Batman and Halloween go together like masks and candy. There's a sense of loss that surrounds the Dark Knight all the way back to his origins that feels right at home in the season of the dead, and when it comes to scary but still fun costumes, Batman's almost can't be beat (ask the many trick-or-treaters who come to your door wearing his cape and cowl every year).
That's exactly why writer Jeph Loeb, co-creator of Batman: The Long Halloween alongside the late Tim Sale, has been drawing on Halloween as an inspiration all the way back to that original 1996-97 limited series. And it's that same connection which sadly informs the making of the upcoming final chapter in the Long Halloween saga, The Last Halloween, which serves as a loving tribute to Sale, who passed away in 2022 with the idea for the story still just a concept shared between him and Loeb.
"There's a Neal Adams/Denny O'Neil story titled 'Night of the Reaper' [from 1971's Batman #237] which takes place in Rutland, Vermont, and has all of the big writers that were working at that time as guest stars, who Neal drew into the story. And it's amazing to see, like, young Denny O'Neal and Marv Wolfman and all those guys hanging out," Loeb tells Newsarama of how he originally began drawing a direct connection between Batman and Halloween.
"But that, for me, was also this sort of like, haunting story. You know, when you have a character whose mantra is 'Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot. I will become a bat and inspire fear in them,' you sort of go, that's kind of what Halloween is all about. Like, you nailed it there, Bruce. So that became something that just worked really well."
"Also, Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. So I think it really just is keeping in mind that he's this creature of the night, and fear is such a big part of him, that beginning the story at Halloween sort of made sense," he continues. "And also, if I'm gonna tell a story that takes place over the course of the year, I didn't want to do a story that started in January and ended in December, the way everything else does."
This time, the mystery of Batman: The Long Halloween will be told over the course of 10 issues in 12 months, with two months off during the year. But Loeb hints that there will still be Batman: The Last Halloween content released in the two months the main title won't be coming out.
"In February and July, there are skip months. There may be some surprises that we haven't yet told everybody about that are in the skip months, but the story itself will be one continuous 10-part story, because that's what it was always intended to be," Loeb explains.
But what does it mean to be telling the story of Batman's last Halloween, or at least the last in the series of Halloween-centric mystery stories Loeb has written for nearly 30 years at this point? As it turns out, it means going all the way back to the beginning, when Batman was still cutting his teeth fighting organized crime and the costumed villains had yet to fully infest Gotham.
"I was talking to somebody and they said, 'So if the first story was about how the freaks drove the crime families out of Gotham City, what's the last Halloween?' And I said, well, if you reverse it, and you think about the fact that the mob never really goes away - it may go to sleep - but this is the other half of the story," Loeb says.
"This is the mob saying, 'We're not going to work with the freaks. We're not going to let the freaks continue to run our businesses. We're going to take things back.' And there are a lot of questions out there about Holiday and the Maroney family. I love those characters, and the fact that they keep turning up in the movies and in animated stuff. The new Penguin TV series has Sofia Falcone in it. So this is an opportunity for us to go back and revisit that family."
That still leaves the dangling question - will Batman: The Last Halloween actually be the last of Loeb's Batman Halloween stories? The answer is apparently yes - but it's not quite that simple.
"I learned a long time ago to never say never," Loeb states. "I never thought I was going to do this. But I have to give editor Arianna Turturro credit, because just doing a book with one artist for 10 issues and getting it out on time is hard enough. She is literally herding cats with a chainsaw, and I just can't do that to another human being ever again! [Laughs]"
"So I'm not saying I'm done with Batman, but I really do feel like this was intended to be the Last Halloween, and so that's what I hope we achieved," he concludes.
Look for more of Newsarama's conversation with Loeb coming soon.
Batman: The Long Halloween is one of the best Batman stories of all time.
