Batman: Haunted Knight, published by DC Comics in 1996, was a reprint of Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween Specials.
Here are three Halloween stories set in Batman’s universe in which the Dark Knight must battle more than simply foes. He battles his anxieties, insanity, and the presence of spirits. Although the conflicts take place in Gotham City, the war is fought in Bruce’s thoughts.
These stories were written by Jeph Loeb, a legend, and the fantastic art was created by Tim Sale. Each narrative introduces a new antagonist, but it appears that the ultimate enemy wreaking havoc on Bruce Wayne’s life is Bruce Wayne himself.
Warning: Before we go into how fantastic the series is, let us take a look at the stories that have made it so unforgettable.
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The Fearless Man Succumbs To His Fears
In the first story titled Fears, Batman crosses paths with Scarecrow, the notorious professor, born as Jonathon Crane, who became a criminal. As a professor and a psychologist, Scarecrow specialized in the psychology of fear. Batman comes off as the guy who does not have any fears. But we know that is not the truth.
It is Halloween in Gotham City. Scarecrow, the psychologist turned psychopath, is on the loose. He’s been going around the city doing what he does – instilling fear in the hearts of the innocent. Thanks to his ruckus, Gotham City has been experiencing a loss of electricity in several places. This is often followed by lootings and fires, and all of this calls for the attention of Gotham’s protector, the Caped Crusader.
Batman arrives and pursues Scarecrow. A stellar sequence of dialogue follows, for which you’d definitely have to read this comic yourself. Even though Batman believes that the psychologist of fear is the one who should be very afraid, he ends up intercepting Scarecrow’s new toxin, thrice as potent as it normally is.
Batman comes out unscathed, or so it seems. He gets a hold of Scarecrow, who has been captured by the Bat once again.
He returns to Wayne Manor but despite being tired, life isn’t that simple for the billionaire playboy superhero. He has to attend a costume party and mingle with the wealthy and elite of Gotham City for business. Ironically, Batman has to ditch his costume for the costume party as he arrives as Bruce Wayne.
At the party, he meets a charming woman who leaves an impression on him. Her name is Jillian Maxwell. Meanwhile, Scarecrow manages to escape despite having been apprehended. The Bat-signal is lit and Bruce Wayne has to leave once again, leaving the woman behind. But she lets Alfred know that she will stay in touch.
Batman goes out and intercepts blows from robbers looting the city that he should be able to avoid. He’s just tired. Without being able to catch Scarecrow, he goes home and to his bed. Surprisingly, Jillian appears in front of him.
There’s something about this woman. It doesn’t take much time for her to get romantically involved with Bruce Wayne. She talks to him about things he doesn’t think of. Such as, Bruce is a man who can have anything he wants. However, he rarely gets what he wants. They go on fancy dates and it feels like Bruce Wayne and Jillian are living an old-school Hollywood romance.
Batman thinks about these as he pursues Scarecrow once again, but is overwhelmed by his crows who are able to tear off a piece of Batman’s costume. As the crows bring the souvenir to Scarecrow, Batman lands into their base and attacks Scarecrow. However, Scarecrow manages to bring Batman to a large maze. Batman gets pierced by poisonous thorns in the maze and finds himself in a state of fear and helplessness.
Alfred finds Jillian in Bruce Wayne’s bedroom once again while the billionaire is absent due to his vigilante duties. He hears her speak and something is not right. Alfred runs a scan on her and learns that Jillian Maxwell does not exist. She goes by different names, marries a rich man, and after a few days, the man dies. At the same time, Batman imagines himself getting married to Jillian while trying to escape Scarecrow’s maze. Finally, he arrives at the Manor in his Batmobile but Alfred finds him in a state of toxic shock.
Bruce Wayne is tended to while Jillian appears in front of him. He wants to spend his time with her but the Batsignal is lit once again. This time, Bruce decides to ignore his duty and fall into his desires. So, he makes travel plans with Jillian. Meanwhile, Scarecrow follows Commissioner Gordon’s Bat Signal and attacks him.
Alfred approaches Bruce about the signal but he dismisses it, claiming that he will travel with Jillian. Unfortunately, this is where Alfred must break the bad news to Bruce. He hands Bruce a disk, which Bruce wants to throw away because he wants to take a leap towards happiness. However, he is Batman. He is who he is and he decides to check what’s in it.
When he finds no sign of Gordon, he follows the Bat Signal. He rescues Gordon from Scarecrow and apprehends the psychopath once again. He acknowledges how the toxin affected him, not to the villain, but to himself. When he returns, Alfred realizes that the mistake in judging Jillian was not done by the world’s greatest detective but by Bruce Wayne. Here, Bruce has to let Jillian go. Previously, she had been to the mansion but Alfred exposed his knowledge of her true identity or the lack thereof, so she wouldn’t be returning. She was in Brazil, waiting to marry another man and then kill him off.
In the end, Batman comes to the conclusion that he wasn’t left without a choice. But, he made the choice to become Batman on the night his parents died. And it was a good choice. Despite the sacrifices that come with it.
Bruce in Wonderland
The next story, Madness, revolves around the Mad Hatter, and Barbara Gordon, who is made to play the role of Alice in Jervis Tetch’s skewed neurotech tea party. It revolves around several references from Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland, a story Martha Wayne had read to her son Bruce Wayne before that night.
The story begins with Barbara Gordon venting in her diary about her father, Jim Gordon, not giving her freedom to be by herself. Meanwhile, it is Halloween in Gotham City, once again, and the commissioner is worried about the ensuing events.
Batman is in pursuit of Mad Hatter, who is responsible for several children going missing. The Dark Knight has fought his fair share of criminals but the madness of the Mad Hatter hits too close to him because it perverts one of Bruce’s fond memories from childhood. Something he claims to not have a lot of.
Meanwhile, Barbara gets into an argument with her father at home. She wants to have her freedom, of course, but he can’t give it to her right now. Not when Gotham City is in such a mess. Ultimately, Barbara escapes from her house, a decision she regrets later.
On the other hand, Batman thinks about an old memory during his fight with Mad Hatter, which happens to be filled with imagery from Alice in Wonderland. When he was a child, his mother read him the story. Bruce heard parts of it from her and loved it. But he could not afford to hear all of it as the Waynes had to go for a movie.
While Martha Wayne got dressed, Bruce asked his mother to wear her pearl necklace, oblivious to what would happen to the necklace that very night. He would never see her again. The fight has left him wounded and his body cannot handle it anymore. Fortunately, Leslie Thompkins arrives in time to aid him.
Barbara Gordon gets chased by Mad Hatter’s men as they offer her tea for the tea party. She is abducted and made to get into the character of Alice. She finds herself at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, surrounded by the other characters of Alice in Wonderland, which are the abducted children. The Mad Hatter has to go to the Queen but he’s late. However, Alice here does not want tea, which is inexcusable. Mainly because the tea is drugged and the Hatter needs Alice to drink it for her to be a part of his world.
Jim Gordon tries his best to find his daughter and lights up the Bat-Signal. Batman notices it, thanks to Leslie Thompkins, and leaves. She and Alfred were there for her after the incident, so life isn’t all bleak for Bruce Wayne. He goes back to his duty.
Jim Gordon traces Barbara to the Hill House, where criminal brothers had murdered a child. He got the information from the March Hare, or rather, the child in the attire of the March Hare.
Batman and Jim Gordon are able to get ahold of the Mad Hatter and rescue Barbara and the missing kids. That night, Bruce Wayne went back home and read Alice in Wonderland.
Retelling the story of A Christmas Carol – Batman Style
The third and final story, Ghosts, takes heavy inspiration from A Christmas Carol. Dr. Thomas Wayne wears the shoes of Jacob Marley while the roles of the three spirits are filled by some notorious villains from Batman’s rogue gallery. Poison Ivy is the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Joker is the Ghost of Christmas Present, and a Grim Reaper is the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come.
On the night before Halloween, a Bruce Wayne who is young in his career attends a charity event with Lucius Fox. The party is crashed by Gotham City’s socialite, the Penguin. He attacks everyone and robs Lucius Fox of his medallion. Batman follows in pursuit and is able to take the medallion back, but the Penguin escapes.
That night, Batman returns to the manor and complains to Alfred about eating something that did not agree with his stomach. Very tired, he goes to bed with a feverish feeling.
Bruce begins to hear the sound of chains kinkling. When he looks, it’s his father, Dr. Thomas Wayne, wrapped in chains. He complains about the chains making him obsessed with his burden, causing him to lose sight of what was actually important. Bruce faces the same problem with his obsession with being Batman, which parallels his father’s obsession with his medical practice. As he leaves, he tells Bruce that he will be visited by three spirits after the clock strikes one.
At one o’clock, Batman finds himself chained to his bed with Poison Ivy’s briars. He thinks he’s experiencing this because of her poison but that’s not true. The real Pamela Isley is in Arkham. This is Poison Ivy, this story’s version of the Ghost of Christmas Past.
She takes him to the past on the night of Halloween when his parents were alive. Young Bruce was in his costume and wanted to go trick or treating with his father, who could not make it due to work. He is then taken to another past memory in Paris where Bruce had met Lucius Fox.
Ivy dissipates and Bruce finds himself in his bed again. This time, he hears menacing laughter that he knew too well. The Joker or rather, the Joker spirit appears and shows Bruce Wayne the children who would never befriend a friendless Bruce when he was a child. However, the worst is yet to come.
Finally, Bruce finds himself in a future scenario. No signs of Alfred, no signs of life. The Grim Reapers take Batman to a graveyard where he sees a very old Alfred, standing in front of Bruce Wayne’s grave. Bruce is shocked to see how he has been forgotten. He realizes that he has left nothing for himself.
Bruce Wayne wakes up and finds Alfred. The Batman has apprehended the Penguin, the news says so. Bruce Wayne sees that his house, which had been tattered by the spirits, was restored. Everything was back to the way it was but this time, something had to change. And it was Bruce.
Bruce contacted Lucius Fox and returned him his prized medallion. He also lit up the house on Halloween and let Gordon handle the state of crime on Halloween. Finally, he went out trick or treating. The spirits taught him to not let Batman take over his entire life. And Bruce Wayne took a step toward making amends.
Review
Each standalone story glosses over different struggles Bruce Wayne tends to deal with. This is a man who is stuck in the past but wants to use it to build a brighter future.
In the first story, Fears, Batman is given the chance at a better life, or so he thinks. The man is mildly scared of bats but has created his entire persona around that very thing. However, when fear transgresses the territory of the material world and enters the abstract, there’s not much the world’s greatest detective can do.
However, that’s not even the greatest thing about this story. The dialogues and the art are the MVP here, especially the ones by Scarecrow. The villain adds his own twist to several nursery rhymes to mock his opponents, be it Batman or Commissioner Jim Gordon. Although this may sound trivial, it gives out the same ominous effect as you may experience when you hear the tune of a dancing doll during a horror film.
The artwork and the usage of lighting within the artwork show just how brilliant Tim Sale is as he brings Loeb’s story to life. The best thing about the comic is that the emphasis on art is way too high. There are entire spreads where the art takes the center stage and gives out the story, without the need for dialogues.
The entire sequence where his romance with Jillian is developed is remarkable. Even though the color blue is used throughout the comic, this is the moment where we get several black and white spreads. This does justice to where the story is thematic. The romance is developed in an old-school Hollywood fashion, something Alfred himself alludes to when he talks about Jillian. Even the art shifts to showing a more vintage atmosphere. Alfred Pennyworth and his dry humor shine through and Jillian does more than enough to compliment it – a great contrast to Bruce’s brooding, humorless nature but not too much of a contrast to make her seem like she’s from a different world altogether.
Even though everything is in black and white here, there is a red rose from Bruce’s bedroom perhaps that retains its color even in the old film aesthetic. Color also plays a huge role in separating Batman’s story with Scarecrow with Batman’s story with Jillian. While the former takes on a blue-ish hue, possibly due to Batman’s association with darkness and the night, the latter is red, which could allude to red being the color you’d think of when you think of love and passion.
This is either an analysis gone right or one of those moments where the students are made to think too much over symbolism in literature even though the author did not intend for any to exist.
Madness is more colorful. Alice in Wonderland itself is a colorful story. The dialogues do the same thing as Fears. While the former added a spin to the rhymes from the real world, this one does that with the rhymes of Alice’s world from the story. With Tetch’s Mad Hatter at the center of it all, we get to see a tea party.
Of course, the nature of the tea party here isn’t so much as Alice getting lost. Knowing the story of Alice in Wonderland clearly helps in appreciating this one but at this point, more or less everyone knows it.
When Bruce Wayne has a flashback of his mother, we once again enter the black and white territory, which helps differentiate the past from the present.
Finally, we have Ghosts, a story that pushes Bruce Wayne in a positive direction. Many stories have retold ‘A Christmas Carol’ with their own twist before. Seeing it come to life with Batman at the center of it all for a Halloween story is certainly exciting.
And it’s not every day that Poison Ivy and Joker come to help Batman find some happiness in life.
The coolest thing about this one is when Dr. Thomas Wayne appears, the texts around him have a font that is reminiscent of the past. In fact, the entire comic does a splendid job with its black and white artwork against the more blue-ish art that surrounds Batman or the more colorful art that surrounds the other characters.
When Poison Ivy appears, Batman’s suit takes on a greenish hue to complement Ivy.
However, this might be the best spread in the story.
And well, it is the Joker after all.
The way the stories play out is best experienced if you read the comics. The stories by themselves are simple, so any knowledge of what happens here wouldn’t really affect your reading experience. As we’ve said in the review, the true brilliance lies in how everything plays out.
And that’s something the Batman comics excel at anyway. In fact, these are one of the many reasons why hardcore comic lovers can never find the same amusement from live-action or cartoons as they do from comics themselves.
What did you think of this comic? Did you enjoy this video? If yes, then don’t forget to like and comment on this video. Till then, goodbye. And have a nice one!