Batman: Dark Victory

Batman: Dark Victory by Jeph Loeb
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A year after Holiday was brought to justice, a new killer haunts the nights of Gotham City. The Hangman is killing cops, cops that seem to be linked to Harvey Dent in some way. Is Harvey Dent The Hangman?

On the heels of Batman: The Long Halloween, I just had to read this. Fortunately, I snagged it on the same trade-in deal when I acquired The Long Halloween.

Dark Victory and The Long Halloween share a similar structure. The Hangman only strikes on holidays. Each issue is centered around a different murder. Batman and James Gordon race to catch the Hangman before their heads wind up in nooses. Meanwhile, on the periphery of the case, Holiday is out on bail and something is brewing in the Gotham Underworld.

To be honest, it felt like a retread of The Long Halloween for a while. Not bad but not really anything new. However, once the added wrinkle of some shady shit going down at the Haly Circus surfaced, I was all in.

I've had a lot of favorite comic characters in the past four decades but Robin was the first. While I normally don't like retellings of characters origins, I enjoyed Loeb and Sale's take on Robin's origin quite a bit and it fit seamlessly with the rest of the day. The conflicted relationship between Harvey Dent and his former friends drove the rest of the book very well.

I complain quite a bit about decompression in today's comics but it works great when Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale use it to tell a slow-burning mystery like The Long Halloween or Dark Victory. Just like the Long Halloween, the clues were in place but I missed them. Tim Sale's cartoony, moody art did a great job setting the tone, although I don't care for his Joker or Scarecrow. Loeb and Sale do a great Batman, too, complete with Kevin Conroy voice in my head.

As far as sequels go, Dark Victory did a great job following up The Long Halloween. Four out of five Batarangs.



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