Batman: The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale
This story served as my introduction to reading Batman stories in general. I’ve read The Killing Joke, but that’s more of a short aside work than a full story, which Long Halloween truly is. It’s decently long and tells a crime thriller story of a serial killer, corrupt officials, secret deals, the mafia, and of course, Bruce Wayne involved in it all.
The book starts with Batman, District Attorney Harvey Dent, and Police Officer James Gordon swearing between the three of them to free Gotham city from the stranglehold of the Falcone crime family, above all swearing to apprehend Carmine Falcone, the head of the family. Over the next few months, conspicuous murders begin to happen, auspiciously each on a holiday. The serial killer gets dubbed “Holiday” and the book follows a “long Halloween” lasting from one year’s Halloween to the next, in a multi-sided noir-mystery that intersects the interests of Batman, the police, the mafia, various villains, rogues, and of course the enigmatic and unknown Holiday.
This book is filled with intrigue and as such the art is shrouded in shadows and abstractions. There’s definitely a focus on detail and realism, but the book maintains a strong sense of style and iconography, often adding impossible details to otherwise very realistic designs. In this picture to the left, we can see a heavy use of shadow to emphasis key details; a smattering of rectangles with a dull yellow is enough to create a window lit with street lights. One gloved hand, a cuff, and a peek of a shirt is enough to convey that he is wearing a suit. Minimalism like this is used very particularly and intelligently throughout the whole book, creating very striking poses and many memorable images that effectively ride the line between feeling very real-world-focused and being obviously abstracted.
See here, in this partial panel the inmate is drawn very proportionally, and despite the use of shadows, realistically. But two elements stand out: firstly, the color is definitely stylized and intended to denote mood rather depiction (the room feels like that color rather than literally being like that), and secondly we can see the bottom of Batman’s cape curling up like smoke. Color in comics is often used for mood rather than depiction, but the cape is a more rare tidbit. Batman has no technology, ability, or other explicit or implicit explanation for his cape actually being able to do that. The visual detail effectively only exists for the reader, not in-setting. That’s art-as-metaphor and it’s a very interesting use of the hyper visual medium that is comics.
On the topic of color, regularly throughout the comic, the mentioned Holiday Serial Killings are shown in black in white while obscuring the shooter’s identity. The shift from (admittedly muted) color to greyscale is noticeable, and helps to denote those scenes as different, not the same as what we’ve been reading around it. The implication is that, when combined with obscuring the shooter’s identity, the greyscale is representative of the mystery and intrigue of the events. Less color = less visual information = more mystery.
This two-page panel is a great example of the book’s use of large two-page panels to emphasis certain moments. A huge amount of detail is afforded to the art with all this space, and it’s used for the most bombastic and impressionistic moments. It feels obvious to say that more visual importance should be given to more narratively important moments, but obvious or not that is a lesson that this book aces.
While we’re here, we can talk more about Catwoman. She’s given the same insanely muscular and defined musculature as Batman, yet unlike the Dark Knight her face is almost never shrouded in shadows. Despite her being stealthy and living a double life, she’s not as hung up in darkness as the main character, and in this book she has almost as much screen time. I’m reminded of our readings on visual detail and closure, and I feel that this is partially used to make us recognize her more, whereas we don’t need to recognize Batman as much (he’s the main character, who we’re following most and know the most about). We relate to Batman in part because of his more iconographic design, and we more so just observe Catwoman, herself being the other in the story. This helps us better see her from the Batman’s perspective, while the rest of her characterization still lets us get to know her regardless.
Also on a side note, I would say she looks almost more in shape than Batman. I get the impression that the Bat gets away with more training, equipment, and his own natural bulk, whereas Catwoman counters that in her way through more intensive training, 100% she gets more sleep than him, and more time spent just traversing and observing whereas the bat is more preoccupied with particulars. Essentially, just through how she’s drawn and how she interacts with him, I feel I have an implicit understanding of why, despite reasoning to the contrary, they are physically equals. That’s the power of visual information and how it can go beyond just literal interpretation. Art as metaphor.
On a last note, story wise (and the story is perfectly tailored to the art style and visual choices), this book was also a knockout. Without spoiling anything, it worked really well with all the best parts of Batman. There’s detective work, personal drama, some well known villains show up without hogging the spotlight, everything feels very dark and human and real but still abstract. There’s deals on deals on deals, great fights, great depictions, and a good twist. We get strong characterizations, effective monologues, and a last chapter reveal that gives a really strong final context to it all. I highly recommend it in general, and particularly as a My-First-Comic or first Batman comic.
-John Messer
