What are some good batman detective mysteries. No end of the world or Gotham in ruins stories...

I thought Gilda killed mobsters so that Harvey would have an easier job as DA and he could be around more to raise their soon coming baby

City of crime by David Lapham. Much better than Loeb's Batman.

No way she could've been Holiday. I'm think it was Alberto all along, but with Harvey just chipping in at the end. Gilda is deluded and already shaky mentally speaking, finding out her husband is a crazy man just pushes her over the edge and she pretends she does because she wants a fucking baby.

Stop and think about it. How exactly is killing a couple of mobsters, none of whom were actually that big, going to reduce a DA's workload? On the contrary, all it did was increase it since he now had to work on finding a serial killer, Gilda herself was actually lamenting it.
Then you run into a bunch of other logical problems
>How did a suburban housewife know how to find any of these mobsters? Not even Batman or Dent knew where the Irish were.
>Where did a suburban housewife get the untraceable guns? Especially after her house burned down.
>How did she know how to get into all the places she went to?
>How did she know how to shoot so well?
>How did Gilda kill anyone on Thanksgiving when she was in the hospital under supervision and a month later she was still in a wheelchair?
>Why would Alberto fake his death by making it look like the Holiday killer did it if he had no way of knowing that the Holiday killer wouldn't kill someone else?
>How did 3 people with no knowledge of the others coordinate all the murders so that there was never any overlap?
>How could Gilda and Alberto both independtly come up with the same hat and disguise while acting as Holiday?
>Other than killing Falcone, what murders could Harvey possibly have committed?
>Why did at the very end Gilda say that Harvey shot Alberto when she knew that Alberto faked his death?
>How would the Calendar Man know that Gilda did it? He had to have been lying, him saying "or she" was him being cryptic.
>Why did Gilda pick the holiday theme in the first place? Pretty big coincidence that Alberto happened to have been born on a holiday.

The only logical explanation is that Alberto was the only Holiday, aside from Harvey committing the final murder. It's also probable that Carmine was helping Alberto all along.

Loeb in general completely sucks at writing mysteries.

You post this every thread about the Long Halloween.
Not that I'm complaining. Its kinda funny.

Is there any point at all to Holiday in the story of the Long Halloween? I get that he drives the plot along, but the Calender man already exists and the book stresses this. Why have someone with an identical M.O to an existing bad guy, why not something new? Or just make the story tell the origins of two face and calender man.

THis is the one that was supposed to be drawn by Sienkiewicz, no?

Brubaker's "Man of Wood" story which was collected in "The Man Who Laughes" trade.

Basically, it's Jim Gordon going back to a cold case, when a new victim of a serial killer back during when Alan Scott was the hero in Gotham.

So you have Alan, Bruce, and Gordon trying to piece together the identity of the killer. Has a nice baw moment between Alan and Bruce at the end.

If by "every thread" you mean "one thread a couple of days ago, which is the only other Long Halloween thread I've ever posted on in Cred Forums", then yes. I just didn't feel like writing every point out again and figured I'd just repost what I already wrote since it covered everything.

Where does Dents predilection for all things binary come from in the Long Halloween? I picked it up a few weeks ago after seeing it on a few lists of "must read Batman graphic novels" and I'd been disappointing by Death of the Family.

To my knowledge, and I admit I may have missed it, but we just get a few off the collar remarks from Dent that are meant to lead us to believe he might be Holiday (couldn't have happened to a nicer guy etc). We learn that his marriage is suffering tremendously over this year due to his obsession with bringing in Holiday, but there's no binary indication that I could see beyond the heavy shading and use of shadows. So he gets acid thrown on his face, gets dunked by Solomon Grundy and suddenly everything is Yes/No, Justice/Injustice/ Courts/Vigilantism.

I appreciate the tone of the story tremendously, it felt very film noir, but certain story elements felt superfluous. Why is Poison Ivy involved, her manipulations just show that the Roman isn't above working with superhumans (despite not liking it), and that has no pay off. Bruce allowing his business to launder dirty money doesn't get any resolution, he just says "that'll be a problem later".

I'm pretty sure she killed Johnny Viti then after she got blown up Alberto started to copy cat the killings and Gilda didn't continue to kill mobsters because someone else was doing it

Alberto was the only Holiday killer, no matter what Gilda says. She clearly had a mental breakdown. Heck, it's even made clearer in Daredevil mini that Loeb/Sale did which Gilda shows up under an alias (which she even admits to), but she basically describes the events of the Long Halloween and Two-Face to Matt.

The Devil's Advocate might be another story you might want to look into. It's basically the Joker being convicted of a crime that the usual insanity plea (which usually ships him to Arkham) doesn't work. So he's put on death row, and Batman has to figure out who the hell A.) Framed the Joker. B.) try and convince this is the one crime he didn't commit.

Batman: Europa is probably the most recent "good" Detective story that has Bruce and the Joker trying to piece together who poisoned them both.

Batman: Year Two is basically a detective story, but it sucks.

There were a few Batman Confidential stories that had a detective side to them (King Tut and Wraith returns) being two that come to mind.

> Johnny Viti is relaxing in his bathtube at his safehouse when the door opens. He doesn't have a WTF? look at a housewife from Gotham burbs in a trenchcoat.

Johnny knew his killer. If it was Gilda he would said something or shown some reaction to this woman suddenly bursting into the bathroom. Instead, just looking like, "Oh it's you. Fuck." Then gets two in the head.

Not to mention at this point of the story, Johnny became a liability to the Roman. Everyone who died in the story was either a liability to either the Roman or Alberto.

0 of the Holiday victims were a liability to Harvey Dent.

How would a normal housewife even have the skills needed to break into and then leave a mobster's house undetected?

...

Not to mention her final kill (the Roman's bodyguard) on Christmas Eve makes 0 sense.
> Joker shows up at their house. Harvey makes sure she doesn't see him, yet she does.
> lets her husband be brutally beaten by the Joker.
> leaves said beaten husband lying on the ground so she can tail the Joker's location, which happens to be Roman's penthouse.
> waits outside when the Joker leaves then puts two in the head of the Roman's bodyguard, who had failed to protect his boss twice before).

I think Gilda has a little of the speedforce in her to do all of that.

so that last part of it was just a crazy bitch pretending she killed people and her made up motive was giving her husband a lighter work load so that they could have a kid?

Pretty much, yeah. Her made up motive doesn't even make sense since the Holiday killings obviously increased Harvey's workload.

>The Devil's Advocate might be another story you might want to look into. It's basically the Joker being convicted of a crime that the usual insanity plea (which usually ships him to Arkham) doesn't work. So he's put on death row, and Batman has to figure out who the hell A.) Framed the Joker. B.) try and convince this is the one crime he didn't commit.
This is retarded near gay fanfiction tier shit. Batman going out of his way to save the Joker from state sponsored execution is about the dumbest Batman plot I can imagine

And in the end there are only TWO Holiday killers as Batman perfectly sums up. Alberto and Two-Face .

Two Face only killed the Roman though?

Exactly. But he killed him on Halloween with a .22 gun, just like Alberto's MO. He was the second and final Holiday killer.

Exactly. The Roman was the final victim of Holiday. It was reinforced even more when the final victim was shot in the Holiday styled shot as well. With the final Holiday standing over them.

Ah, my friend, you need the Wagner/Grant/Breyfogle 'Tec run from the late eighties/early nineties. They created a lot of quirky, interesting villains (Anarky comes from that particular run, and Cornelius Stirk, the face-changing cannibal dude but I'm not sure if he was used by any other creators) and there were only three arcs which were longer than one or two issues--the Clayface Mudpack arc, a short Penguin arc and a Catman story. Although the whole run hasn't been reprinted there is a H/C containing most of it called Legends of the Dark Knight: Norm Breyfogle. It has the Mudpack arc, a great one-off called "Ecstasy" about the drug turning this bloke bonkers (Joe Potato is in that one), a Ratcatcher story, first Ventriloquist appearance etc, etc. Highly fucking recommended. Plenty of Worlds Greatest Detective moments in there! Not sure if the collection has the Tulpa story (where Bats teams up with The Demon!) or the one with the Australian Aboriginal who comes to Gotham to retrieve a tribal artefact that was taken by murderous thieves, they're both classic little one-shots, too.
Grant and Breyfogle went on to the Batman title after their time on 'Tec but this was the Tim Drake era and I don't think the work was as good as the Detective Comics stuff. I think their first work on Batman was a Scarecrow story? That stuff is still great (there may be one or two issues in the collection I mentioned) but the 'Tec stuff is my favourite version of Bats ever and objectively one of the best. Hope this helps, I really do think you'll enjoy this stuff, OP. If you don't wanna shell out for the hardback you could probably pick up a good chunk of the run for about $20, they're not particularly rare comics (dunno about the first appearance issues, though).

>Legends of the Dark Knight: Norm Breyfogle

Better prioritize this book on my backlog!

Yeah, even though I have all of that run it'd be nice to have a hardback with (most of) it. I've heard it has a few colouring and printing issues, though (of COURSE it's been re-coloured FFS, REEEEEE), apparently some nuances of the inking are lost and there are some silly mistakes with the colouring as well. BUT it'd obviously be easier to buy that than spend time shopping around for the floppies. Such a great run, you'll be spoiled, user! I grew up with that Bats, it was the first comic I obsessively collected, really.