ANI-MOVIES, *Batman: The Long Halloween-Part 1

Taking place in the what has been labeled as the "Tomorrowverse", DC's new line of animated movies hase the Dark Knight's premiere in it as a two-part story based on the hit 90s maxi-series, Batman: The Long Halloween. Part 1 comes with a DC Showcase bonus of The Losers based on the original 60s comics and not the Vertigo remake. Both features are done in the same style recently done in Superman: Man Of Tomorrow.

The Losers short is set during World War II with an elite U.S. military team given the nickname of "The Losers" due to all their deadly missions, making them a protoype to DC's original Suicide Squad. The team gets sent to a hidden island to shut down an operation run by the Red Chinese forces who are using a time portal to harness energy from the past, but also allowing herds of dinosaurs to run loose all over the place. The opening looks like something out of a Tarentino flick, and the rest mixes in elements of Predator and Jurassic Park into an orgy of bullets and blood sure to thrill any Dino Crisis fan. Like the Sgt. Rock Showcase short, The Losers takes a standard soldier story and cranks it up to a weird war epic.

The first half of The Long Halloween takes place in modern day, but at the early part of Batman's career. Gotham City is still largely in the pocket of mafia don Carmine Falcone. On Halloween night, his nephew Johnny is mysteriously killed before he was going to testify against Falcone for D.A. Harvey Dent. Batman, Commissioner Gordon, along with Dent form a secret trinity bent on bringing down Falcone, and revealing the identity of the killer referred to as Holiday as the murderer carries on their personal quest by terminating a gang of Falcone's associates on Thanksgiving. Catwoman shows great interest in this caper too as she leads Batman to a warehouse full of the mob's hard cash. The serial killings ruffles the feathers of a certain homicidal clown as the Joker busts out of Arkham to show Gotham who is the real top dog of maniacs in town. On Christmas Eve, after Joker invades Falcone's home, Holiday arrives to assassinate one of the mob boss' bodyguards. A week later on New Year's Eve, Joker is still loose and planning on dropping off some deadly gas amongst Gotham's festivities. Batman manages to stop his nemesis, but then believes he has finally uncovered Holiday's identity. The caped crusader confronts Falcone's son Alberto as the likely suspect, but Holiday arrives to debunk that theory by shooting Alberto and escaping. The movie concludes during Alberto's funeral where Falcone' introduces Bruce Wayne to Poison Ivy.

The movie takes a hard turn from the original source material as it was actually Alberto who did the majority of killings as Holiday, leaving new viewers guessing as to where Part 2 is going to lead. It is refreshing to see Batman having to become more of a detective at the dawn of his crimefighting campaign, an element that was a major plotpoint in the recent live-action, The Batman, which was largely influenced by The Long Halloween. It was a better idea to split this story into two installments to be able to give a full narration of the rich intriguing mystery.