This book had an interesting premise; where it fails is in the clunky dialogue, pointless cameos, and Godfather references ad nauseam.

Great Batman stories are Moore's The Killing Joke and Miller's Year One (which these fellows obviously idolized but emulated poorly) and Dark Knight Returns. Next to those three incredible books, this soulless, pointless gangster saga stumbles, lumbers and drags. If you haven't read those, read them first, and if you have, then read them again rather than this one. Believe me.


Black and white   February 26, 2007
 11 out of 23 found this review helpful

So much to draw and so little to say. When this book isn't childishly ripping off "The Godfather" or "The Silence of the Lambs," it's mucking about in a plotline that's as two-dimensional as it's overblown. Capos spout dialogue at each other in storytime mafia-ese; characters we're supposed to care about lose all credibility and come off as dull thanks to the clumsy script; and half of Batman's rogue's gallery seems contractually obligated to make an appearance--sometimes just falling into the frame as eyeroll-inducing non sequiturs. Batman is a wonderful character, and he can support so many kinds of stories: detective yarns, suspense thrillers, noir tragedies, psychological inquiries, even postmodern eviscerations. But this . . . this is nothing. This is bad writing. There's no story here. Kudos for the sometimes beautiful visual images, but even they quickly wear thin with nothing to support them. Sadly, in a reader's world of hits and misses, "The Long Halloween" is something even worse: a waste.


Top-notch early career Batman story   August 4, 1999
 9 out of 9 found this review helpful

The Long Halloween is one of my favorite additions to the Batman canon. It is an intriguing mystery that fleshes out the early years of the careers of Batman, Commissioner Gordon (here Captain Gordon), and District Attorney Harvey Dent. The story focuses on the efforts of these three men of justice to bring down the criminal empire of Carmine "The Roman" Falcone, a character who made his debut in Frank Miller's Batman: Year One. Over the year that the story spans, our heroes are being aided in this endeavor by a mysterious killer who murders a victim of the Falcone family around each of the major holidays. Also during this time, many of the members of Batman's rogues' gallery show up to make plays of their own. The writer/artist team of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale is one of the best currently working in the comics field. Loeb's writing comes closer to letting the reader into Batman's mind than most, but still keeps the distance that the character demands. The Falcone family is portrayed as a pretty stereotypical mafia family. If you are a fan of the Godfather films, you will find plenty of homages/thefts to those works here, right from the opening panel. But they serve the purpose of providing fodder for the holiday killer. It's what Loeb does with Harvey Dent that makes this book. Two-Face, for me, was always an interesting idea for a villain, but always came across, oddly enough, rather one-dimensionally. By having a story that is set before Dent's transformation, Loeb is not constrained by the "Number 2" modus operandi the character is inevitably saddled with. Dent here is more like the Han Solo character. Cocky and unintimidated by anyone, he's so much more fun to read here it almost makes me wish we could throw continuity out the door and pretend he never got that acid thrown in his face. What Alan Moore did for the Joker in The Killing Joke, Jeph Loeb does for Two-Face here. One more thing about the writing: Loeb knows when to write and when to let Tim Sale's beautiful artwork tell the story. So sometimes there are several pages with little or no words. The murders, for example, are all presented in complete silence, which is just as it should be. As for the art, Tim Sale provides some of the best representations of the Batman characters I've ever seen. His work is slightly stylistic on the "normal" characters, and wildly exaggerated on the "supervillains", but without making the characters look like they belong in separate books. Sale's Batman is the definitive one for me, and his version of the Joker second only to Brian Bolland's. Added to this is his expert use of shading and page layouts that look like scenes from movies. Absolutely top-notch stuff. If you only buy comics for the pictures, this book is still worth the money. But I'd recommend reading it too.