My fascination for the Batman started ages ago. Over these years I’ve always carefully considered authors and works. To my great satisfaction.
My most recently consumed work is Batman: Haunted Knight, by the great Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, magically supervised by (the late) Archie Goodwin.
3 Halloween tales of the Dark Knight:
In Fears (1) Scarecrow tries to exploit the fears of the caped crusader (a huge flock of… crows?) getting the bat to be vulnerable… a little anyway. In Madness (2) the Batman avenges the damage to his childhood memories by the Mad Hatter. The Ghosts (3) of foes and his past (Year One!) appear after an encounter with Penguin (and bad shrimps?) to make our tired warrior -fascinatingly- show a softer side.
I got to know (and appreciate) Loeb with the 2-part Hush story, and the follow-up to this Haunted Knight, The Long Halloween.
What makes Loeb so good is not that he tries to re-invent the Batman. He rather uses Frank Miller’s re-inventions but combines it with a ‘back to the roots’ angle of superclass detective. As such he portrays the Batman with his classical opponents in superior and exciting tales of (murder) mystery.
