The Long Halloween – Jeph Loeb

This town isn’t big enough for two homicidal maniacs. – Joker

Yet, turning every page of The Long Halloween, one wonders how can there be two sane people in Gotham City. Not because the pages are filled with almost every single villain (Joker, Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, Mad Hatter, The Riddler, Calendar Man) in the Batman canon. And not because the depressing atmosphere of Gotham seems to seep out of the pages to engulf the reader. Sanity can seem precious because, The Long Halloween shows in excruciating detail and with great humanity the journey into insanity and it becomes difficult not to identify with that journey.

On the surface, The Long Halloween is a classic whodunit mystery. Someone starts murdering people – underworld criminals – across Gotham. Only, the murders happen on holiday’s and the killer is dubbed, ingeniously, Holiday. No one knows who this Holiday is, but everyone seems intent on finding him/her: criminals to see who is stealing their thunder, Carmine Falcone to extract revenge for the death of this men and relatives, Batman to stop future killings, and Jim Gordon and Harvey Dent to uphold the spirit of the law. And this search and the elusive nature of Holiday takes it’s toll – psychological and physical – on all.

But maybe on none more than District Attorney Harvey Dent – the white knight of Gotham. One who carries the mantle of the cleaning up the mess – in a clean way. With every page turned, this mantle becomes a little heavier and it’s gloss a little duller. Dent needs help, but has no one to ask it from. He needs support, but his family life is crumbling faster than his psyche. Chasing ghosts in the back alleys of Gotham, he loses himself in the shadows. He becomes Two Face; the court mishap just bringing him out in open.

In stark contrast to Dent is Batman, sharing the same obsession against crime and fighting the very same demons as Dent. But with no obligation other than his goal, he can fight without his hands tied unlike Dent. the shadows of Gotham’s streets do not scare for he is no more than a shadow himself. The Long Halloween, in the end justifies Batman’s hood and cape, for without it Gotham would lose it’s Dark Knight much like it’s White Knight and add another homicidal maniac in it’s ranks.

Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi

Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel is one of the rare instances where mostly through a Manichean narrative of real events, the author is able to create a richly layered story which is at once an honest account of growing up, an unflinching look at surviving under an oppressive regime and a passionate call for freedom of the individual in the truest sense. It is also a critique of  people and ideas that hold onto our imaginations and creep into our conversations, probably unjustifiably so, long after they are gone or are valid.

Persepolis is an autobiography of sorts, as Satrapi describes in two books, her life from the time Iran came under the Islamic regime in late 70’s when she was in junior school to mid 90’s when she left for France to train as an artist. In between, she experienced the Islamic revolution in Iran and the loss of freedom (especially for women) that came with it, the horror of the Iran-Iraq war, the xenophobic attitude of a different culture as she moved to Vienna to evade the war, the duplicity of everyday life back in her country and an early unsuccessful marriage. All of this is the perfect recipe for a heavy commercial tearjerker, but the greatest achievement of Satrapi is that she conveys all this in a tone that is matter of fact and light without ridiculing the seriousness of the matter at hand.

An artist by profession, the power of pictures also is not lost on her. The graphics are simple caricatures in black and white without the detailed penciling and coloring associated with most modern graphic novels. To a large extent, these stark images enforce the simplicity in her narrative without the burden of words. And in certain frames the black and white figures are imbued with a gamut of emotions that are beyond verbal language.

One could contradict Satrapi’s version of events because she was and remains a member of the elite in Iran. The great grand daughter of the Shah of Iran, she experienced things that ordinary Iranians probably can’t dream about. But such politicking does not take anything away from the sheer beauty of this work or her skill as a storyteller par excellence.

Note: This has now been made into an acclaimed animated film of the same name that is worth watching on it’s own. But then I always prefer the book to the movie.