Gotham City is a busy place, with a lot going down each and every week. In this monthly column, Joshua Lapin-Bertone helps you stay on top of it all by letting you know what you should be paying attention to within the Bat-Family…and why.
 

I have a few horror-obsessed friends who plan their entire year around Halloween and the spooky season. I’ve often wondered if they would find themselves at home in Gotham City. Between the killer clowns, costumed characters, creepy architecture and overall dark vibes, the city feels like it’s celebrating Halloween all year round. It’s almost as if the entire city is one big haunted house.

And then there’s Batman himself. He dresses like a bat, lives in a dark mansion and his base of operations is a creepy cave. (Not to mention he once dated a vampire, even if he avoids bringing it up.)

A few years ago, I wrote about Batman’s relationship with Christmas and how it’s changed over the years. Since we’re in the spooky season, I thought it might be appropriate to give Halloween the same treatment. But when every day is full of costumed creatures and horror, how is Halloween any different for the Dark Knight?

It’s hard to talk about Bruce Wayne and Halloween without bringing up Batman: The Long Halloween, but since we’ve already written a lot about it this year, I want to use this space to spotlight some overlooked stories.

Unless I’ve missed something (and it’s possible I have), 1948’s Batman #46 appears to be the first Batman story to use Halloween as a backdrop. In it, the Dark Knight theorizes that the Joker will strike on Halloween, and sure enough, the Clown Prince soon puts a Halloween greeting card on a billboard, warning Batman about all the mischief he’s planning.

The Joker starts by dressing up as a witch and infiltrating a Halloween party thrown by Gotham’s elite. When he turns off the lights to commit a robbery, everyone assumes it’s a Halloween prank. Fortunately, Batman and Robin (who are disguised as pumpkins) are able to stop him.

What amazes me about this story is how, without even trying, it defines Batman’s relationship with Halloween in a way that still holds true today. To Batman, Halloween is a time to be more on guard. Not only does it attract Gotham’s most dangerous criminals, but the costumes and festivities make it easier for the villains to fit in. It’s the only time of the year where the Joker can walk into a society party undetected. Batman is vigilant every day, but Halloween is a time when he must be even more so.

1971’s Batman #237 is an underrated classic with some wonderfully unnerving artwork from Neal Adams and Dick Giordano. Batman tracks a mysterious killer called the Reaper and even tangles with some Nazis. Since the story is set on Halloween, there are numerous bystanders dressed up as superheroes, including Batman and Robin. The fake Robin is attacked by Nazis, and the fake Batman is murdered by them.

This shows us another side of Batman’s relationship with Halloween. His status as an icon causes people to dress up like him, but dressing up as Batman attracts criminals and can lead to deadly consequences. Bruce blames himself for the man’s death, believing that the poor guy would still be alive if he hadn’t dressed up as the Caped Crusader for Halloween.

“Three men slain, including an innocent bystander whose only fault was wearing my costume! You tell his widow…his orphans…just exactly how great I am,” Batman tells Robin. Needless to say, it’s another reason why Batman doesn’t look forward to Halloween.

By the time we reach the ’90s, we begin to get a more in depth look at Batman’s feelings surrounding Halloween. Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween Special #1 by The Long Halloween’s Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale opens with a monologue from the Dark Knight where he notes how dangerous the holiday is in Gotham.

“In Los Angeles at this time of year, everyone with a gun fires it into the air. People are killed from the falling bullets. In Cincinnati, a curfew prevents the children from trick-or-treating after dark. In Detroit, they call it the Devil’s Night. Buildings are torched. Fires sweep throughout the city unchecked. But in Gotham, all hell breaks loose.”

Interestingly, we also see Bruce Wayne throw a lavish Halloween party at his mansion. However, he notes that he’s only doing it to collect money for charity, and if he could, he wouldn’t attend at all. Considering his experiences with Halloween in the past, I don’t blame him.

There’s a lot of talk about Batman Returns being a Christmas movie, but people seem to sleep on the fact that 1995’s Batman Forever is a Halloween movie. While it doesn’t lean into the holiday as much as Returns does, the middle act of Forever takes place on Halloween, with Riddler and Two-Face disguising as trick-or-treaters to invade Wayne Manor. To Bruce, Halloween is just window dressing, and his mind is on confessing his feelings to Chase Meridian (years before she became Aquaman’s mom and an AMC spokeswoman).

A few months after the film’s release, Batman’s relationship with Halloween took an interesting turn in Batman: Ghosts, a follow-up to the earlier Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween Special. In this one-shot, Loeb and Sale give Batman the Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol treatment, but they substitute Christmas for Halloween.

Like Scrooge, Bruce is visited by three ghosts, who show him his Halloweens past, present and future. In the past, we see that even as a young boy, Halloween was not a joyous time for Bruce. We see that young Bruce spent his childhood Halloweens wishing his father would take him trick-or-treating instead of working and bemoaning the fact that he had no childhood friends to trick-or-treat with. This is a fascinating revelation, because it reveals that Bruce’s rough relationship with the holiday predates his time as Batman.

After being visited by the spirits, Bruce realizes that he’s let his Batman persona swallow him whole, leaving nothing for his family’s legacy. Realizing that there are more ways to help the city outside of being Batman, Bruce makes arrangements to use his family fortune to form the Wayne Foundation, a charity to help lift up Gotham’s needy citizens. When Halloween night arrives, he decides to let the GCPD handle things for one night. Instead, Bruce stays home and hands out candy to trick-or-treaters. What’s more, he has a smile on his face, indicating that for once, he’s finally embracing the Halloween spirit.

Perhaps the point of all this is that Halloween can be many things. Yes, it’s a time when Gotham is more dangerous, but it can also be a time for family, legacy and even fun. Halloween will always be a night when Batman has to face unimaginable horrors, but that doesn’t mean he can’t make something good out of it. It’s a complicated holiday, but Batman is getting the hang of it.

Happy Halloween, Gothamites!
 

Joshua Lapin-Bertone writes about TV, movies and comics for DC.com, is a regular contributor to the Couch Club and writes our monthly Batman column, "Gotham Gazette." Follow him on Bluesky at @joshualapinbertone and on X at @TBUJosh.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Joshua Lapin-Bertone and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.