By Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-56389-273-8
The creative team of Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale have tackled many iconic characters in a number of landmark tales, but their reworkings of early Batman mythology – such as The Long Halloween – certainly rank amongst their most memorable.
Set during the Batman: Year One scenario created by Frank Miller, and originally released as a 13 part miniseries (running from Halloween to Halloween), it detailed the early alliance of Police Captain Jim Gordon, District Attorney Harvey Dent and the mysterious vigilante Batman to destroy the unassailable mob boss who ran Gotham City: Carmine Falcone – “The Romanâ€.
However, before that epic undertaking the creators worked together on another All Hallows adventure – one that grew like Topsy and eventually became a triptych of Prestige One-Shot Specials under the aegis of Archie Goodwin’s most significant editorial project.
After the continuity-wide reset of Crisis on Infinite Earths, with DC still in the throes of re-jigging its entire narrative history, a new Batman title launched, presenting multi-part epics refining and infilling the history of the post-Crisis hero and his entourage. The added fillip was a fluid cast of prominent and impressively up-and-coming creators.
Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight was a fascinating experiment, even if the overall quality was a little haphazard.
Most of the early story-arcs were collected as trade paperbacks – helping to jump-start the graphic novel sector of the comics industry – and the re-imagining of the Gotham Guardian’s early career gave fans a wholly modern insight into the ancient yet highly malleable concept.
As explained in Goodwin’s introduction ‘Trick or Treat’ the first Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween Special began life as a story-arc for the monthly series before being promoted to a single, stand-alone publication released for October 1993. Its success spawned two sequels – and the aforementioned Long Halloween epic…
Collected in one spooky stripped-down paperback compilation, those three scary stories comprise a raw and visceral examination of an obsessive hero still learning his trade and capable of deadly misjudgements as seen in ‘Fears’ when, after spectacularly capturing terror-obsessed psychopath Jonathan Crane, the neophyte Caped Crusader leaves him to policemen ill-equipped to cope with the particular brand of malicious insanity cultivated by The Scarecrow…
It’s fair to say that the man behind the bat mask is distracted; still attempting to reconcile his nocturnal and diurnal activities, Bruce Wayne is helpless before the seductive and sophisticated blandishments of predatory social butterfly Jillian Maxwell. Faithful major-domo Alfred Pennyworth is not so easily swayed, however…
Left too much to his own devices, Scarecrow has run wild through Gotham, but when he abducts Gordon he at last makes a mistake the Dark Knight can capitalise upon…
A year later another Halloween brought ‘Madness’ as rebellious teenager Barbara Gordon chose exactly the wrong moment to run away from home: a night when her dad’s mysterious caped pal was frantically hunting Jervis Tetch – a certified nutcase abducting runaways to attend decidedly deadly Tea Parties orchestrated by a truly Mad Hatter…
Steeped in personal nostalgia as a maniac rampages through his city, inadvertently trampling upon some of Bruce Wayne’s only happy memories (of his mother’s favourite book), the pursuer almost dies at the hands of the Looking Glass Loon, only to be saved by unlikely angel Leslie Thompkins – another woman who will loom large in the life of the Batman…
The final fable pastiches a Christmas classic by Charles Dickens as ‘Ghosts’ sees a delirious Bruce Wayne uncharacteristically take to his bed early on the night before Halloween.
After socialising with young financier Lucius Fox, eating bad shrimp and crushing bird bandit The Penguin, the sick and weary playboy lapses into troubled sleep only to be visited by three spectres…
Looking like Poison Ivy, The Joker and the corpse of Batman and representing Past, Present and inescapable Future, the phantoms prove that only doom awaits unless the overachieving hero strikes a balance – or perhaps truce – between his two divergent identities…
Trenchant with narrative foreboding – long time fans already know the tragedies in store for all the participants, although total neophytes won’t be left wondering – these eerily enthralling Noir thrillers by Loeb perfectly capture the spirit of the modern Batman, supremely graced with startlingly powerful images of Mood, Mystery and rampant Mayhem from the magic pencil and brush of Tim Sale.
One of the very best Batman books you could read.
So, do…
© 1996, 1997 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.