I have been reading Batman stories for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid I used to gorge myself on Detective Comics, Batman, and — my favorite — The Brave and the Bold (which was back then always tales of Batman and Superman teaming to fight the bad guys). One of the first things I did when I got to college was use my brand new credit card to buy subscriptions to a bunch of Batman comics. Of course by the time I finished my freshman year I was … ahem … distracted by a million other things and money was much more likely to be blown on beer and import Pearl Jam CDs, so my love affair with my own subscriptions was brief.
I grabbed The Long Halloween about a year ago and it has been sitting on my bedside table with a never-ending rotation of about a dozen other books for that whole time. Last night while my better half watched The Bachelor I finally returned to Gotham City and quickly shredded through this dark epic. Like most of the best Batman books, this one includes a gallery of the Dark Knight’s nemeses; The Riddler, Catwoman, The Mad Hatter, Poison Ivy, and Solomon Grundy all make appearances. And, of course, The Joker plays a part. At its heart, though, The Long Halloween is (yet another version of) the story of Harvey Dent’s transformation from brilliant and dedicated District Attorney into the villain Two-Face. Great stuff …