- Title: Batman: The Long Halloween – The Last Halloween #2
- Comic Vine: link
- Writer: Jeph Loeb
- Artist: Klaus Janson
It only took two issues for me to lose whatever interest I had in DC attempting to milk more story out of Batman: The Long Halloween. Issue #2 goes through the motions with the calendar moving from Halloween to Thanksgiving with Batman hitting dead end after dead end in his search for the missing James Gordon. The comic features callbacks both the the first issue, returning Catwoman for some pretty awful flirting and then offering no insight into the case, and to the original series with Calendar Man providing Robin with a clue.
Eventually Batman is lead to the Penguin, but that to ends in what appears to be a literal dead end. The comic doesn’t earn Batman going crazy on the captured Mad Hatter for questionable intel nor the apparent death of the Penguin (which doesn’t make sense for a variety of continuity problems). The art of the issue is also a step down from the opening chapter, leaving me with neither the patience nor interest to stick around to see how events play out.
[DC, $4.99]