Holiday (comics)

Holiday
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	Batman: The Long Halloween (1996-1997)
Created by	Jeph Loeb Tim Sale
In-story information
Alter ego	Either Alberto Falcone or Gilda Dent, potentially both.

Holiday or the Holiday Killer is a fictional character appearing in the Batman story The Long Halloween (1996-1997) by writer Jeph Loeb and artist Tim Sale. The character is a serial killer who kills members of Gotham City's mobsters and corrupt officials on major holidays. The true identity of the killer is never definitively revealed in the story itself; both Alberto Falcone and Gilda Dent confess to being Holiday, with Gilda claiming she committed the first three murders and that her husband Harvey took over subsequently.

Set shortly after the events of Frank Miller's Batman: Year One, The Long Halloween follows the crusade of Batman, Captain James Gordon and Harvey Dent to topple mobster Carmine Falcone's crime family. At the same time, however, a mysterious assailant begins killing mafiosi on holidays, starting with Halloween.

The killer's identity remains a mystery for most of the story, but the method is always the same. The killer's weapon is a .22 pistol (using a rubber baby bottle nipple as a silencer) with the handle taped and the serial number filed off, which is left at the crime scene along with a holiday trinket representative of the holiday. This leads to the nickname "The Holiday Killer".

Holiday's crime spree occurs for 13 months, with the only holidays without a murder being April Fools' Day, where the killer confronts the Riddler but leaves him alive in the spirit of the holiday, and New Year's Eve where the 'victim' later turns up alive. There are several red herrings that appear in the story to further deepen the mystery, but ultimately, Alberto Falcone is revealed to be Holiday on Labor Day, Gilda Dent later confessed to the first three killings, and Two-Face briefly assumed the role.

...
Wikipedia