Reviews

Magnífico. Al principio me costo engancharme, presenta muchos personajes. Y el primer capítulo sucedio muy lento oara mi gusto. Pero despues fue una carrera hasta el final por saber como iban a ir sucediendo las cosas. Me mantuvo expectante hasta la ultima viñeta.

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juniorclassroom's review

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

4.5

Content Warnings

28hdt's review

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adventurous fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

redsg's review

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2.0

Let's be clear about something- anyone who has even the littlest interest in Batman will read The Long Halloween at some point in time. It has too big a reputation and too big an influence to ever be ignored, no matter who gives it a negative critique. As such, this review is for people who have read the graphic novel, and will subsequently contain spoilers. In general, it's harder to be spoiler-free for comic books given the extensive visual storytelling that goes on in them.

So that being said, you have been warned....

One of the things I've noticed about the Arrowverse shows is that some seasons work better when binge-watched, while others works better when viewed in a weekly format. For example, I found season 2 of Arrow, which is widely considered to be one of the best seasons of superhero television, to be somewhat lackluster and repetitive when viewed in bursts, while season 3 of Flash, which is widely considered to be one of the weaker seasons of the show, to actually be quite good when binged.

I've determined that this dichotomy exists because of how we expect a pay-off. When something is drawn out over the course of a few months to a year, we expect the endgame to be something more juicy. Because of this, creators are encouraged to employ a lot of thrills to keep interest in the endgame, while also balancing against the risks of falling into filler territory.

The results from these two factors speak for themselves:
-If elongated
-- If the finale is good and the middle part good = people love it
-- If the finale is bad but the middle part good = people enjoy it
-- If the finale is good but the middle part bad = people generally enjoy it
-- If the finale is bad and the middle part bad = people hate it

-If seen in bursts
-- If the finale is good and the middle part good = people love it
-- If the finale is bad but the middle part good = people dislike it
-- If the finale is good but the middle part bad = people generally dislike it
-- If the finale is bad and the middle part bad = people hate it

As you can see, it is harder to pull off an entertaining show when watched non-stop compared to the old weekly format model. Why is that? My theory is it comes down to two main factors: the cost-sunk fallacy and the perks of momentary satisfaction. Regarding the former, when someone is putting in weeks of their time investing into a show's storyline, their primary focus is on the pay-off. Therefore, even if you lose their delight in the middle, you can win them over with a grand finale. Momentary satisfaction adds to that because sprinkling in thrilling moments throughout a series that someone is seeing weekly can quell their weekly hunger just enough.

Compare this to a project that is available from start-to-finish from the get-go. A viewer could theoretically finish it within a couple of days (or even just a single day!), meaning they are focused on the enjoyment of the overall series. It doesn't matter if some entries are better than others or if the show has a kick-ass ending: if it isn't consistently good, you will see people get upset. A great example of this is Luke Cage s1- most agree that the first half was good, but that things fell apart in the second half, and that ended up having an impact on the second season where ratings were low enough for Netflix to cancel it.

I've gone into extensive detail about this because I feel the same logic applies to comic books. There are comics that have been widely acclaimed as individual monthly issues, but when the trade paperback came out, people realized that maybe it wasn't as good as it had been made out to be. Or maybe they think the same, and I'm alone in believing that a story that works in individual issues may lack the same impact in a collected format.

That is the crux of my issue with The Long Halloween. I'm under the impression that it gained this strong reputation because people read the individual issues, as they presumably fell on holiday releases, and got sucked up into a real-time, year-long mystery that Batman was facing. In my opinion, when you read The Long Halloween altogether, as provided by the DC Absolute imprint, it not only loses its power, but also has several glaring flaws exposed. That being said, there is a lot to like about it, and if I were to rate it on my own scale, I would give it a 2.5/4. As Goodreads doesn't have half-stars, I have decided to ultimately downgrade it to a 2/5.

This is because of a number of reasons. The Long Halloween is an interesting concept, but it is one that needed to be realistically-executed. The idea of Batman, the World's Greatest Detective, taking AN ENTIRE year to solve a crime is hard to grasp, but it was absolutely possible for this to be believable if Loeb had pulled it off brilliantly.

However, he doesn't, and that comes down to one main factor- we never see Batman actually doing any investigative work. Nor do we even see the aftermath of alleged off-screen (off-panel?) investigative work. This is incredibly disappointing because if you're going to have Batman spend an entire year falling to catch a simple criminal, then at least show why he falters. Even Identity Crisis, a comic that I abhorred, provided a small letter showing Batman having conducted a forensic sweep of Sue Dibny's crime scene.

And this is made more infuriating when it's revealed that all three of the potential Holiday Killers were regular humans, and not some meta who was capable of hiding their tracks from the Caped Crusader (ironically a similar problem to Identity Crisis). Seriously, 13 shootings and not one of them leaves something that can lead Batman to the shooter's identity? Again, if you want to go down that path just to justify a year-long story arc, fine- at least give us something to chew on.

The second issue that comes up is Loeb's sloppy execution of an intriguing theme that has been a constant in several Batman comic books: this idea that Batman is making things worse. Loeb chooses to depict this by having The Long Halloween set as the transition period between the mobsters seen in Year One with the rogues gallery commonly seen in the post-Crisis canon. Not only are these mafia-style criminals losing power, but they are finding that they have to turn to freaks when put in desperate situations.

Unfortunately, two problems come up in this regard. One, a number of rogues were already established at this point in time, so to act like the shift in power has only now begun seems strange when characters like Poison Ivy, Joker, Riddler, and Grundy all exist (though at the same time, I do contend that none of these villains have gained a foothold in Gotham City yet). And two, Loeb falters to his inherent problem of stuffing stories with too many characters, no matter if they work or not.

Maybe it's cause I read Hush and Public Enemies long before I read The Long Halloween, but I've always said that Loeb is capable of executing this trait of his properly. However, he just isn't successful here. Riddler, Joker, Mad Hatter, and especially Grundy feel forced into the narrative. Scarecrow and Poison Ivy at least serve story purposes, so I could forgive their inclusion.

And then there's Catwoman. Loeb has a great hold of the dynamic between Batman and Catwoman (and by extension, Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle), as he more than proved in Hush, so here the relationship is fine and makes for some entertaining banter. What doesn't make sense, though, is Catwoman's role in the story. She literally doesn't do anything substantial other than interrupting Batman whenever he is interrogating someone, which only makes her presence annoying. There is a part where she saves Bruce from being mind-controlled by Poison Ivy, but that role could very well have been relegated to Alfred.

And that brings me to my third point, which is how incompetent they make Batman. I already pointed out his lack of detective skills in a mystery-driven comic, but there's more to it than that. For starters, are we expected to believe that he hasn't created an antidote or counter to Ivy or Scarecrow's toxins? Seems like something he would have done. Not only that, but he literally gets hit by Harvey point-blank in one of the end chapters as well, which allows Dent to escape quickly (Batman, a top martial artist!). There's also the fact that he comes to the premature conclusion that Harvey Dent is Holiday based on circumstantial evidence. Seriously, isn't this guy supposed to be the definitive detective? As in not rushing to judgment? And why is he over-relying on Calendar Man? I get that the Arkham logs could be wrong (Loeb insists on that in multiple issues), but I never bought that this guy actually wanted to escape from his cell (and wouldn't cameras have shown otherwise if we can't trust the logs?

Speaking of Calendar Man, I understand that a lot of people have praised The Long Halloween for reinventing the character as a Hannibal Lecter-type figure by providing Batman with mysterious clues about who Holiday is. And I agree, this was a great way of darkening a character without turning them into an edge lord. What doesn't make sense is how Julian Day even knows about Holiday's identity. In Silence of the Lambs, it was at least noted that Lecter had met Buffalo Bill at some point in the past. Day, on the other hand, never met Alberto, Linda, or Dent in the story. It's possible that he did beforehand or off-panel, but when a reader is forced to make assumptions about integral story beats, it doesn't bode well for the narrative work.

The next critique is on the Holiday Killer itself. The multiple reveals were so poorly handled, and honestly reminded me of The Usual Suspects (considering the movie came out 1-2 years before the graphic novel was finished, I wouldn't be surprised if it had an influence on Loeb and Sale). Let's be clear about one thing- Alberto is the only person who makes sense to be Holiday. His motivation of being ignored/belittled by his father is sound, his "death" is framed ambiguously enough that the fake-out works, him being a top Falcone member means it made sense that he could get in close and kill members of his father's gang without them suspecting, and that his birthday falls on Valentine's Day makes his holiday-themed motif have some grounding in reality.

Why Loeb chooses to add a dumb shock value twist at the end in the form of Linda and/or Harvey being involved is beyond me. Linda, in particular, makes no sense. If she was so desperate to help Harvey move past the Falcone case, why does she limit herself to holidays? Spacing yourself out is one thing, but doing a holiday-themed killing spree was ridiculous. And how was she able to get in close to the members she claims responsibility for? Being a dame is one thing, but I sincerely doubt the Falcone Family guards would let anyone in close. And it's never even stated whether she got weapons training and or had some law enforcement background that would make her easy killings and lack of remorse more believable. All these flaws apply to Dent as well.

My last major criticism has to do with Tim Sale's penciling. I get that he and Loeb wanted to showcase the freak elements of Gotham and its inhabitants, but he went overboard in this department. All the characters look like something out of Dick Tracy, and it's evident that Sale was reusing the same male model for all the "normal" men in Gotham, differentiated only by the facial hair (there's literally a panel where I couldn't tell the difference between Harvey and Maroni in the prelude to the court scene).

Some miscellaneous problems I had with the book:
-Holiday is repeatedly stated as causing terror in Gotham. Except, not only is this not shown, but it doesn't make sense- why would regular folks care if someone is offing mobsters?
-Partly going off of that, I never understood why Maroni was getting so hysterical about Holiday to the point where he was willing to cooperate with Dent at some point. Doesn't Falcone losing guys help him in the long-run?
-Harvey and Linda surviving a bomb that blows up their entire house without any permanent damage (and Harvey is apparently unscathed)? Nonsense.

That being said, I did say that there were positives and there are. I liked how Sale depicted Batman's cape as having this shadowy presence of his own, as well as his character model of Poison Ivy where she seems to be made of plants. And to Sale's credit, his inking is incredible. He really knows how to do noir/neo-noir shading in the book, and it gives Gotham this nice moody aesthetic. The real props, however, have to go to colorist Gregory Wright. He brings out the true shades of Batman's world, adding gorgeous hues, tints, and layers depending on what the scene requires.

The concept of Gotham moving away from a crime haven and to a freakshow was also interesting, and while I do think the execution was flawed (The Dark Knight did a much better job of showing this), I think Loeb deserves credit for taking a stab at it.

There were nice emotional beats strewn throughout the book, between character pairs like Bruce and Alfred and Harvey and Linda. In particular, I really liked the revelation that part of Bruce's PTSD over his parents' deaths ties back to asking his mother to wear pearls and Joe Chill targeting the Waynes because of her pearls. It was very well done.

And as I said above, Loeb has a good handling of the Catwoman/Bats relationship. Though my reservations about the use of the character come into play, I can't deny that it was fun to read the panels of them together.

But overall, there were just too many flaws in The Long Halloween for me to recommend it. Of course, recommendations don't matter here because this is a Batman comic that everyone will read and want to judge for themselves (as should be the case with any piece of fiction/non-fiction to be honest). I just hope that future reviewers of this text look upon with less awe than predecessors.

Given that I bought and read the Absolute Edition, I'll also give a quick review of the other material present in it, which isn't much but still something. For starters, the AE does reportedly come with a few extra pages that were removed during the final edit of the original Long Halloween, like Falcone holding his son's decayed "body". So that's nice.

The intro features a conversation between Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer explaining why they love The long Halloween. It's interesting to see them talk about its influence, given that the interview takes place before principal photography even began on The Dark Knight (which bore the most influence from The Long Halloween out of Nolan's trilogy). So it's kind of interesting to read, though the constant praise from the two filmmakers I found to be meh given my own opinion of the text.

Next we have a look at a limited action figure toy line that ran based on the Long Halloween. The toys do look beautiful, but a photo of them can only do so much.

Next there's an interview with Loeb and Sale hosted by TLH letterer Richard Starkings. I found this to be an intriguing thing to read.

Next is a printed copy of Loeb's original pitch/layout for TLH. I guess it's cool to read how things originally went, and comic book fans will enjoy this the most.

And finally, you have a Loeb and Sale breaking down each of the individual monthly covers. The insight given by the two adds to the previous interview in terms of value, but it only goes so far.

Overall, I don't know if I can recommend getting the Absolute Edition of TLH. As I said, I personally didn't enjoy the story, and the extras that come with the AE don't add much. That being said, AE reprints are, of course, gorgeous to look at and read, and it's nice to see comic book images projected on a larger, thicker paper. That's why I try and get them personally. But if you're a casual reader, you're probably better off sticking with the regular TPB, though I will point out that TLH's AE is cheaper compared to other DC Comics' AEs, so there is that to consider.

randiroo's review

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5.0

I loved the noir style. This is a great introduction to some of Gotham's most notorious villains, but also a fun mystery in its own rite. I'll be seeking out more Batman comics, and I'll definitely be looking to find more in this style, as well. I tried my best to forget all I knew about Batman, which I think is totally necessary. Highly recommended for not only fans of Batman, but people looking to break into comic book reading, like me!

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