Batman #712

[superfangirl1]

Two-face kills Mario Falcone and confronts Gilda.










Lucky batman mask prevent bullet penetration and absorb the impact from the firearm. Two-face and Gilda leaves him knock out. Damian comes moments later to the scene to take him back to the batcave bruise with a very bad headache.

Comments

[thehefner]

As I recall from your wonderful "Rumble in Gotham" posts from back in the day, you loathed Hush. If so--and if you don't mind my asking--why then are you so fond of TLH and DV? For my money, the quality of writing is pretty much the same, but Tim Sale just sold it better than Lee.

Also, when did Harvey learn that Gilda was the killer, and in what way exactly did he cover for her?

[lucean]

Loathing is probably a pretty good word for how I feel about HUSH, especially when I had to go through it again for "Rumble in Gotham". As for TLH and DV, where I did enjoy TLH a lot more, I guess it's just a question of taste, after all a lot of people like HUSH and Loeb's run on SUPERMAN/BATMAN.

Ultimately I felt that TLH and DV were though-out stories, where there was at least an attempt on characterization and slowly build up the events. TLH especially with the focus on Roman's crumbling power, the rise of the freaks and Den't obsessive crusade. It had it's problems, Loeb always had difficulties writing the other Bat-villains properly, but at least there was an attempt, even though Loeb did cheat like crazy with that mystery. HUSH instead felt to me like a lot of noise, which was supposed to have great implications for the whole Bat-mythology and ended up having a lot of established characters jobbing like crazy for the new creation of Loeb. I guess that I felt that despite their flaws, TLH and DV were respectful of the established Batman mythology and stories written by others, while HUSH just spat on pretty much everything. That is also my biggest probelm with post-DV Loeb. He became someone who completely disregarded what other writers had written before him, yet insisted that his work to be taken as the new canon. Don't know that makes any sense.

As for your second question, at the end of TLH when they're arresting Two-Face, he asks Batman that he does realize that there were two Holiday killers before he is taken away. Gordon is puzzled by this comment, but Batman, being the world's greatest detective, points out that the date had changed to Halloween when Harvey killed Roman, making him also a Holiday killer. This even though Holiday killer was a serial killer, whose targets changed from members of the Falcone family to rivals of the Falcone family after Alberto was shot. Considering Loeb's problems in writing consistant mysteries, I don't know why he constantly tries.

[misterbug]

"Ultimately I felt that TLH and DV were though-out stories, where there was at least an attempt on characterization and slowly build up the events."

Noting, of course, that Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola did about 70% of the legwork in that regard.

[thehefner]

Don't forget the film Presumed Innocent, as the ENTIRE ENDING AND GILDA TWIST is lifted directly from that, right down to the workshop in the basement.

[thehefner]

I'm glad that you're open about the story's many, many flaws, but I think you're still being way too forgiving for a story that holds a completely unearned status as an all-time Great Batman Story. If it were a little trifle, or a more obscure gem, then yeah, I'd forgive it more. As it is, hell no, it's riddled with cliches, flaws, bad writing, empty writing, and most of its elements are lifted wholesale from Batman: Year One, Helfer's Eye of the Beholder (the introduction of Absolute TLH has an interview with David Goyer and Christopher Nolan, who attribute EotB's rooftop scene as being a Loeb invention), The Godfather, and the film Presumed Innocent. It deserves far harsher scrutiny, especially in light of Hush, where Loeb tried pulling many of the same tricks for the second or even third time. Those just made it clear to me how much they didn't work the first time around, upon closer examination.

That doesn't sound like Harvey actively covered for Gilda as much as he made a surprising statement and Batman came to an assumption as to what it meant. How could Harvey have known that, by saying there were two Holiday killers, that Batman would instantly assume that Harvey was talking about Alberto and himself for some reason that came out of nowhere in the arrest?

And Jesus, don't even get me started on how the ending doesn't make a lick of goddamn sense unless Harvey, Gilda, and/or Alberto were in contact and had planned things out together.