Dark Victory and Something Extra

Dark Victory, the not-quite-as-successful and not-quite-as-good sequel to The Long Halloween, was released in late 1999-early 2000.  Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale continued their take on the early years of The Dark Knight’s career in this direct continuation of the earlier work.

Cover to the Dark Victory Absolute Edition

Taking place about nine months after Harvey “Two-Face” Dent killed Carmine Falcone in the climax of The Long Halloween, Dark Victory depicts a “copycat killer” continuing the work of the “Holiday Killer” from the previous book.  This time around, the killer targets people from Harvey Dent’s past (police officers, judges, city officials, etc.) rather than Mafioso, however, the murders still take place on holidays throughout the 16 months (early August of one year to Thanksgiving of the next year) that the story takes place.  The killer, dubbed the Hangman Killer for his use of the children’s game “hangman” when leaving notes behind at the scene of the crime, is ultimately revealed to be Sofia Gigante, daughter of Carmine Falcone.  Her motivation was to exact revenge upon Harvey Dent for his murder of her father.

Sofia Gigante AKA The Hangman Killer

As I mentioned, Dark Victory is not quite as good as Loeb and Sale’s earlier work on Batman, but it does have its cool points.  For example, the inclusion of Police Chief O’Hara, a character from the 1960’s television show.  Unfortunately, Chief O’Hara was one of the victims of the Hangman Killer.

Chief O'Hara in Dark Victory

His Batman (1966) counterpart

Loeb and Sale also released a “companion piece” to Dark Victory starring Catwoman.  Titled Catwoman: When in Rome, the four-issue mini-series details Selina Kyle’s journey to Italy to seek out the truth behind her link to the Falcone Family.  With her travel companion, Edward Nygma (The Riddler), it serves as a good comedic break from the darkness that is the rest of the main series.  It is never fully revealed, but the general gist is that Selina is Carmine Falcone’s daughter.

Cover to the Catwoman: When in Rome trade paperback

Ultimately, Two-Face has the last laugh over the Falcone Family as it is revealed that he is in possession of Carmine’s body.

I keep wanting to make a joke about "ice pops" and Carmine being the "pop" of the killer of this story... I got nothin'.

What makes this story so important to me can be summed up in one word: Robin.  Dark Victory serves as a re-telling of the origin of Dick Grayson as the Boy Wonder.  Early in the story, Bruce Wayne attends the circus in Gotham City.  As punishment for the circus owner not paying protection money to the mafia, the ropes used by the star attraction, trapeze artists known as The Flying Graysons, are burned (using the same acid used to disfigure Harvey Dent) causing the parents of young Dick Grayson to fall to their deaths.  Bruce Wayne takes Grayson into his home and become his guardian.  Filled with rage, Grayson wishes to hunt down the man that is responsible for his parents’ death, a mafia enforcer named Tony Zucco.  This plotline plays out in parallel to the main plot of discerning the identity of the Hangman Killer and, in the process, Grayson is instrumental in helping Batman (who had revealed himself as Bruce Wayne) in breaking the case.

The Dynamic Duo

Without Batman’s consent and with Alfred’s help, Grayson modifies his Flying Grayson costume into something more befitting a crime-fighter.  In the final battle with Two-Face and The Joker, Grayson, now calling himself “Robin” comes to The Dark Knight’s aid.

"What is that you are wearing?"

Dark Victory won’t ever make a Top Ten List of mine.  And that is mainly due to its reliance on the mythos set up in The Long Halloween.  It is a sequel and reads just like it; without having read the original work, the sequel falls short.  That said, it is still a great story to introduce Batman’s first sidekick and does a nice job of wrapping up the plotlines of the Falcone Family and Two-Face.

In an additional, completely not related item, Batman vs. Superman director Zack Snyder originally teased the reveal of an image of the new Batmobile to be used in the 2016 film.  When the picture was released via Twitter yesterday, it turned out to be something so much more amazing.

 

THAT is Batman

Now, filmmaker Kevin Smith said of the new Batsuit a few months ago:

“He (director Zack Snyder) pulls me to the side, he pulls out his iPhone as if it was going to be ‘Look at this picture of my kids,’ and he showed me something that, I’m  not kidding, I went glassy-eyed, and not because I was baked, absolutely glassy-eyed, and I went weak in the knees” Smith said. “It made me happy in such a way that nothing that I’m not involved in has made me feel in a long time. I saw…the batman costume. More than that, I saw a picture of him (Ben Affleck) in the costume.”

Those words have had me more excited to see the new Batsuit than almost anything else.  Knowing how much of a Bat-Fan Kevin is, I knew he would know what he is talking about.  Now that I’ve seen it, I have to say I agree to the fullest extent.  It has short ears similar to that of artist Jim Lee’s design in the Hush series, a Bat-symbol reminiscent of that in The Dark Knight Returns, but best of all, IT’S GREY!  I hate all-black Batsuits, so this is welcome news.  Hopefully this is just the first in a series of great news items for the upcoming Batman vs. Superman (that’s not really going to be the title, is it?) film.

Thanks for reading!

-Josh

Sources: excerpts from primary source interviews; Wikipedia

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