For a character whose whole thing is striking fear, there’s precious little work in the area of Halloween-themed Batman stories worth talking about. Adaptations from Batman Returns to Batman: The Animated Series have generally favored Christmas as the holiday setting of choice, with its traditional focus on family and cheer to contrast against Batman’s dour isolation.
Where do we turn, then, for Batman stories of All Hallows’ Eve? To Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s Batman: Haunted Knight, of course.
Welcome to Polygon’s 13 Days of Halloween series! Between Oct. 19 and Oct. 31, Polygon will publish 13 opinion pieces about different films, shows and specials that exemplify what Halloween means to us. Whether that’s the scariest movies you haven’t seen yet or a look at a popular Treehouse of Horror episode, this is our tribute to the world of the strange, creepy and downright horrifying that exists within popular culture.
On Halloween, falling bullets from celebratory gunshots kill innocents in Los Angeles, proclaims the first page of Haunted Knight. Cincinnati institutes a curfew, fire sweeps through Detroit on Devil’s Knight, "but in Gotham City, on Halloween … "
This is the opening of only the first of the three stories in Haunted Knight. The collection reprints "Fears," "Madness," and "Ghosts," three collaborations between Jeph Loeb’s writing and Tim Sale’s art that became yearly Halloween specials in the Legends of the Dark Knight ongoing series in 1993, 1994 and 1995. In each story, Bruce Wayne faces a challenge that calls into question a fundamental aspect of his life as Batman.
OK, yes, also he fights the Scarecrow, the Mad Hatter, Penguin, Poison Ivy and the Joker.
Legends of the Dark Knight (which ran from 1989 until 2007) was set nebulously "in the early years of Batman’s career," a place that allowed creators to use as much or as little of Batman’s wider comics canon as the creators desired — effectively making every Legends story into the holy grail of introducing a new reader to comics: the self-contained story. Sale and Loeb’s Halloween stories are essentially three small graphic novels — though you can get them all in one package these days.
In our first and longest story, "Fears," Scarecrow wreaks havoc on Gotham night after night — while a new woman in Bruce Wayne’s life causes him to question everything about his responsibilities toward his city. In "Madness," Loeb somehow packs three separate character arcs — James Gordon figuring out how best to parent his newly adopted teenage niece; Batman struggling to recall memories of parents without reawakening his own trauma; and a pre-Batgirl Barbara Gordon facing the worst Gotham City has to offer and finding herself up to the challenge — into one story, juggling three separate narrators effortlessly. And in our final piece, "Ghosts," Bruce Wayne is visited by his dead father, bound by the chains of isolation he forged in life, who promises that before the night is done, Bruce will be visited by three spirits of the past, the present and the future.
Yes: it’s A Christmas Carol but Halloween; Batman is Scrooge and villains are his ghostly spirits.
Loeb and Sale would go on to create Batman: The Long Halloween, the best Batman graphic novel of all time, in my estimation — but Loeb’s understanding of what makes the character tick is apparent even in these comparatively quick stories. Is being Batman an obsession or something that Bruce Wayne willingly chooses, and which option is actually more compelling? Is Bruce’s inability to move past his parents’ murder — even decades later — a character strength or a weakness? Is dedicating his life solely to vigilantism the best way to honor his parents’ legacy? Is it even the best way to save Gotham City? These are the questions Loeb asks and answers within the 180-odd pages of Haunted Knight.
In addition to his usual stunning compositions of color and blacks, fine lines and gigantic dark spaces — not to mention his unforgettable villain designs — Sale channels the look of David Mazzucchelli’s James Gordon in Batman: Year One, Frank Miller’s enduring Batman origin story. The stories even have the same master letterer as Year One, Todd Klein, who reprises the visual motifs he used for James Gordon’s Year One narration for "Madness." (If you can name a single comic book letterer, it’s likely Klein, who is perhaps most famous for his work on The Sandman.) The effect is almost surreal, if you’ve read Year One — like recognizing an actor or a voice but not being able to remember from where. Except, of course, there are no actors, no voices. It’s all an effect of art and text.
Visually linking to Year One is an incredibly effective way to express the series’ setting as "in the earlier years of Batman’s career," and it’s no wonder that Sale and Loeb would decide to explicitly set the beginning of The Long Halloween six months after the end of Year One and involve many of the same characters. And, in case you’re wondering, the reason why The Long Halloween is the best Batman graphic novel but not the character’s best Halloween story, it’s because the name is a bit misleading.
Batman: Haunted Knight does everything you want in a Halloween special: it features the creepiest spooks in Batman’s already terrifying rogues gallery. It’s instantly accessible even to someone who’s not familiar with the rest of the show, series or history and it showcases some of the best talent of the time. And on top of all that, it’s still a great exploration of the major themes of its subject through the lens of the holiday.
Who needs a crowded selection of Halloween Batman stories when we’ve got these three? Make sure you it with the lights out.
Source: Polygon – Full