DC Kills Two-Face in New Batman: The Long Halloween Comic

DC has just killed off one of Batman 's biggest villains - or have they? This week marks the debut of the new limited series Batman: The Long Halloween - The Last Halloween , the third and final chapter in the saga of Batman's early years, and the string of serial killings that pulled him, Gotham's mob families, and the rising order of masked supervillains into years of investigation and conflict. Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's preceding stories Batman: The Long Halloween and Batman: Dark Victory left a lot of unresolved conflicts on the table - some of those grievances have now led to murderous intentions in The Last Halloween!

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW

Batman: The Long Halloween - The Last Halloween #1 (by Jeph Loeb and artist Eduardo Risso) finds Batman and Robin (Dick Grayson) caught up in a new web of attempted murders on Halloween night. Catwoman is shot by an unseen assassin while fleeing Carmine Falcone's penthouse (with the Dynamic Duo in pursuit); Commissioner Jim Gordon has his son James abducted from right under his nose, while he and his wife are out taking the boy Trick-or-Treating. Even the bad guys get hit: Two-Face and his bodyguard Solomon Grundy are attacked in their secret lair in the sewers, by a trio of gun-toting assailants all wearing clown masks. Two-Face takes two bullets to the abdomen and forehead from a .22 pistol with a duct-taped handle - the same weapon used by the infamous Holiday Killer.

The head clown unmasks himself (though we don't get to see his face), and announces that he's there to speak with Harvey Dent's wife Gilda - one of the killers who used the Holiday Killer persona during the Long Halloween. This new clown mask killer clearly knows Gilda's secret and was willing to go through her husband to confront her.

Is Two-Face REALLY Dead?

Eduardo Risso's artwork makes it abundantly clear that Two-Face takes one of those bullets right in the Harvey Dent half of his skull, and he looks pretty dead in Gilda's arms. However, this is Two-Face we're talking about, and the timeline of this entire Long Halloween Trilogy kind of demands we see him live on to become one of Batman's biggest foes.

This "shocking death" could be another classic comic book misdirect in several ways. A .22 pistol is low enough caliber that Two-Face could survive a shot to the skull from one. The villain already survived a gunshot from The Joker and a long fall, so two gunshots may be a cakewalk in comparison.

The other possibility is that Two-Face's shooting serves a narrative purpose. Perhaps The Last Halloween will reveal that what is left of "Harvey Dent" just died with that gunshot wound to the normal side of his head; when he awakens, "Two-Face" may be all that's left.

Batman: The Long Halloween - The Last Halloween #1 is now on sale at DC.