The Long Halloween & Dark Victory

[GrazoTheClown]

2 of the best Comic Series I have ever read. So freaking good.

[Horror Business]

i can't say that they are the best but for some reason i love the long halloween so much.

[dancj]

The art is fantastic. The stories are decent enough - which is a lot better than we normally get out of Jeph Loeb

[mohammedali]

I thought the story was great for Long Halloween. Every issue you'd be really keen to know what happened next. The only issue I have is that Gildas 'confession' at the end was just unnecessary. The story made much more sense without it.

Mohammed Ali

[Guts/Batman]

I can't find Dark Victory in tpb form...

...and it pisses me off.

[Maleficentogre]

I found a copy when batman begins came out. I bet a lot of trades will be back in circulation when the next movie comes out. Movies are the best time to find things like that.

[Lubichev]

click on www.milehighcomics.com. i got mine through them when they were having a sale. 12 dollars!!

[Guts/Batman]

I see Haunted Knight at the comic shop all the time but not Dark Victory. I hope I find it soon.

[dancj]

I can't find Dark Victory in tpb form...

...and it pisses me off.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1563898683/sr=8-1/qid=1141820997/ref=sr_1_1/102-9452008-0200122?%5Fencoding=UTF8

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1840234172/qid=1141820982/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/202-2138059-9892606

[Syphre Zero]

Although I don't read Batman titles (dyed-in-the-wool Superman reader), I would argue that Long Halloween and Dark Victory are two of the best comics I have ever read. The art is beautiful and the story bears all the hallmarks of the perfect detective story, to a point that transcends the genre. I recommended Long Halloween to my brother, a guy who has never read a comic book but knows every episode of The Sopranos by heart, and he LOVED it. In my opinion, some of the finest comic work available today.

[Nick Kal]

Oh I love both of those so much. Jeph Loeb's Batman stories are some of the best comics out there.

[Captain Jim]

Both are very good and much, much better than the over-rated Hush. I don't know what happened to Loeb. He used to produce such good work. Now I find him barely readable.

[AlistairCrane]

Both are very good and much, much better than the over-rated Hush. I don't know what happened to Loeb. He used to produce such good work. Now I find him barely readable.

I wouldn't go so far as to say they're better than Hush (which is the perfect Batman story). But they're pretty damn good. Especially since Selina is Bruce's love interest throughout both stories.

[Guts/Batman]

I wouldn't go so far as to say they're better than Hush (which is the perfect Batman story). But they're pretty damn good.

I'd put Long Halloween wayyyyyyyyyyyyy above Hush. It had alot of the things that Hush lacked.

For a multitude of reasons, but most importantly the characters in LH were not simply there for Jim Lee to draw them. Over 2/3 of the characters in Hush had no business being in that story.

[Maleficentogre]

Long haloween is much much better than hush on a lot of fronts. actually on nearly every front I can think of.

[literally exaggerated]

Dark Victory was pretty good. Long Halloween is an absolute classic.

[Captain Jim]

I imagine persons who had never read TLH or DV would have been a lot more impressed with Hush than persons who had already read either or both of those two. In many respects, Hush is just another version of the same story. IMO, the original not only did it first, but did it better. I even like the art better. Jim Lee is fine, but he still looks like a Neal Adams clone to me.

[Captain Jim]

Hush (which is the perfect Batman story)

I can't believe I just read that. If you really think that's true, I humbly suggest you start reading some more bat-stories.

[Guts/Batman]

Indeed Jim. The minis that the editors keep popping out are awesome. Just awesome. Hush pales in comparison so them, yet doesn't get the same treatment as Hush does.

We don't even have threads for the awesome minis (though I am tempted to make them if I did more posting over here) yet everyone talks about Hush like it was written well and an original story.

Makes me wonder if anyone is actually reading the minis. As far as I am concerned, DC has been getting the minis right and the continuity books wrong.

Hush to me is just one big maxi-series. Any one of the minis beats Hush on storytelling. They have kept the plot simple and linear and not confusing. I'm guessing that the goal was to infuse the books with "fresh" material and a new fan base.

It accomplished that goal, however it did so through weak storytelling with the art carrying most of the weight, which again, might have been done by design.

Looking at it from a certain point of view, one can see Hush as LH for a new generation. If you look at the storytelling aspects of the two stories you notice things in LH that you don't see in Hush.

This is one of the differences. This one of the reasons why LH is great storytelling. Harold's death just felt really, really unnecessary. A token death at best.

The characters in LH are actually necessary to the plot. They aren't just thrown in to have Jim Lee draw them. Batman stories don't work this way. The characters are actually thrown in in a meaningful way.

Also, I think that if the GK stories that revolved around Hush would have been better and made Hush a unique character within the Bat-verse, it would have had a positive after effect on the original Hush arc.

But IMO, DC screwed the pooch on following up on Hush. Made Hush a Deathstroke/Batman clone when he should have been a distinct character who adds nothing new to the character landscape.

If they would have just stuck with the answer from the original arc, then we could have gone on. If DC had gone with Loeb's rumored direction and made Jason Hush, then that frees up GK or Batman do to something with one of those books instead of going down the road they did (no I'm not talking about Winick specifically I mean everything in general).

I myself have only read the first chapter of DV. The local comic shop has almost all of those copies, just not the tpb. I have thought about getting the copies but that will be really expensive at this point.

[AlistairCrane]

I can't believe I just read that. If you really think that's true, I humbly suggest you start reading some more bat-stories.

Nope. Hush had everything I wanted: lots and lots of Batman's Rogues Gallery, Bruce and Selina relationship, Jim Lee art, a mystery, lots of Batman's Bat-family.......I loved it!! Oh yeah, and the return of Jason Todd, AND the recovery of Harvey Dent. Perfect.

[Saracen Pig! Spartan Dog!]

Dark Victory???

Meh.

I was halfway through the 2nd issue when I realized that Loeb and Sale were doing a God awful horrible ripoff of The Godfather. I actually called up my local comic book shop and told them to take it off my supscription list, as it royally pissed me off that the two of them couldn't even come up with an even semi-plausible mask/cover for the story, but instead just blatently rehashed The Godfather.

That being said, a few years back another new comic book shop was having an anniversary buy one Tp at full price get another for $2.00 so I picked up Long Halloween and Dark Victory. I paid full price for Halloween.

[Ripper]

I wasnt impressed by Long Halloween much really, it just seemed really cold and unintresting to me. Im not saying its bad, it just didnt grab me. Saying that, I prefered it to Hush, which I dont really care for. For me, Arkham Asylum is my prefered TPB along side DKR,DKR2 and Year One.

[Ullar]

I got my Dark Victory over the summer at Barnes and Noble. Got 10% of becuse i have a membership card. I liked long halloween and DV but i showed reread halloween after i get through Madrox.

[Hellcow]

I was hoping a combination of LH and DV would be next in line for the Absolute treatment.

[Strider119]

They are pretty good titles, I concur.

It's funny how Jeph Loeb can write such a good Batman tale and then write some of the hands down worst tripe I have ever laid eyes on when he tries to tackle Superman.



homerun!
strider119

[dancj]

It's funny how Jeph Loeb can write such a good Batman tale and then write some of the hands down worst tripe I have ever laid eyes on when he tries to tackle Superman.

Swap the word "Batman" with "Challengers of the Unknown" and swap "Superman" with "anything else" and that sentence is pretty much spot on!

[drnocturne2]

LH and DV are among my all time favorite comic books. I could also add Haunted Knight and Superman for all Seasons to that. They really elevated the art form.
However, I still don't get the ending to LH. I guess it was meant to be deliberately ambiguous.
I'm one of the hold outs who still hasn't read Hush. The more feedback I read, the less urgent it seems.

[dancj]

I'm going to have to reread Long Halloween some tiem. People keep saying the ending was ambiguous, but I don't remember anything ambiguous about it.

[thehod]

It's funny how Jeph Loeb can write such a good Batman tale and then write some of the hands down worst tripe I have ever laid eyes on when he tries to tackle Superman.

Superman for all seasons was a wonderful Superman story though.

[steeler80]

Both The Long Halloween and Dark Victory are quality reads. For some reason that I can't put my finger on, I like Dark Victory just a little better. It seemed to have a better flow.

[agentofthebat]

can someone tell me what happens in dark victory?

[the_coldest_sun]

can someone tell me what happens in dark victory?
Apparently a victory occurs, and its a dark one. :confused:

[Calculator]

can someone tell me what happens in dark victory?

Another holiday-esque murderer starts picking off cops, some big names from the Year One mini that Miller did. While this happens the Freaks (the Batman Rogues Gallery) goes to war with what is left of the Falconer mob family. And...Robin comes onto the scene.

IMO this is better than the Long Halloween because of it's lack of Mobster movie homages which I found really really distracting.