Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #13 – “Chapter Thirteen: Punishment”! We’re finally at the end of a loooooooooong Halloween, ladies and gentlemen! In the previous installment, Maroni is the latest victim on Labor Day. After Batman and Gordon spend the whole issue convinced that Harvey “Two-Face” Dent is the killer, the killer is not actually Harvey Dent at all! It’s some man with purple sunglasses.
Anticlimactic? You better believe it! But let’s see where this goes…
Batman: The Long Halloween, Issue #13 [December, 1997]
Written by: Jeph Loeb
“Chapter Thirteen: Punishment”
Labor Day in Gotham City. “I am Holiday,” says Holiday, a smug sumbitch if I’ve ever seen one. Then a kerfuffle happens! The guard assisting Gordon and Maroni get back up, not at all dead or shot in the chest as one would believe! He was wearing a Kevlar vest, so he was shot in the chest. Just not, you know, chestily enough. Gordon grabs Holiday’s gun, and the guard slugs Holiday’s head with all his might, breaking his stupid glasses and causing blood spit-up. ALWAYS punch someone wearing glasses, I always say. Batman pops in to tell us such gems as “guns are bad” and “guns killed my parents”, so he loses America’s deplorable Republican vote right there. “This is only the beginning,” he warns Holiday.
So this Purple Glasses Buttfucker? It’s Alberto Falcone, who we all thought died in Issue #4! But oh no, here he is in the flesh! “On New Year’s Eve, Alberto was killed. Another of the Holiday victims. The city coroner confirmed his death. I went to the grave myself.” In short, Batman = confused. So it’s not Harvey Dent after all? Ugh, too bad he’s on a rocket set on a direct course for the sun. No going back on that now, I suppose.
Alberto lies there bleeding. Batman grabs his throat for a good ol’-fashioned choke, but Gordon tells him to stop trying to kill his murder suspect, please. Batman continues thinking: “I made a promise to my parents to protect this city from the evil that took their lives. If I am to succeed, I must be willing to deal out – the punishment.”
Ah yes. The Punishment.
Tough titties, Batman. You don’t get to deal out The Punishment right now. Gordon slaps a pair of cuffs on this shrewd asshole and reads him his rights. All like “you have the right to remain Sexy”, for example.
Then we get a nice glimpse of Alberto’s completely not-at-all-ugly-whatsoever mugshot.
Frank Sinatra, you ain’t.
HOLIDAY KILLER CAUGHT! Nothing to see here, ladies and gentlemen! Show’s over! He faked his own death to throw everyone off the scent! A real twisted display of murderous genius! Then he continued to kill other members of his family! His father’s “enemies”. Then Maroni himself! All this to win over daddy’s affection? Most assuredly! And ah, it makes sense that he killed the city coroner! He knew the wrong body was in Alberto’s grave! Sneaky, sneaky!
Carmine pays his son a visit in the clink. They hug and fondle and kiss and tongue. “All the clues were there,” Gordon says as they watch the security camera. “Why couldn’t we stop him sooner?”
And Batman, god bless him, he just goes “IT’S MY FAULT, WAAAHHHH!” and frowns both internally and externally. He thought it was Harvey Dent the whole time!
“But… Alberto could not have done this alone. His father had to have known it was not his son in that grave,” Batman thinks as Alberto and Carmine continue caressing and smooching. “You need anything?” Carmine fawns. “I can get you a pair of those eyeglasses like you like. The purple ones.”
Alberto, now looking like Woody Allen, is like “no thanks pops”.
Carmine can get him out of the slammer. The joint. “You plead guilty to killing Maroni. And only Maroni,” he whispers. “And I can fix that. Only if you let all this other nonsense about ‘Holiday’ go.”
Well, sir, now, I tell ya, this really riles that lad up. Nonsense??? It’s not nonsense! DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHEN HIS BIRTHDAY IS, DAD? RRAAWWWRRRR!! “It’s February 14th. Valentine’s Day. Not that you would know. Since you had business to attend to. Every. Single. Year.”
Maybe because you give us all the fuckin’ creeps?
“You thought that Gotham City was synonymous with organized crime,” Alberto continues. “But Gotham City has changed. It doesn’t want your kind anymore.” Then he gives Dad the ol’ LOOK AT ME, I’M THE CITY’S LUMINOUS FUTURE!
Gordon watches this display with furrowed-brow disgruntlement. Batman is so disgusted he has to look away. Carmine Falcone, this cat definitely knew.
Halloween Night. One year has passed, and my, my, my, wasn’t that fast?! Gilda passes out candy to all the good little boys and girls. And Jim Gordon! He stops by sans costume with his clown-garbed baby boy. Barbara and Gilda give each other a hug and Gilda lets the Gordons into her humble, Harvey-less kitchen.
Who, Rock Hudson? You’re not his type, lady.
Gilda bemoans the squealing, Halloween-starved children coming up to her door. Too many superheroes and ghosts and not enough My Husband Harvey Dent! Boo hoo hoo… “Where is my husband? Is he even alive? Where is my Harvey…?”
In Arkham Asylum, Mr. Calendar Man silently watches a man flip a coin in his hand over and over again. He approaches Calendar’s glass cell, which has a newspaper clipping reading the headline “HOLIDAY KILLER SENTENCED TO DIE”.
Then the coin-flipping man says “sorry” and walks away…
At the Roman’s Penthouse, Our Favorite Carmine is breaking shit all over the place! All ARRRGHHH, HOW COULD MY OWN FLESH AND BLOOD DO THIS TO ME??! Then he cries because his son is going to get the death penalty. This is called conflicted feelings and it’s supposed to humanize Carmine to the reader, but it doesn’t work because he’s a poorly-drawn cartoon character.
Suddenly… outside of Carmine’s penthouse, laughing gas seeps into the hallways and kills everyone with fits of the giggles! Carmine and Sofia run out to the hallways to find all their guardsmen dead. “This is bad. Bad. Very bad.” Carmine kicks open the door to his office and finds every villain in there all at once! “Trick or Treat,” Joker says smilingly!
Carmine’s about to get thoroughly rectally wrecked.
“What is this?” Carmine frowns.
“What needs to be done,” says a shadowed figure amongst your Poison Ivys and your Catwomans and your Scarecrows.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Carmine asks, drawing his pistol.
“How much longer did you think I would let the Falcone family tear Gotham City in half? Splitting this city between good – and evil?”
Lookin’ good, Double-Face!
Of course, Harvey Dent is revealed to be the grotesque monster we all hoped he’d be! He has a gun trained on Carmine with his evil hand. “Nice gun. Light. .22 caliber. The perfect weapon to kill you with.” And then Carmine says he’d rather burn the city down than turn it over to some freak.
A flash bomb breaks through a window and lands in the room. Catwoman gives a “mrrow…?” before everyone is blinded by science. In comes Buff Batman with so many shadows on his face that I can’t tell if he’s grinning, frowning, or eating feces. He starts punching bitches with reckless abandon. Solomon Grundy. The Joker. Poison Ivy. The Penguin. Mad Hatter. Scarecrow.
…Catwoman? Has he lost an ally because he wouldn’t fuck her? “Whose side are you one?” he growls. “The same side I’m always on…” she purrs.
“Again. And again,” Dent says as he holds Carmine with one arm and aims a gun at his head with the other. “The courts will send them back to prison or Arkham. They will escape. And we will have the same problem. Again. And again.”
Batman finally recognizes this acid-faced dipwad who now calls himself Two-Face. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? “If you pull that trigger, how are you different from The Roman?” Batman asks, trying to talk some sense into an insane person for the millionth time and getting the same result (they call that “politics”). Two-Face tells him that the system doesn’t work that way; justice is determined with the flip of a coin, it all seems.
Then he shoots Carmine twice in the head. Bye Bye Roman.
Sofia runs into the room all livid and Catwoman restrains her with her little lasso ropes. “It’s finished. What’s done is done.”
Then Sofia stumbles backwards through a window and down the building to her death while Catwoman goes “oh, wait, nooooo”.
Let’s try to handle this rationally like one-faced men.
Batman continues to try to talk some sense into Two-Face. Think of Gotham! You got married here! You’re trying to start a family here! What about that sweet piece of ass, Gilda? What about Gilda? Huh? Gilda? Sweet piece of ass? Is anyone listening?
Two-Face ain’t takin’ the bait. Now he’s going to go to his assistant Vernon to shoot some bullets into his nerd noggin’. “Somebody gave Maroni the acid to throw in Dent’s face,” Two-Face says, pointing his little pistol. “You believe in the justice system, don’t you, Vernon?”
There are two sides: innocent or guilty. Two sides. Like this coin. *flip* Hey would you look at that? *shoots nerd to death, leaving him facedown in a pool of his own blood and glasses*
Batman later confronts Two-Face again on the police station roof after both murders and asks a meek “why”?
“I did what needed to be done,” Two-Face insists.
“You’ll never convince me of that,” Batman gripes.
Jim Gordon pops onto the roof and goes “oh dear”.
“There won’t be any judges to be bribed. No witnesses who will disappear. The Roman is dead. And I killed him. The Long Halloween is over.”
Batman says that they’ll get Harvey’s help, and Two-Face scoffs at this. Batman and Gordon will be the ones who will need help from now on.
Especially Santa Claus!
Two-Face holds out his wrists and asks Gordon to arrest him. “We’ll see how the law and order handle Harvey Dent…” he says smugly. Then he drops the bombshell that there were two Holiday killers, which is news to both Batman (without mustache) and Jim Gordon (with mustache). Although, because Harvey Dent seems to be obsessed with the Number 2 now (as in poop, definitely), they’ll never know for sure if he’s serious. “Alberto Falcone confessed to all of the Holiday killings. He’s going to the gas chamber!”
“Was it worth it?” Batman asks.
“Hmm…?”
“The promise that we made to bring down the Roman. What it cost us. Harvey…”
“If you’re asking me ‘did the good guys win?’ Yes. The good guys won, Batman. But I won’t know if it was worth it for a very long time…”
At the home of the Gordons, Jimmy Jammy Jimbo cradles his son in his arms. Barbara had heard on the police scanner that David Schwimmer was running around Central Park naked. Also, that they arrested Harvey Dent. She apologizes, but Gordon says it’s all but a day in the life of a Gotham Police Captain.
Batman continues to try to keep his promise to his dead parents that he will rid the city of evil once and for all. Good fucking luck.
A month later, in Arkham Asylum, the Calendar Man and Holiday rattle names of holidays are each other like they’re both the de facto experts on holidays now.
A month after that, on Christmas Eve, we see Two-Face harnessed to a chair in his own padded cell. “Gilda…” he says. Gilda is at home packing boxes. The home is no longer theirs, too many memories. She monologues like a motherfucker.
“Harvey. I did what needed to be done… Do you remember, you promised? We would finally have time together. When you didn’t have so much work to do. I read your case files. About taking serial numbers off guns and… and how a baby bottle nipple would muffle the sound. How clues are left at murder scenes.” She burns evidence in her furnace. “And I thought if I did that, Batman would think it was someone extraordinary and not me. I used your hat and coat for a disguise and left those… things at the killings. Johnny Viti was the first. Then, again, on Thanksgiving, I left the hospital while you slept. And again, on Christmas. But when Alberto Falcone was shot on New Year’s. And you came home late that night. Your hair was wet even though you were wearing a hat. A hat… I found the gun in the basement. You told me it was evidence. But, I knew. You had the same idea as me. You picked up where I left off. So we could have time together. A child. A secret. Let them think it was Alberto. No one will ever find out… because they don’t have you to help. You are my Apollo. You can do no wrong.”
“I believe in Harvey Dent.”
Final Thoughts
Gilda Dent is kind of a baller! Good for her.
This was the fantastic limited series I was hoping for! Now I can move on, accidentally trudging through some awful shit again before I stumble upon something good! See you next time!
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