Too Long a Halloween

As I have mentioned in some of the recent posts, the great aspect of The Dark Knight was its focus on the villains, or specifically, the circumstances that led them to their villainy, at least for me. Bandit referred the graphic novel The Long Halloween to me keeping this in mind. However, after Watchmen and The Killing Joke, this one was a disappointment, in comparison. I found it uni-layered, and very serial in its storytelling, probably because it is not a work of Alan Moore.

The story starts off intriguingly with the Falcone crime family of Gotham and its brooding head, known as The Roman, bearing too much of a resemblance to The Godfather Don Vito and his Corleone family. Some of the storyboards, like the sequence where Gordon, Dent and Batman meet on the roof of the police HQ, seems straight out of the Dark Knight, or the other way around I should say. At the end of the day, it is a whodunit of a series of murders, with the deranged murderer striking only on public holidays, like Christmas, Thanksgiving etc., starting on Halloween. There are way too many characters with little cameos, including a whole bevy of crazed criminals attracted to the city by the big Bat, as each one passes under the investigators', and thus, the reader's suspecting magnifying glass.

I kept wondering when the story would end, after I had gotten over the initial hook of excitement. Also, found the gimmick of a murder every holiday too blasé and "oh look, I am a crazy murderer"-y. Personally, I don't enjoy whodunits as much as the ones where we know the killer all along, but the real mystery is how, or why. There is a certain element of chill in that. The last couple of pages had something I wasn't expecting, but still didn't do enough for me to change my view of the entire novel, much like Farhan Akhtar's Don. It seemed like a stroke as a result of an afterthought of how to salvage this a bit.

The Thrilling Joke

When I entered the theater to watch The Dark Knight last summer, I had expectations since the previous Batman film had been the best one and director Chris Nolan seemed to be making the characters layered. What ended up happening was that I almost forgot Batman was in the movie and was completely emotionally vested in the bad guys, especially The Joker. Recently, Bandit told me that the character of the Joker in the film was inspired by a comic book called The Killing Joke. I just had to read it.

The Killing Joke is a short story about The Joker escaping from a mental asylum after he had been put there by Batman. The Joker proceeds to take revenge on Commissioner Gordon, to prove his theory that everyone is bad, and can be made to do bad things, if pushed hard enough. He makes it personal and his methods are so violent and dark, that it makes the film look like a children's Disney movie. The Joker takes over a theme park and turns it into a nest for all birds of dark feathers. There is also a chilling epilogue to the story, that doesn't involve any of the usual Batman villains, but a common man, like you and me.

Written by Alan Moore, it uses his parallel story-telling technique that he employed to great effect in the Watchmen; this time concentrating on The Joker's past, circumstances that led a sane man to become The Joker. A lot of the dialog in the film, especially those between The Joker and Batman were reminiscent of the movie. Questions are raised in the reader's mind whether the two characters are just two sides of the same coin. The illustrations by Brian Bollard, are very 3D-like, making the characters pop out of the book, and making it more real. The end, again, like Watchmen, champions the cause of the human spirit.