On Anticipation

We've all experienced it. The movie that we've been seeing previews about for months. The CD of your favorite band that has that one fantastic single they've been playing on the radio. The laptop for which you've been saving your money for months. Finally, the day arrives. You rush home and rip open the package. Sometimes, it meets all of your expectations. Sometimes, you're disappointed in the final product, and the disappointment is all the more bitter because of how much emotional investment you had in the source of your disappointment. For my kids, they looked forward to Halloween while I dreaded it to a certain extent. ("Yes, they do look cute in their outfits. They're five and two. No, we don't live in the neighborhood. We're from Hawaii. Honest.") I had a bit of anticipation recently where I was looking forward to reading a comic book that I had borrowed from the library that I had heard about for a long time. It was The Long Halloween by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale.

Don't know who Jeph Loeb or Tim Sale are? That's OK. You might be familiar with some of their work, though. Tim's artwork can be seen prominently displayed throughout the first season of the series Heroes. Every painting that Isaac did in the show was actually done by Tim Sale. Why did they use Tim's artwork? Well, one of the executive producers on Heroes was Jeph Loeb. He also was one of the writers on the series. He also worked on a couple of little series that you may be familiar with: Smallville and Lost. He also wrote both Teen Wolf movies, but we won't go in to that.

Anyway, I had heard about Batman: The Long Halloween for quite some time. It's the sequel to Frank Miller's Batman: Year One which chronicles some of the early adventures of the Dark Knight. I had gotten a large stack of graphic novels from the local library with Halloween being among them. I had determined to read it last, however, since I like to save the best for last. I had some concern that I would be let down. Would it live up to the expectations? The hype? I remember when I watched Pulp Fiction for the first time. Everyone had been talking about it for months. We listened to the soundtrack while lifting weights in school. Finally, I was able to watch the movie. I didn't like it at all. Sure, it had a couple of memorable lines, but it just wasn't a movie that I liked at all. Would Haloween be the same? No, it wouldn't.

Halloween is comics story telling at its finest. Loeb and Sale weave a dark crime noir story within Batman's Gotham City surrounding a series of murders done on holidays. They play with all of the heavy-hitters of Batman's rouges gallery - the Joker, Catwoman, Poison Ivy, Scarecrow - while we see the clues unravel and see certain characters' sanity unravel. There were several legitimate surprise twists that I didn't see coming at all. It was well worth the wait.

The thing about anticipation is that when your expectations are met instead of being shorted, it almost brings about feelings a relief instead of joy. Another one of those human nature sort of things, I guess. Maybe we just need to not allow ourselves to anticipate things so much. I'm going to start that right after I finally have enough to purchase my laptop.