Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #5 – “Chapter Five: Valentine’s Day”! In the previous installment, the Joker steals a bi-plane and intends to spread deadly laughing gas all over the patrons celebrating New Year’s Eve at the town square… you know, just in case Holiday is there somewhere.

Harvey Dent’s assistant finds a connection between Carmine Falcone and Bruce Wayne. Heavy news friend. Dent is not going to be happy to tell Jim Gordon…

Holiday claims another victim. Bookworm and all around nerd Alberto Falcone. The killer seems to be targeting those close to Falcone. WHO WILL BE NEXT?!

Is Bono close to Carmine Falcone? Please?

Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #5 [April, 1997]
Written by: Jeph Loeb
“Chapter Five: Valentine’s Day”

Oh man, is this going to be a Batman/Catwoman sexual tension bottle episode? Maybe they’ll both be killed and I can finally enjoy this Batman comic! Nah, I’m kidding. It’s good! Ha!

A smokin’ Jim Gordon and a smokin’ Harvey Dent knock on Bruce Wayne’s giant manor doors. Alfred, ever the rapscallion, tells them that Bruce Wayne is not home and that they are welcome to wait in one of Mr. Wayne’s many heroin dens.

“Nice dump,” Dent says as they enter the lavish foyer. Something tells me that Harvey Dent might be a teensy bit jealous, no? Did you know that Bruce Wayne has a ball pit??

“Sirs, with it being Valentine’s Day, I feel I would be derelict in my duty if I did not point out that – Oh, how should I put this? — with someone of Master Bruce’s… popularity… he may not return for some time,” Alfred says. Bruce Wayne is fucking every chick in Gotham’s west side, apparently. Gordon asks Dent if he’d like to try again later, but Dent is already distracted by a portrait of Bruce’s family. He asks Alfred if anyone named Falcone has dropped by at all, at any point, possibly even to see Bruce’s (dead) (as a doornail) (lol) dad.

Alfred is silent as a doornail.

Gordon tries to pinch a doornail of a headache out of his face.

Alfred deflects and asks Gordon how his lovely wife Tammy – or is it Gertrude? — is doing. Gordon says that Jessica is doing fine, and oh shit. Hey, did Dent remember to get his wife something today? Dent did not either. Whoops!

At the Gotham Cemetery (apparently Gotham’s only cemetery even though people are fucking dying left and right in this shithole town), Carmine Falcone lays a flower on his son’s grave. “Is it worth it?” says a voice behind him. It’s Batman, killing the mood. As usual.

“Is what worth it?” Falcone asks, aiming a gun point blank at Batman’s neck.

“The price.” Batman frowns. He’s always frowning.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Your son.”

“Alberto was never involved in my business.”

“Either directly or indirectly. How many other innocent sons have you destroyed?”

Carmine pulls back the hammer. “Nobody. And I mean nobody. Speaks to me this way.”

Hey, someone’s a-playin’ da whirlyball! Shove off, hoser!

Catwoman shows up to be annoying. Every time, every stinkin’ time Batman confronts the Roman she shows up. Like the worst rash Bruce Wayne has ever had. On his penis.

Batman tries to manhandle the cat, but she’s a slippery one.

“You don’t think I could have taken that little gun from that little man?” Batman growls.

“Jealous?” Catwoman grins seductively, Valentine’s Day-style.

“You should have stayed away.”

BORING! BOOORING! Are you ready for more boring shit? It’s nighttime now, and Selina “Whoreface” Kyle is dancing with Bruce “Whoreface” Wayne. They flirt disgustingly until a suspicious robed individual with a basket of roses offers Bruce a flower to give to his lovely lady. Selina holds out a wad of cash. “My treat,” she says, emasculating Bruce Wayne so hard that his nuts grow vaginas! Really! Really, they do!

She hands him the rose. Bruce gets lacerated to death with a thorn. Like a cat scratch. Get it?

Anyway, these two suck. Moving on, Vernon, Harvey Dent’s assistant, gets a couple of stacks of cash from Salvatore Maroni in his restaurant. “You got no date tonight, Vernon? You wanna stay for dinner?” Maroni asks, but Vernon doesn’t have time for saying “no” to the first question, and then also saying “no” to the second question. He informs his Maroni buddy that Harvey Dent is targeting him. “He believes you are the weak link in the Falcone organization.”

Hey! This money smells like hooker blow!

Maroni eyeballs Harvey Dent from across the room and takes his buddy over to enjoy a meal of dead baby cow and Parmesan cheese. Mangia!

A group of Falcone’s goons are in a car just outside of Maroni’s restaurant. “He’ll kill us if he finds us in here,” one of them says. Apparently, they’re taking a risk by even being outside right now! See, that’s called “reading comprehension” and I’m very good at it.

One asks the others if they have a guess as to who Holiday is. And then someone shoots up the whole car, killing the lot of them DEAD! AS A FUCKIN’ DOORNAIL! How do you like that spumoni, ya bastards!

The assailant shoots the gas tank, which doesn’t actually do anything in real life, and blows up the car. The resultant blast blows out Maroni’s windows and turns the restaurant into a pile of broken chairs and tables. “Okay.” Maroni shakes his fist in the air like a 107-year-old man. “You want war. I’LL GIVE YOU WAR!”

In Casa de Gordon, Jimmy comes home late to find Barbara Tammy Gertrude Jessica Helen Stacy feeding the baby. Gordon smiles sternly, holding a heart-shaped box of chocolates, and apologizes for being out so late all the time. They kiss. Good for them.

In Maison du Dent, Harvey places a heart-shaped box of chocolates on the bedside table next to his sleeping Gilda of a wife. They kiss. Good for them.

In Brucewaynehaus, Alfred asks how his night went and Bruce ignores him.

Where’s Alfred’s gal pal? The dude fucks; why doesn’t get to get any on Valentine’s Day?

Pretty much in a fugue state, still holding the rose, Bruce Wayne heads out to his gardens. “Come,” says an unknown voice. “That’s it. You know you can’t resist me.”

It’s Poison Ivy. She had put some love serum on the rose thorn and now she’s rubbing her face on his neck.

It’s gross.

Final Thoughts

Poison Ivy is going to suck Batman’s dick, isn’t she? Say it ain’t so.