Movies News Talk
Returning for another mystery in the world of The Long Halloween, Batman, the legendary vigilante superhero character of millionaire Bruce Wayne, will have his gallery of rogues right there with him.
No Batman tale quite impacted Gotham as much as the detective mystery by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, published over 25 years ago. Long Halloween enthusiasts will, however, be rewarded to another sequel in 2024: Batman: The Long Halloween: The Last Halloween, the last installment of Batman's Halloween chronicle. The way The Long Halloween used a killer outside of the usual caped superheroes and villains was among its better features. As they approached the riddle, each problem highlighted Batman and a different enemy. Batman has another mystery to solve now in The Last Halloween, and it appears that the rogues of these covers will complicate matters. Even generally unused villains like Solomon Grundy, highly liked by Jeph Loeb, will be guiding the narrative of their issues in the same manner that made the original so popular.
Tim Sale's cover art for the much expected Batman's Long Halloween features Batman's most well-known rogues. AIPT now has the covers for the ten-part miniseries' last four issues. Batman: The Long Halloween is written by Jeph Loeb and illustrated by a different artist for each issue as Tim Sale, the original artist, lately passed away. Still, Sale's art lives on the covers he finished for the series prior to his death. Catwoman and Solomon Grundy earn their own Sale covers. Based on the rogues gathered on the cover of the last issue, it seems Two- Face, Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, Riddler, Penguin, Harley Quinn and the Joker are all on the docket to cause a bit of mischief in Gotham. The style mimicked seems to be honoring Tim Sale and the world he built even in the alternative covers for these problems finished by other artists.
DC back at its basic, detective comic roots is great at a time of shifting continuities and world-ending high-stakes drama. Batman became the World's Greatest Detective thanks in large part to the Long Halloween, which also gave Gotham's enemies traditional, almost fairy-tale appearances using Tim Sale's design. Catwoman is wearing one of her original purple costumes; even Two- Face, whose beginnings were permanently altered in The Long Halloween, has not too dramatic split side. DC Comics recently gave this basic villain a reinventions driven by nightmares. Here, though, it's good to see Two- Face returning to Tim Sale's understated simplicity. It's great to see Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's work still on show and revered in these covers, seeing characters rebuilt into their old forms. The front component of the narrative is Tim Sale's artwork; his memory holds this last chapter. The fans of Long Halloween should get ready to witness some of their preferred Batman enemies pushed and challenged to the very limits in The Last Halloween.
Every one of these bad guys gets highlighted for a mugshot in alternative covers for the last four issues. The artist of each version draws on their respective issue to conjure Tim Sale's unique artistic style. Dave Johnson's cover for issue #7 features Poison Ivy; Solomon Grundy takes front stage in Becky Cloonan's cover for issue #8; Chris Samnee's cover for issue #9 centers Catwoman; Two- Face graces the cover for issue #10 by Matteo Scalera.