The inspiration for The Dark Knight, Batman: The Long Halloween is a solid introduction to the Batverse. Focusing on a spree of holiday related murders, this piece emphasizes the detective side of Batman and his connection to the official elements of jurisprudence in Gotham City.

While I thought this book would be Halloween focused, it instead chronicles a year of killings, always on important holidays. Through this series of crimes, we focus on the relationship between "the triumvirate" of Gotham, detective Jim Gordon, district attorney Harvey Dent, and caped crusader Batman. Through this framework, Loeb and Sale show us much of Gordon and Dent's personal lives, making these characters feel realized in a manner that I hadn't seen before in a Batman story. Dent and Gordon's families also get some solid page time.

This choice serves the narrative particularly well in the case of Dent. Through scenes of him at home, we see his transformation into Two Face play out in real time.

The only downside is I feel the additional backstory for Gordon and Dent reduces the amount of time spent with Batman, and, more prominently, Bruce Wane. This version of the character is clearly well established, and, while still capable of making mistakes, is not the naive Batman of some more recent adaptions.

Alongside our main figures, the idea to include a different murder in each chapter is a good way to introduce us to the entirety of Batman's rogue's gallery. Despite being locked in Arkham during the entire run, Calendar Man plays a significant role in this story as he is someone Batman thinks might be able to understand the motivations of the mysterious holiday killer.

The origin story of Two Face in Batman: The Long Halloween is the pinnacle example of this choice.

. While the rogues are featured throughout this story, I do think it's worth mentioning that it's clear from early on that the crime families are the major threat to Gotham. Seeing the Dark Knight work to find evidence on people he knows are doing wrong but are not visibly evil adds a sense of sad but interesting realism to this Batman story.

You might notice that I'm talking a lot about the characters here. I enjoyed the plot and world of The Long Halloween, but, in general, crime stories are not my favorite. The Batman books I've enjoyed the most are those with higher world ending stakes where he acts as a master planner. That said, the plot twists here are fantastic. If crime as a genre is at all interesting to you, I think this story is a worthwhile read regardless of your previous interest or exposure to Batman.