| Rating | Collected Issues | Reviews |
|---|
M.A.S.T.E.R.P.I.E.C.E.
Now on to Dark Victory!
This just might be my favourite Batman story ever.
DC's version of The Godfather, mixed with a great detective and a lot of cats and bats, "The Long Halloween" is one the greatest Batman stories ever - and it shows why.
This is a classic story and should be read by every Batman fan. It's a murder mystery with many familiar Bat-Rouges. This is also the most accepted origin of one of my favorite villains, Harvey Dent, AKA Two-Face. The only issue I had was the reveal of Holiday at the very end of the book. The series is a fun concept with each issue representing each holiday over the course of a year and seeing Gotham's Crime families is something here that's missing in most modern Batman stories. My personal favorite issues were Christmas (Issue 3), New Year's (Issue 4), and Punishment (Issue 13, Final). I absolutely recommend this as a can't-miss story and a masterpiece from Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale.
A great story with twists and turns page after page - crime, detectivey stuff, gangs, mafia, villains, romance, explosions, alliances, backstabbings - it's all great stuff. The back cover, it's list of celebrity recomendations, along with decades of accumulated, worldwide praise have made picking up this book feel like I was pulling the mighty Excalibur out of the rocky peak of Mt. Doom. But getting from the first panel all the way to that back cover was a series of letdowns and whimpers that left me completely baffled and puzzled.
By far my biggest gripe in my time with The Long Halloween was the way it looked. Altogether it was just flat-out ugly. Which to some may be a small hurdle, but to others - clearly a minority - a red flag sapping enjoyment panel by panel. And unlike many cases of badly-drawn comics, I can't really put my finger on what exactly is wrong here. It's just that every panel feels unfinished. Like there's detail missing. And because of that, Gotham feels cleaner, less polluted, less chaotic than it usually does in those more dark-themed Batman stories. Every face is slick, clothes are clean, floors and walls are plain, like there was one more person on the team responsible for the finishing touches that would add grit and character to everything, but they just took a day off and the book got printed either way.
Another thing is that I just feel like on top of every page being ugly and dull, each issue tries too much to be it's own story. Like Loeb and Sale were not really sure people would stick around, so they wanted each issue to stand on it's own at least a little. Which in turn results in the main, overarching narrative feeling shoved off to the side to make room for your regular villain-of-the-week stories, most of which are the same issue from issue. You could literally cut out the whole Joker book out, and it would not make a single difference. And that's fine within confines of simpler, more light-hearted stories, but with a tome as culturally relevant as this, a book that inspired what's considered by most to be the best ever Batman film - I can't shake off the feeling that The Long Halloween doesn't go all-in into being neither a solid, complete, dark detective story, nor a fun, colorful series of villain beatdowns. It's middle-of-the-road character is thus reflected in my middle-of-the-scale score.
All in all, Sale and Loeb's supposed magnum opus tries to have cake and eat it too. And even if it momentarily feels like it commits to a either choice, it's still a pretty ugly, bland and flavorless cake.
A great detective novel set in the early days of Batman, much like the recent "The Batman" movie. It was a great page turner, but I must say I watched the Animated adaption afterwards and - while similar and faithfully adapted - the animated movie's story is even better! So this almost comes across as an original movie script for the animated movie.
© 2024
Prev
