The Long Halloween question. (Spoilers)

[CDTM]

Read on, cause the spoiler tags useless otherwise...

[CDTM]

Ok, I just read it, and there's a few questions on the conclusion:

It's pretty much outright stated Falcones son wasn't Holiday, and it was instead Dents wife. If that's the case, who put the fake body in the grave then, and who killed the coronor? Was he just laid up in a hospital all this time and nobody knew about it?

And how could the wife of the district attorney get close enough to do the things she did? Hell, how'd she get past their security, pinpoint where they live, and all that good stuff...? It actually would've made more sense if it was the kid, instead of her, cause he'd have the motive and the means.

[Expletive Deleted]

There were two Holidays, three if you count Harvey.

Gilda did the first two or three murders, and the rest were Alberto.

[CDTM]

There were two Holidays, three if you count Harvey.

Gilda did the first two or three murders, and the rest were Alberto.

In the last pages, Harvs wife notes how on the night Alberto was shot, Harveys head was wet even with a hat on.

The implication is that it's been Harv and his wife all along, and Falcones son was just taking credit for it, in addition to the one murder we saw him do on Falcones rival.

[Expletive Deleted]

She was wrong.

She saw his wet hair, assumed he'd shot Alberto, and stopped being Holiday.

Thing is, Alberto's shooting was completely fake. So Harvey couldn't have done it. The hair was a red herring for both the audience and Gilda.

Gilda did the first three, Alberto did the rest.

[CDTM]

She was wrong.

She saw his wet hair, assumed he'd shot Alberto, and stopped being Holiday.

Thing is, Alberto's shooting was completely fake. So Harvey couldn't have done it. The hair was a red herring for both the audience and Gilda.

Gilda did the first three, Alberto did the rest.

If that's true, which it may well be (I've checked around the web enough to know this's as unsolveable as whether the Emperor merely allowed Mace Windu to beat him), it still doesn't explain the gun shavings found in Harves basement. Since an entire years gone by, it's doubtful they'd simply be left there all this time for Batman to find later...

Edit: Plus why Harv carried that gun around, which was later taken as evidence against him.

[Expletive Deleted]

It still doesn't explain the gun shavings found in Harvey's basement. Since an entire years gone by, it's doubtful they'd simply be left there all this time for Batman to find later...Doubtful, maybe. But keep in mind, LONG HALLOWEEN isn't exactly the most tightly plotted, self-consistent mystery ever written.

I took that to be an instance of Batman seeing the evidence against Gilda and not realizing it.Plus why Harv carried that gun around, which was later taken as evidence against him.Because he was unstable and on his way to going off the deep end. The whole point of Harvey's story in LONG HALLOWEEN, to me, is that his transformation into Two Face wasn't just the result of the acid splash. It was a gradual thing, with the acid splash being just the final straw, the tipping point into supervillainy.

If he was already a supervillain before the acid splash . . . what's the point of the character arc, then?

[Brack360]

There are multiple interpretations to the ending of The Long Halloween. However, I believe that one of the most important clues is to notice when Holiday changes from right-handed to left-handed and later back to right-handed. On Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, Holiday is right-handed and is Gilda. On New Year's Eve, the view of Holiday is obscured (for the only time). On Valentine's, St. Patrick's, Mother's, and Father's Days, Holiday is left-handed, and I believe it is Harvey. On the Fourth of July, Holiday's hand is mostly obscured but you can tell that it is right-handed again upon a closer look. This is when Alberto becomes Holiday and also when there is a major change in who the victims are (only Alberto would kill the coroner). Holiday was also right-handed and must have been Alberto on April Fool's Day, and the Riddler's comment ("When does a killer not kill?") is a direct reference to the New Year's Eve incident (but April Fool's Day doesn't really count because no one was killed). Later, when Harvey says that there were two killers, he either means himself and Alberto and is deliberately excluding Gilda to protect his wife or is not considering Alberto to be Holiday because no souvenir was left on Labor Day and the August murder wasn't even on a real holiday. Lastly, while it does require some suspension of disbelief to accept Gilda as Holiday, I have tried to look at this way: the very existence of Batman requires a much greater suspension of disbelief than Gilda as Holiday does.

[Voncaster]

Its amanzing to me how frustratingly incomplete the end to Long Halloween is. Almost nobody knows forsure what combination of Gilda, Harvey, and Alberto the Holiday Killer represented. The fake death of Alberto seems the most troublesome to me.

Anyway doesn't Loeb get hounded with questions about this at comic conventions? How is that there is still no official answer to this question. I ask this becuase when I finished the Long Halloween I asked the exact same question.

[CDTM]

Its amanzing to me how frustratingly incomplete the end to Long Halloween is. Almost nobody knows forsure what combination of Gilda, Harvey, and Alberto the Holiday Killer represented. The fake death of Alberto seems the most troublesome to me.

Anyway doesn't Loeb get hounded with questions about this at comic conventions? How is that there is still no official answer to this question. I ask this becuase when I finished the Long Halloween I asked the exact same question.

Hrm..

It's interesting that Identity Crisis gets flamed in part because of it's poorly handled clues, while LH is given a pass. But then, I think that's only the straw that broke the camels back with that one, while Long Halloween had a lot more going for it...

[Lorendiac]

Its amanzing to me how frustratingly incomplete the end to Long Halloween is. Almost nobody knows forsure what combination of Gilda, Harvey, and Alberto the Holiday Killer represented. The fake death of Alberto seems the most troublesome to me.

Anyway doesn't Loeb get hounded with questions about this at comic conventions? How is that there is still no official answer to this question. I ask this becuase when I finished the Long Halloween I asked the exact same question.

I have a couple of old posts about Long Halloween that try to "analyze" some of this stuff. I wrote them about a year ago, when I got really interested in studying records of old online arguments about the subject. I may repost them tomorrow.

Meanwhile, to answer your question: As near as I could tell in my research a year ago, Jeph Loeb may have been asked this at conventions, all right, but apparently has consistently refused to commit himself on who did which murders throughout that year-long timeframe.

I have developed several different theories to explain this, one of which might actually (by sheer luck!) resemble the truth!

1. Jeph Loeb himself doesn't know who did what in the story.

2. Jeph Loeb considers it vitally important, a necessary ingredient in TLH, to never resolve these things but instead to let each reader "find" the answer that suits him best.

3. Jeph Loeb mistakenly believes that he stuck in enough clues, and was logical and self-consistent enough, that any intelligent reader who really studies TLH will eventually end up at the same deductions about what happened as any other intelligent, fair-minded reader. So he prefers to sit back and let them reach the "correct" conclusion regarding each individual murder on their own.

4. Jeph Loeb originally thought he knew exactly who did what in each murder scene in TLH, but has now realized that his "solution" doesn't really make any sense - is perhaps contradicted by other clues he wrote into TLH for some reason - and he would be embarrassed if he had to admit that, so instead he firmly refuses to tell us what he originally had in mind.

And there are probably other possibilities. I don't know what the truth is regarding what's going on inside his head on this subject :confused:

[riftt]

or Loeb could be homaging classic film noir like The Big Sleep where even the writer didn't know who killed who.

[Lorendiac]

or Loeb could be homaging classic film noir like The Big Sleep where even the writer didn't know who killed who.

I think that would basically be what I offered as #1 :)