I just read Year One and then The Long Halloween for the first time.

They are good stories, but TLH was supposed to be a sequel to year one? How long after Y1 does it take place? 7 months? (the next halloween) or what?

Also, in Y1 you only see catwoman and harvey dent being introduced and then at the very end a mention of the joker.

Yet in TLH, we see every friggin' villian in his rogues gallery. I know this is Loeb's style (to stuff as many characters in as possible) but it does not seem very year two-ish to me. The origins of all those villians are assumed and only Catwoman and Two-face get any real screen time. Is this ever explained?

Is Carmine Falcone in anything else other than these two stories?

Anyone else feel somewhat short-changed by this story, even though it did have some good moments?

For example, Dent's wife is implicated at the end, but we hardly get to know her. It's a great twist ending, but it almost makes no sense why she is even involved.

Also, Loeb could have set it up to where the two main "normal" organized crime families were set to take a fall with the "crazies" of Gotham taking over the crime biz. He could have developed that more at the end, but didn't. But I think that was a big part of the story that should have been developed more- the transition from sane criminals to insane criminals.

Here's another question along those lines: Why DOES batman have so many insane villians?