Thanksgiving; Falcone’s personal bodyguard on Christmas; Falcone’s son, Alberto Falcone, on New Year’s Eve; and a group of Falcone gunmen on Valentine’s Day. This leads Falcone to believe that Holiday is connected with his main rival, Sal “The Boss” Maroni. However, the Holiday Killer changes targets on St. Patrick’s Day and murders Maroni’s men.

While the crime families deal with an escalating body count, Batman, Harvey Dent, and James Gordon are torn between their battle to take down Falcone, the need to identify and apprehend Holiday, and the continual onslaught of criminals escaping from Arkham Asylum. All of these pressures begin to have a negative effect on Dent’s marriage, driving a wedge between Dent and Gilda. Dent’s inability to bring Falcone to justice also causes him to make choices he would not normally make, including striking a deal with Sal Maroni, whose father is killed by Holiday on Father’s Day, to obtain testimony against Falcone. Dent’s plan backfires when Maroni throws acid in Dent’s face during his testimony. The acid permanently scars half of Dent’s face, and he begins his transformation into the villain Two-Face.

Following up on a tip that Holiday’s next target is Sal Maroni, Batman and Gordon set a trap for the killer, using Maroni as bait. However, Holiday is able to kill Maroni before Batman can intervene. Batman stops Holiday from escaping and reveals the killer to be Alberto Falcone. Having faked his death, Alberto took on the identity of Holiday in the hope of gaining attention from his father. With Holiday in prison, Batman turns his attention to the task of locating Dent, who is still missing and still obsessed with removing Falcone from power. To achieve this goal, Dent, now Two-Face, frees and enlists a number of Arkham inmates and confronts Falcone. Batman arrives and stops the villains, but not before Two-Face kills Falcone with Holiday’s signature .22 pistol.

After killing Falcone, Two-Face turns himself in to Batman and Gordon, claiming he has finally accomplished what they agreed to do a year ago. In Arkham Asylum, Two-Face realizes what his choices have done to his life, while his wife Gilda packs up their home and burns clothes that are identical to those worn by Holiday. She admits to committing the first three Holiday murders, bringing doubt to the extent of Alberto’s involvement.

Characters

•Batman, a.k.a. Bruce Wayne, the protagonist, is a masked crime-fighting vigilante. After seeing his parents murdered on the streets of Gotham City, Wayne vows to clean up the city so no one else has to suffer as he did. Batman is able to bend the law in ways the regular police force cannot. This makes him a valuable ally in the battle to save Gotham from Carmine “The Roman” Falcone.

•Harvey Dent, later Two-Face, is Gotham’s district attorney. A married man, Dent is dedicated to his job and to cleaning up Gotham City. Realizing he cannot do the job on his own, he aligns himself with Batman and Captain James Gordon to take down Carmine “The Roman” Falcone. He eventually has acid thrown in his face, which triggers his transformation into the villain Two-Face. As Two-Face, he kills Carmine Falcone.

•Captain James Gordon is a married man and the father of a new son. He has risen through the ranks of the Gotham City Police Department by being one of the few honest cops on the force, making him an obvious choice to team up with Batman and Dent for their war on crime.

•Gilda Dent is Dent’s wife. Her desire to be closer to Dent and start a family with him causes her to adopt the identity of the Holiday Killer and commit the first three Holiday murders, in hope that the resulting gang war will create less work for Dent so he can spend more time with her.

•Carmine Falcone, a.k.a. The Roman, is the head of the Falcone crime family. He has at least two known children, Alberto Falcone and Sophia Gigante Falcone. As the untouchable crime lord of Gotham, he is the target of both gangsters and law enforcement.

•Alberto Falcone is the son of Carmine “The Roman” Falcone. He wants to be involved in the family business, but his father wants him to follow a more legitimate career path. His father’s neglect causes him to fake his own death, adopt the Holiday Killer persona, and carry out a number of murders, until Batman catches him after he murders Sal “The Boss” Maroni.

•Sal Maroni, a.k.a. The Boss, head of the Maroni crime family. He constantly tries to get ahead of his main competition, Carmine “The Roman” Falcone, but always comes in second. He eventually makes a deal with Dent to present evidence against Falcone after his father is murdered by Holiday. However, he changes his mind and instead throws acid in Dent’s face.

•Holiday, the primary antagonist, is a serial killer who kills once a month, always on a holiday. Holiday is always clothed in a fedora and trench coat to hide his or her identity. At the scene of the crime, the murderer always leaves the signature weapon, a .22 pistol; a baby bottle nipple, used as a silencer; and an item to represent the holiday. The Holiday persona is adopted by at least two people: Gilda Dent, who admits to the first three killings, and Alberto Falcone, who admits to all of the Holiday killings. However, it is possible that others, including Harvey Dent, adopted the persona over the course of the year.

Artistic Style

Batman: The Long Halloween was serialized as a thirteen-issue maxiseries to allow the issues’ releases to coincide with the months and holidays of Holiday’s murders. Artist Sale began work on Batman: The Long Halloween after a successful collaboration on Legends of the Dark Knight with writer Loeb. Because of their close working relationship, both Loeb and Sale are credited as “storytellers” on collaborations. The narrative development and storytelling of this noir murder mystery set in Batman’s superhero world relies heavily on Sale’s focus on character details and the creation of a dark atmosphere.

Because Sale is color-blind, his art tends to have darker tones and rely on heavy shading. This shading helps to add depth and contrast to his characters and panels. This dark feel also helps to highlight the darker nature of Batman, Gotham, and the noir crime story being told. Sale’s black-and-white drawings are highlighted in the full-page Holiday murder scenes that are free of color except for a single emphasized item. Sale’s character designs avoid the hypermasculine and hypersexualized characterizations popular in mainstream superhero comics of the 1990’s in favor of realistic characters. However, to create visual distinctions between the old-fashioned gangsters and the new supervillains of Gotham, Sale skews the physical dimensions of the Arkham inmates, making them inhumanly thin, fat, or endowed with abnormal mouths and hair.

In contrast to Sale’s attention to character details, his backgrounds are in a minimalist representational style that becomes more detailed in the six black-and-white panels leading up to the final full-page panel of each Holiday murder. During the murders, small details, such as furniture, buildings, and the killer’s weapon, are brought into sharper focus.

Themes

Batman: The Long Halloween is, at its core, the story of Dent’s fall from grace and his transformation into Two-Face. Because of this, the idea of duality is constantly present throughout the book. This duality is most present in the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle and in the relationship of their alter egos, Batman and Catwoman. During the day, the two date, dance, and carry on romantically, but by night, they fight, quip, and chase each other. Duality is also seen in the struggle over Gotham between the crime families and the new wave of “Freak Criminals,” as Falcone calls them. This duality is highlighted by Julian Day, the Calendar Man, who is imprisoned in Arkham Asylum, and his nonfreak counterpart Alberto Falcone, the confessed Holiday Killer.

The Long Halloween centers on families who are integral to Gotham City: the Waynes, Dents, Gordons, Falcones, Maronis, and families that are created through partnership. The pact that Batman, Dent, and Gordon enter makes them brothers in a common cause. Though their methods differ, they are united by their passion for justice. The families in The Long Halloween are in constant flux: The Dents are disintegrating slowly, the Gordons are growing closer, and the Falcones are losing Gotham. Comparing these families reveals further examples of duality: Dent’s inability to maintain his family and distant relationship with Gilda is in stark contrast to Gordon’s ability to strengthen his family and the bond he has with his wife, Barbara.

Impact

Batman: The Long Halloween is considered the canonical origin of Two-Face. In his Golden Age and Silver Age incarnations, Two-Face was another in a long line of gimmicky additions to Batman’s rogues’ gallery. His crimes were always focused on the number two, taking place on the second of a month or at two o’clock with targets such as a shipment of two-dollar bills. Loeb made Harvey Dent a more tragic character and Two-Face a believable villain.

Considered a sequel to the popular Miller series Batman: Year One, The Long Halloween experienced critical and commercial success and was followed by two sequels of its own. Batman: Dark Victory picks up soon after the events of The Long Halloween and chronicles the origins of Robin, Batman’s sidekick. Catwoman: When in Rome fills in Catwoman’s adventures between The Long Halloween and Dark Victory. The success of The Long Halloween also led Loeb and Sale to collaborate on further graphic novels chronicling the early and formative years of other popular heroes.

Films

Batman Begins. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Warner Bros., 2005. While not a direct adaptation, this film starring Christian Bale chronicles Bruce Wayne’s transformation into Batman and his attempt to clean up Gotham City by taking down the crime boss Carmine Falcone, played by Tom Wilkinson. While the storyline and many characters of The Long Halloween are not found in the film, Nolan and screenwriter David S. Goyer frequently cite the graphic novel as a primary source material.

The Dark Knight. Directed by Christopher Nolan. Warner Bros., 2008. The sequel to Batman Begins, this film introduces Aaron Eckhart as District Attorney Dent. As in the graphic novel, Dent, James Gordon (Gary Oldman), and Batman (Christian Bale) enter into a pact to take down the crime families of Gotham, this time led by Salvatore Maroni (Eric Roberts). However, the Joker, played by Heath Ledger, replaces Holiday as the primary antagonist. Another significant difference between the film and graphic novel is that instead of being scarred by acid thrown in his face, Dent is disfigured and begins his transformation into Two-Face after being kidnapped and strapped to explosives by the Joker.

Further Reading

Loeb, Jeph, and Tim Sale. Batman: Dark Victory (1999-2000).

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Catwoman: When in Rome (2007).

Miller, Frank, and David Mazzucchelli. Batman: Year One (1987).

Bibliography

Brooker, Will. Batman Unmasked: Analyzing a Cultural Icon. New York: Continuum, 2001.

Loeb, Jeph, and Tom Morris. “Heroes and Superheroes.” In Superheroes and Philosophy, edited by Tom Morris and Matt Morris. Chicago: Open Court, 2005.

Loeb, Jeph, and Tim Sale. Absolute Batman: The Long Halloween. New York: DC Comics, 2007.

Morris, Matt. “Batman and Friends: Aristotle and the Dark Knight’s Inner Circle.” In Superheroes and Philosophy, edited by Tom Morris and Matt Morris. Chicago: Open Court, 2005.