Batman: The Long Halloween; by Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale

Batman: The Long Halloween
By: Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale

"Jeph Loeb has crafted a story that is unique to the characters. It's a complex murder mystery, but it's also a Batman story." - Yannick Belzil

Plot

Taking place shortly after the events of Frank Millers Batman: Year One, this novel focus around Batman’s earlier days of crime fighting in a noir-ish mystery tale. The Long Halloween focuses on the crimes of a mysterious murderer named Holiday, who kills a members of Gotham City’s mobsters and corrupt officials on major holidays. The Caped Crusader works with district attorney, Harvey Dent, and GCPD captain, James Gordon, to solve this mystery. While stopping this crime, Batman and the GCPD are still at war with the two most powerful families in Gotham, Falcone and Maroni. As there are speculations and most likely theories, the true identity of the killer is still a mystery today.

What was your rationale? For whom is this text appropriate?

This graphic novel has 13 issues within it, a short read. The Long Halloween is regarded as one of the best Batman comics to date for its dense story, realistic situations and characters, and a captivating mystery that leave readers stumped. I chose this text mainly because it is a page turner. When I first read it as a kid, I never wanted to put it down. Graphic novels importance is the main reason for why this text is appropriate. Graphic novels are great for visual learners and a great way to read between the lines. For visual learners, this text gives them additional visual on what the they are perceiving. The visuals and clear dialogue tells a story that is complicated and also easy to understand. These visuals in this text are more appropriate to teach since we can see them compared to a normal text. Teaching around visuals can be focused around the presence of Batman and the duality of black and white.

Teaching Ideas

Teachings from this graphic novel center around the theme of duality of man. The most recurrent theme in the book is that of the duality of man—the idea that people are split between their good and evil urges. The most obvious example of this theme is Harvey Dent. Throughout the book, Dent struggles with enforcing the law without breaking the law himself and becoming his true self. When Dent helps Batman burn down a warehouse full of Carmine "The Roman" Falcone's money, Dent is tempted to steal some of the money for himself. Does he have the right to take the money? More specific teaching ideas are...
  1. How has the death of Bruce Wayne's parents affected his life? In what way could his dual personality be connected to the death of his parents?
  2. Are these Batman villains pure evil or do they suffer from mental disorders?
  3. How does Loeb blur the lines between good and evil (black and white)? What does this express about human behavior in general?\
  4. Choose one of the following characters and discuss their motives and the evidence that suggest they are the Holiday killer.

  • Harvey Dent
  • Gilda Dent
  • Alberto Falcone

What are the potential issues that may arise from using this text?

As awesome as this comic is, there are mature aspects in it. Blood, guns, and language are a common occurrence in this text. Being a graphic novel, you get to actually see the blood and guns. This is a downside of a graphic novel. To be safe, I would most likely have the parents or guardian sign a permission sheet  for their son or daughter to read this graphic novel.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Read It, But I Don't Get It

Teaching students how to read is probably one of the most challenging aspects of teaching. They are all challenging do not get me wrong, but this is a big one. Teaching how to pronounce words and sound them out is one thing, teaching them to understand the context of the reading and analyze the literature is a different thing. As students progresses in school, reading literature becomes more difficult. Using tools to help students read and understand it is the job of an educator, and we should use all the strategies that we can find. To teach students how to read literature and understand the context, you must know strategies. In chapter 9, “What's the Plan?”, strategies of how to read are available with examples following them. A strategy I found most useful is “stopping the readings”. That is right, stopping the reading. A good reader stops when they do not know something or if they do know something. Good readers use the information that they know to help them understand they...
Read more

Social Justice; a Community in the Classroom

I read an online article called "Introduction: Creating Classroom for Equity and Social Justice". A short read, yet what I found most interesting was that this articles main point was to change the minds of teachers to rethink the way they teach. This article defined social justice is justice in terms of distributing opportunities and privileges. Social justice is for the people as it includes "the lives of all those in our society, especially the marginalized and dominated" (1). Basically, social justice is creating a working community in the classroom. A social justice classroom offers more to the students rather than a traditional classroom. A traditional classroom leaves very little room for students to incorporate their own thinking, involvement, and initiative. A social justice based classroom would give students the opportunity for their own thinking and challenge knowledge, such as questioning reading for example. That is not all what happens when we ...
Read more