'Haunted Knight' is a series of three short Batman stories done by the Leob/Sale team. All three taking place on Halloweens. The first and longest of the three called 'Fears' puts Batman up against Scarecrow on Halloween night, and all it really ends up being is a big chase with some random girl named Jillian playing a background love interest type character. The second story 'Madness' involves Gordon's adopted daughter, Babs, rebelling and going out on her own only to run into the Mad Hatter who forces her to dress up as Alice and have a tea party with him. It heavily reflects on Bruce's childhood memory of the book 'Alice in Wonderland', and the ways the Hatter is perverting his precious memoris. The final and possibly stupidest of the stories, 'Ghosts', opens with Batman capturing The Penguin on the night before Halloween. Later that night, and I'm not kidding here, Bruce returns home, his father visits him shackled in chains and warns him of three spirits coming to visit him through the night so he can make a change. Sure enough, it plays out like a really fast and careless version of 'A Christmas Carol'. Bruce learns something in the end about himself, but I'll be damned if I understood what the hell it was. The stories are all just ridiculously confusing and, in their own way, annoying! All through the first two, Scarecrow and Hatter both speak in nursery rhymes. This seemed evident with Leob's style in 'The Long Halloween' too, which kind of annoyed me. But 'Long Halloween' and 'Dark Victory' made for good, solid stories... but this? I dunno, I just REALLY did not like this as all! The imagery was really messed up and confusing, the writing was crap in my eyes, I got nothing good at all out of this. The real disappointment here though is that its the same team who gave us the last two I reviewed! It really was like someone different came in and took over the writing process here. I'd recommend 'Long Halloween' and 'Dark Victory' to Batman fans anytime, but I wouln't recommend this to anyone.
Final Rating: 1/5

Taking place just several months after 'The Long Halloween'. The culprit has been caught, sentanced, and all seems well. Without much warning, however, the holiday themes killings begin again, but with both the culprit of the previous crimes and the infamous Calendar Man stuck in Arkham, the police detectives don't know where to begin. This time, instead of focusing on the mob, the targets are members of the Gotham police force. With each killing comes a letter with the game 'Hangman' on it, always half solved. The letters themselves are coming from Harvey Dent's personal files as well, making him (now Two-Face) a prime suspect once again. The story ends up being another detecive tale, and it almost tells the same thing over again, but takes a different appraoch. In the last one, there seemed to be a few really random scenes I didn't enjoy, bumping my overall rating down a bit. In this one, the story is much more straightforward, and focuses on the whole deal without doing much sidetracking. We also get to see (as you may guess by the cover art) the origin of Robin, but I wasn't big on how it was handled. It just seemed incredibly abrupt, as when his parents get killed off (sorry for the spoiler, but any Batman fan should probably know this happens by now), there's really nothing leading up to it. Its literally just a couple of pages, as if it wanted to get things over with. It makes for an interesting enough little side story, once Bruce Wayne brings him in. But despite the cover, he doesn't even show up until about the last third of the book. It does a good job with its storytelling, however, and it manages to keep you guessing, even when you think the aswer is obvious. Overall, I have to say I enjoyed this one a little better than 'The Long Halloween'.
Final Rating: 4.5/5

One year on Halloween night, Gotham's untouchable crime lord, Carmine "The Roman" Falcone, begins to suffer a fate involving his family. One by one, murders involving the Falcone family transpire on holidays, giving an unknown assailant the nickname "Holiday". Teaming up with police captain Jim Gordon and Gotham's district attorney Harvey Dent, Batman vows to capture Holiday one way or another, keeping the promise to his parents of ridding the streets of crime. The story takes place in the early days of Batman, continuing the continuity of 'Batman: Year One'. Various villains are featured here, delving into that good old Rogues Gallery, showing us our favorite villains from The Joker and The Riddler, to crime bosses Carmine Falcone and Sal Maroni, to the obscure Calendar Man and Solomon Grundy! It manages to cram a lot of names in there without losing its luster. Then of course there's the ever-tense situation as to whether we get to see Harvey Dent turn into Two Face or not (I'll never tell). The story has much more of a "Nolan-ess" to it than a lot of other Batman comics. By this I mean that it keeps things dark, more real, and while major Batman villains will play a part, the real criminals are the crime families of Gotham. There was actually one scene that kinda bugged be involving Poison Ivy, as in the end the efforts put forward seemed rather pointless. But otherwise, I really dug it. It ends with a pleasantly unexpected twist that comes right out of left field. It is, however, a little long-winded, and its far more of a detective book than an adventure book. I can't say it bored me at all, but it did feel like it took a long time to finish. The book didn't grab me by the brain like 'Arkham Asylum' did, but perhaps its just that big a leap to take. A lot of whether you like this or not is gonna depend on what you wanna see from it. It makes for an awesome mystery with your fair share of suspects, and it keeps you guessing all the way. But if you just wanna see Batman kick a bunch of ass with a simple plot of good vs evil, or even if you wanna see The Joker take the comic book over as a criminal mastermind, its not gonna be quite right for you. Still though, I was happy with it in the end.
Final Rating: 4/5

Highly recommended to me by a new found friend, this dark and twisted story taking place in Arkham is a welcome alteration from the graphic novels that I'm generally used to. Writer Grant Morrison has the Joker taking hostages in Arkham Asylum, and demanding that Batman pay them a visit or else lives will be at stake. What follows upon Batman's visit is a game of hide and seek where Batman will eventually have to face several of the lesser villains of the Batman franchise. We also discover a new therapy being introduced to Two-Face in hopes that he won't have to rely on his coin for decision making, weening him off of it so to speak. Meanwhile as this is all playing out, we get several flashbacks of Amadeus Arkham in the early 1920s, and the tragedies that unfold for him with the opening of Arkham Asylum. When reading these two completely different story lines, you wonder how it all connects. Don't worry though, there's a very nice connection to everything in the end. The way the book is written is indeed very cool, using various fonts and texts depending on who's speaking, and not just your average comic bubbles. Perhaps the thing that stands out most in this graphic novel is Dave McKean's artwork (which indeed includes the text), giving it all a very dark and twisted style that is in its own way very disturbing and unsettling. He manages to portray the characters in a very different manner than what we may be used to. This particular read isn't just another graphic novel consisting of Batman and The Joker, but rather a dark and stylish work of art that manages to hold the reader's mind captive, taking time to look at the pages within. Best thing I've read in a while. A special thanks to Jill for this one!
Final Rating: 5.5/5

Readers of the famous series 'Scott Pilgrim vs The World' have probably familiarized themselves with this particular cover in the behind-cover illustrations of the other books that Bryan Lee O'Malley has done. Basically, it's the only one that isn't a 'Pilgrim' book. The plot revolves around an 18-year-old girl named Raleigh. She is on a road trip back to Vancouver from California with three peers from high school who she hardly knows. The book is narrated by Raleigh as she speaks of her relationship with her long-distance boyfriend, parents, and the fact that she's convinced that she has no soul due to her unpopularity. Things get really weird when she starts dreaming of cats and constantly running into them, convincing herself that at some point her soul was transferred into a cat. The narration of the book is pretty emo-tastic, poetic, artsy, and at times downright confusing. The actual scenes with the four friends is very much written with that 'Scott Pilgrim' style of comedy, giving me a few laughs here and there. This, however, isn't any kind of epic adventure, and I'd be hard pressed to say that its nearly as fun as 'Pilgrim'. Its far more deep, its far more artsy and emotional. Its more just about a young girl, coming to terms with herself and the life that surrounds her. Not much of the book makes a lot of sense until the final few pages when everything comes together, making it a story about fate, basically. It doesn't take long to get through at all, and its not what I'd call a bad book by any means. Depending on a 'Pilgrim' fan and their reason for liking the 'Pilgrim' books, this could very well prove to be a hit or miss for some. By the end, there is a very deep and humbling message about life, and I got a lot out of it personally, but at the same time I thought it took a lot of rambling to get to those final notes. Unlike the 'Scott Pilgrim' books, this isn't something I feel I really want to re-read again. It is, however, worth checking out if you live on that confused teenager level of life.
Final Rating: 3/5