Batman: The Long Halloween

"Everything around me is a lie," says Bruce Wayne in the opening monologue of one of the best stories every told in the Batman mythos.

Loeb, now known for being producer on the hit "Heroes" TV show, pens one of his first comic book masterpieces with "The Long Halloween." This is the Gotham seen in "Batman: Year One," where mobsters are strong, Bruce Wayne and Batman young, and enough insane or sane villains to keep the reader turning the pages with enthusiasm.

This is crime noir-there is the conflict with the gangster Carmine Falcone,

Here, Harvey Dent is a young district attorney trying to clean up Gotham, before he turns into Two-Face, a signature Batman villain.

There is also Jim Gordon, a captain in the Gotham PD, who will soon move up in the world and become commissioner. But now he is a maverick of sorts who works with a cape wearing super hero to try and do the things he cannot.

The main enemy early in "The Long Halloween" is Falcone, who Batman wants to crack down on. Falcone is also an enemy of Dent, who sees countless murders going unsolved when he knows the crime lord is guilty.

The real mystery does work itself in quickly. The first of the Holiday murders-this one a murder of Falcone's nephew.

The murders build up, and the mystery thickens. Harvey Dent, always pushing for justice, teams up with Batman, and it comes close to costing him his life.

Dent plays a game with his enemies when he fakes his own death. But the Holiday killings continue, and the evidence leads to a villain famous in Batman comics-the Joker. Artist Tim Sale creates the perfect image of an insane man who practices his insanity in the most deadly of ways. However, someone else is involved with the killings. Other villains appear-like The Riddler and Scarecrow-but more and more Batman thinks this is not a costumed killer, which makes the comic book ever more important because it moves away from just super-hero-drama.

Mysteries abound in "The Long Halloween." Who is the Holiday killer?