The Long Halloween

[The Laughing Fish]

I think it's a good idea to dedicate a thread to Jeph Loeb's The Long Halloween and discuss somethings about the comic that I find unique.

For instance:

• The story could be intended as a sequel to Frank Miller's Year One, since it takes place where the Falcone mob are still active, Carmine had a facial scar inflicted by Catwoman in YO, and Johnny Viti, who if I recall, tried to kill Gordon and is still alive at the start of this story.
• This book borrows some plot points from Batman Annual #14 - The Eye of the Beholder, where Harvey Dent becomes Two-Face after suffering from abuse from his father and pressure on the job as a DA before getting disfigured caused him to succumb to bipolar disorder. Vernon Fields, the corrupt assistant DA who was in cahoots with the mob and was an accessory in Dent's disfigurement appeared in both stories. Dent's father didn't appear in TLH, but his influence was evident in one scene, as Gilda finds Harvey sitting quietly in the basement as he tells her he visited his dad.
• Batman may have arguably inspired the lunatics to arise in Gotham, but it was Carmine Falcone who gave them a prominent presence because he hired those to instigate the situation i.e. hiring Poison Ivy to hypnotize Bruce into dealing with the Falcones for a business agreement, having Scarecrow and Mad Hatter on his payroll, Catwoman's stalking of Falcone and hiring Riddler to find out who the Holiday killer is.
• Elaborating more from the last point, Falcone seems to affect those he doesn't associate with. Batman finds Catwoman nearby the Falcones whenever he investigates them, but she won't reveal why. I heard a theory somewhere that Catwoman might have been Falcone's illegitimate daughter.
• The Falcone family had a stranglehold of Gotham City, and Carmine got to climb up the ranks thanks to Thomas Wayne saving his life when he was younger; making Bruce ponder if Gotham in the present day might have turned out to be a safer place if his father never agreed to operate on Carmine.
• Two-Face justifies his decision to murder Falcone to start "a new dawn" for Gotham City; one without the mob having any power to manipulate the system like they used to. You might say that Two-Face may have ended a deadly cycle but started something arguably even worse - the rapid progress of Batman's psychotic rogues gallery.

Now this post wouldn't be complete if I didn't talk about the ending. Does anybody else get the impression that Alberto Falcone lied to everybody for being the Holiday killer just to spite his own father and family, if we are to believe Gilda and Harvey Dent were responsible for the serial murders?

EDIT: Oh FFS, I just realized there was already a thread dedicated to this comic. 

Mods, please feel free to delete this thread and move this post to the original thread:
http://www.batman-online.com/forum/index.php?topic=297.0