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A killer has returned (or is it killers?), odd alliances are made (and smashed and remade), and long-kept secrets are revealed in Batman: The Halloween – The Last Halloween. What started as the final collaboration between writer Jeph Loeb and artist Tim Sale (May 1, 1956 – June 16, 2022) turned into a phenomenal tribute to the late illustrator and a worthy end to their years-long collaboration on the early years of the Dark Knight Detective.  

Batman: The Long Halloween – The Last Halloween #0 (originally issued as a one-shot, Batman: The Long Halloween Special #1) was the actual last collaboration between the partners. It was initially released as a standalone, and then reissued when the Last Halloween series came together.  

Using a large supply of Batman pieces that Sale had left behind, former DC art director Marc Chiarello, an acclaimed artist in his own rite, colored the works and turned them into spectacular covers. Sale, then, was very much a part of every issue, although he only illustrated the #0. 

For the interiors for the rest of the series, Loeb, color artist Dave Stewart, and letterers Richard Starkings and Tyler Smith were paired with 10 of the industry’s greatest artists, all of whom did their best to inject Sale’s spirit into their art without once trying to ape his distinctive style. The contributors included Eduardo Risso, Klaus Janson, Chiarello, Cliff Chiang, Bill Sienkiwicz, Enrico Marini, Dave Johnson, Becky Cloonan, Chris Samnee, and Mateo Scalera, and the results were spectacular. 

Not only does each issue work on its own, the series pulls together plot elements that Loeb and Sale had been building on since their early Halloween one-shots and the original Long Halloween miniseries. 

To fully take in just how impressive this work is, however, requires a look back at how Loeb and Sale got here in the first place. Their previous Batman-centric collaborations for DC included the one-shots Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween Special #1, Batman: Madness A Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween Special #1, and Batman: Ghosts Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween Special #1, before they kicked off the miniseries Batman: The Long Halloween, Batman: Dark Victory, and Catwoman: When In Rome, all of which preceded the Last Halloween story (They also produced Challengers of the Unknown and Superman For All Seasons for DC). 

Following the four-issue Wolverine/Gambit: Victims, the duo produced four miniseries at Marvel, Spider-Man: Blue, Daredevil: Yellow, Hulk: Gray, and Captain America: White. What those character miniseries at Marvel had in common with the DC work was their ability to distill decades of stories and emotions into concise, resonant, coherent stories that somehow still managed to have solid bits of mystery to them.  

With cinematic flair but a true love of comics, Loeb and his collaborators built Batman: The Halloween – The Last Halloween into a worthy conclusion to decades worth of storytelling.  

The hardcover also includes a gallery of the variant covers produced for the series, as well as an interview with Loeb about the process of putting it all together. It’s a genuinely solid memorial to Sale and any fan of the Long Halloween series should be happy to give it a read. 

– J.C. Vaughn