Here are cover scans and issue summaries for the three Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween specials by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, which were published together in TPB form as Haunted Knight.
CHOICES
(Note: This issue was originally published as "Choices" but was retitled "Fears" for the Haunted Knight TPB. Also, this special was originally conceived of as a miniseries. Therefore, it is eighty pages total and divided into three sections, whereas Madness and Ghosts are only forty-eight pages each.)
Part I: Jonathan Crane, a.k.a. The Scarecrow, is loose in Gotham City on the first night of the Halloween weekend. In an attempt to apprehend him, Batman breaks up a meeting of goons and shakes them down for info. The Scarecrow has been blowing up electrical relay stations and then looting the areas without power. Batman learns from the goons where Crane's next target is, and catches him there in the act. Batman apprehends the Scarecrow just as the police arrive.
Soon Batman is gone, off to Wayne Manor to attend a charity costume ball as Bruce Wayne. While at the party Bruce dances with a beautiful woman who is unknown to him. Her two dalmatians almost sniff out the entrance to the Batcave behind the grandfather clock before Alfred arrives bearing news that the Batsignal is in the sky. Bruce bids a hasty farewell to the strange woman and goes out on patrol.
While Bruce Wayne was occupied, the Scarecrow used his infamous fear toxin on his guards and has escaped to wreak more havoc on Gotham. He succeeded in destroying another relay station, and Batman is out trying to find him and control the looting. When Bruce returns back to the manor empty-handed, he collapses into bed, asking Alfred to bring him some food. But instead the strange woman appears with his breakfast, revealing that her name is Jillian Maxwell. And Bruce cannot help but be intrigued.
Part II: Looking over Gotham on the following night, Batman is pondering the events of the past day, wondering what made him choose to leave Jillian's side to go on patrol. Suddenly he is attacked by a group of crows under the influence of Jonathan Crane's fear toxin. As they drag him down from the rooftops, his mind wanders again to his time spent with Jillian that very morning.
Flashback to the morning, which picks up where part I left off with Jillian bringing Bruce breakfast in bed. After adjourning to the patio, they converse for a while, and Jillian and Alfred exchange lines from an old movie about being bitten by a dead bee. They go for a drive, then shopping, and finally for a horse and buggy ride in the park. While riding, Jillian asks Bruce, "For a man who could have anything he wanted, why do I have the sense that you rarely get what you want?" The answer comes when the two are held up by a gun-toting Seattle Mariners fan. Jillian hands over her purse saying to Bruce, "It's only money. It's not worth your life," a comment Bruce gives thought to. Later upon, reaching the mansion again, Bruce bids Jillian adieu so he can "go to work," although he contemplates letting it slide when he hears the police captured the mugger on their own. But the Scarecrow is on the loose, and nothing can deter Batman from his task.
Back in the present, one of the crows brings the Scarecrow a scrap of Batman's costume. However, Batman has tracked the crow directly to Crane's lair. Crane flees into a hedge maze, and when Batman gives pursuit, he is scratched by thorns in the walls of the maze, thorns coated with the Scarecrow's fear toxin. Meanwhile, Alfred finds Jillian snooping around the manor and begins to suspect there is more to her than meets the eye.
Part III: Alfred, having decided to investigate Jillian, is using the computer in the Batcave to accomplish this task when the Batmobile pulls in. Alfred finds Batman in the car, passed out. While Alfred attends to his wounds and tries to give him an antidote, Bruce has a fever dream in which he chases Crane into a church and runs through a maze to the altar. There Jillian is waiting for him, and the Scarecrow presides over a wedding ceremony of sorts. But at the end of the ceremony Jillian asks him to unmask and he cannot. Bruce comes out of the dream to find Alfred there, trying to tel him something about Jillian. Jillian, however, interrupts and Bruce tells her he has chosen to take some time off and would like it if she would go on a trip with him.
On the roof of the police department, Captain James Gordon switches off the ignored Bat-signal, worried because he needed Batman's help to stop the Scarecrow from following through with his NEW plan, to kidnap a city official until he gets a ransom. As Gordon leaves the roof, the Scarecrow appears and makes him the first kidnapping victim. Back at Wayne Manor, Bruce asks Alfred to pack a steamer for his trip, but Alfred instead gives Bruce a disk containing his findings on Jillian. The disk has to wait, however, as Bruce looks out the window to see the Bat-signal has been appropriated by the Scarecrow. The entire signal has been recolored orange, and two blotches have been painted over the bat to transform it into the infamous jack-o-lantern face. Batman springs into action, tracking the Scarecrow to the face of a clock tower, where Jim Gordon is precariously perched. Batman rescues Gordon just in time, and then triumphs over Crane inside the clock's workings.
The story wraps to a close when Jillian Maxwell arrives at Wayne Manor, ready for her trip. She is stopped at the door by Alfred, who reveals that he knows about her past. It seems that "Jillian" is an alias, one of many she has used to marry rich husbands just before they die under mysterious circumstances. She slaps Alfred and leaves angrily. Bruce, first in the cave then underneath his parents' portrait, contemplates the desire he expressed through his relationship with Jillian for a normal life. In the end he chooses to stay in Gotham, fighting crime as the Batman, a life he finds fulfilling.
Weeks later, "Jillian Maxwell" is sitting on a beach in Brazil, planning to marry again. She will kill her new husband with a car bomb and blame it on drug lords. But then she receives a note: the word "Confess" is written on a piece of paper, with a Bat symbol drawn around it. And she knows she has no choice but to comply.
Thoughts: Choices is a much better name for this story, as it directly deals thematically with Bruce's choice between a normal life and his life of crimefighting. But of course Fears ties into the villain of the special, the Scarecrow, so that makes some sense as well.
Jeph told the story of this special's origins in his Comicology interview. It was originally intended to be a three-part arc in the regular issues of Legends of the Dark Knight. But because issue 50's story with the Joker was already scheduled for an October release, Archie Goodwin decided to release the whole story at once as a one-shot so it could still be released around Halloween.
The story is very much more similar in style to Jeph and Tim's work on the Challengers miniseries, esp. Tim's artistic style. But hints of what's to come in future issues (the repetition of key phrases, Crane being characterized as a nursery-rhyme spouting loon) foreshadow their later work on the individual specials and TLH itself.
There are some famous costumes in the crowd of the party in part I. These include Madman, Bone, Cerebus, Milk and Cheese, Hawkeye of the Avengers, Hobbes of Calvin and Hobbes, the Tin Man of Wizard of Oz, the Clockwork Man of Return to Oz, Peter Pan and Captain Hook, Snow White and the evil witch bearing an apple, Waldo of Where's Waldo, Bozo the Clown, and whoever was #51 of the LA Rams at the time... I'm sure there are more but I just don't recognize them. If you can name more, e-mail me and fill me in.
And while you're at it, if you can tell me more about the "dead bee" quotes, I'd appreciate that too.
You might be wondering when this story takes place chronologically. Because Gordon is a captain, it MUST be before Dark Victory. But Bruce's Halloweens were rather full between Year One and Dark Victory. My thoughts are that this story takes place on the Halloween depicted in DV issue one. In fact, I suspect that Bats and Catwoman talk about Sofia's plans at Arkham just before this special begins, and just after the next to last page in Choices, Bruce takes off again to visit Harvey at Arkham. The only problem with this theory is that it means that Batman had ONE BUSY NIGHT that night... but that's typical of his nights, isn't it? Plus it makes sense that Selina Kyle is absent here, since they were on the outs as DV begins, and it adds poignancy to Bruce's choice to remain Batman if you know that he's deciding this in the face of losing his allies (Harvey turning to Two-Face in the end of TLH) and that the next year for him will be an especially rough one, as detailed in DV. But at the end of DV things are looking up, so obviously it was the right choice.
MADNESS
As Jim Gordon and his newly adopted daughter Babs are on their way home via the subway on Halloween, Batman bursts onto the scene chasing Jervis Tetch, a.k.a. the Mad Hatter, whom he believes is responsible for the recent rash of kid runaways disappearing from Gotham Central Park. Batman is off his game, thinking about how Alice in Wonderland reminds him of his childhood, and Tetch takes advantage of the opportunity. He draws a gun from out of his hat and shoots Batman, grazing his temple and knocking him unconscious. While out, Batman dreams about his childhood, how his mother used to read to him from Alice. In fact, the morning of her murder Bruce's mother read to him from the book, and because they bonded, Bruce asked her to wear her pearls and make it a "special" night. Later, awake yet still groggy, Batman wanders through the city and ends up at the sight of his parents' murder: Crime Alley.
Meanwhile, Babs has been fighting with Jim about what she perceives as he lack of freedom, and what he views as protecting her from the gritty world he knows all too well. She storms off to her room, but later when Jim goes there to make peace, he finds she has run away. At the same time Babs is in the park on her own and afraid when several men in shull masks attack her, but she is saved when gunfire scares them off. The source of the gunfire: Jervis Tetch.
Part II: We find Barbara Gordon now joined by several other runaways and dressed as various characters from Alice in Wonderland, with Babs herself as Alice. The Mad Hatter is reenacting the tea party, but Babs doesn't like tea. When Jervis angirly smashes the teapot, the "March Hare" makes a break for it. He is eventually found by Jim Gordon, who is on patrol in search of his missing daughter.
Meanwhile Batman again wakes from unconsciousness to discover he is having his wounds treated by Dr. Leslie Thompkins. This prompts another flashback, this time to the days after his parents' murder. Dr. Thompkins tried to read Alice to him, but he wouldn't have it. Later that night he overheard Leslie and Alfred discussing how they hope to get him to eventually be able to be reminded of his parents without the pain. They determine the only way to do that is through showing their support for him so he doesn't withdraw into himself. Batman comes out of his remembrances and goes back out to look for Tetch, thanking Dr. Thompkins as he goes for ALL her help.
Batman finds Jim Gordon at the site of Jervis's hideout, an old abandoned house that previously was owned by two rich brothers who kidnapped a child out of boredom yet murdered the child after the ransom was paid for fear of being identified. Batman convinces Gordon to wait and goes in himself. He takes out a few goons, only to find the Mad Hatter is using a string of pearls to strangle Babs. Gordon bursts in through a window and frees his daughter. Tetch flees but is caught by Batman, who knocks Tetch out by knocking his head into a looking glass. The other runaways are taken to Dr. Thompkins for help, Jim and Babs reconcile, and Bruce goes home where he curls up with a good book: Alice in Wonderland.
Thoughts: Of course the revelations in the flashback are very poignant to Bruce's life. Essentially he is responsible for his parents' murder, in that he asked his mother to wear the pearls that caught the attention of their killer. But of course thinking that way only leads to (what else?) madness, and it is through the love of Dr. Thompkins that he is able to stop blaming himself. Thus Tetch's appearance and criminal behavior ceases to "taint" his memory of his mother, evident in his ignoring the pearls being used as a weapon by Tetch in the final fight scene and in his ability to reclaim Alice in Wonderland as a happy bit of reading.
And for the Gordons this is also a very poignant episode, showing how a young Babs did not get along with her adoptive father Jim when their living situations were new. Of course by the end of the story they have become much closer and are well on their way to becoming the close father and daughter we see in the comics today. This is best symbolized in Babs's inner monologue, where she refers to Jim on page one as "Uncle Jim;" by the final page, she calls him "Daddy."
Chronologically this issue is a bit of a problem. Babs is around, and she isn't in TLH or DV, so this story must take place after DV. It could easily then take place one year after the Halloween in DV #13, and Gordon's wife Barbara would have to leave him for good shortly after that. The only problem: Jim Jr. is a baby in this story, whereas in DV he is old enough to talk on the phone and draw pictures for his father. But it can't be reconciled any other way, so let's just sweep that under the rug and remember that it's just a comic book, OK?
GHOSTS
On the night before Halloween, Bruce Wayne is attending a charity gala and meets an old friend named Lucius Fox. As Bruce and Lucius begin to talk, the party is crashed by Oswald Cobblepot, a.k.a the Penguin. The Penguin opens fire into the crowd, and Bruce draws his attention, getting shot in the chest and falling out a window. This provides a convenient way for Bruce to change into Batman and enter the foray just as the Penguin is stealing a prized medallion from Lucius. Cobblepot, rather than stay and get beaten, jumps out the window. But Batman hooks his Batarang around the Penguin's leg, and before the Penguin can fly away with his stolen jet pack, Batman catches him.
Bruce returns home to Wayne Manor tired, and as he goes to open the front door he sees his father floating before him for just a moment. Chalking it up to his weariness, he enters and collpases into bed, but he is prevented from sleep when his father's ghost appears in chains. The spirit warns him that he is too obsessed with his quest as Batman then disappears. Bruce returns to sleep but is awakened at one a.m. by a spirit in the form of Poison Ivy. She takes him back to a Halloween he had as a child, one in which his father was too obsessed with his work to take him trick or treating. Then she takes him to Paris, where a young Lucius Fox is being mugged by men in jack-o-lantern masks. A young Bruce Wayne appears to save him from losing that medallion, but when Lucius offers him a business opportunity, Bruce is too obsessed with his quest to take it.
Returned to the manor, Bruce is awakened as the clock strikes two by laughter which he identifies as the Joker's. But it is only another spirit, one who shows him what the children of his neighborhood think of him. In his obsession as Batman, he has let Wayne Manor become to these children somewhat of a haunted house. The Joker disappears and is replaced by a cloaked figure with skeleton hands. This spirit takes him past a ruined Wayne Manor to the cemetery in which his parents are buried. An ancient Alfred visits a small grave beside that of his parents, and after Alfred departs a flash of lightning revelas to Bruce that this unkempt grave is his own. The cloak is pulled back on the final spirit to reveal a skeleton wearing a Bat-cowl, and Bruce askes the spirit if it's too late to change these events.
At that moment Alfred wakes Bruce, and it was all a dream. It is still just the morning of Halloween, so Bruce goes about making some changes. He meets that day with Lucius Fox to give him back his medallion, which Lucius revealed came from his father, and Bruce and Lucius agree to work together to start the Wayne Foundation. That night he leaves his cape in the closet, turns on all the lights in the manor, and greets trick-or-treaters merrily at the front door.
Thoughts: Do I even need to tell you where the inspiration for this story cam from?
Tim Sale's depiction of Thomas Wayne here is much more gaunt than his depiction in the pages of TLH, but I attribute that to this version being a ghost.
As with the previous specials (in fact even more so with this special than the others), character is emphasized over plot. The first special featured Bruce coming to terms with his crime-fighting role, and the second focused on Bruce learning to think of his parents not just in terms of the tragedy of their deaths but the good times, the happy memories, as well. Here the special seems to take things full circle, with Bruce realizing that he is in danger of losing himself in obsession if he focuses too much on being Batman. (Because this special has more to do with character than actual plot, it bares more resemblance to Jeph and Tim's work on Superman For All Seasons than the mysteries TLH and DV.)
It's interesting then, with that thematic difference from the first special, that chronologically Ghosts must come BEFORE Choices. Here Lucius Fox and Bruce Wayne decide to begin the Wayne Foundation, and the costume party in part I of Choices is being held as a Wayne Foundation charity function. But Gordon's a captain here too, so it's gotta be between Year One and Dark Victory. My theory: Bruce stuck around giving out candy to trick-or-treaters for a while but went out LATER in the evening to police headquarters. (Really if you think about it, how late does trick-or-treating last? Plenty of time is left for Bats to go to police headquarters.) There he found out that Johnny Viti had been murdered, as depicted in TLH issue one. Means yet another busy Halloween night for Bats, but again it makes it poignant that throughout TLH he slips further and further away from the decision here: to NOT obsess about Batman so much.
