Note: I started this post as part of the Hugo Strange series, but it became much more than that. I hope you'll indulge this extreme departure from the usual Two-Face topics, as this is a subject which has been haunting me for days now.
With "Interlude on Earth-Two," Alan Brennert was the first DC Comics writer to asked the questions, "If you go to a world where an alternate version of yourself got older, married, had a full life, and died... wouldn't that be kinda upsetting? Not just for you, but the people who knew and loved your alternate self?"
They're questions that no DC writer had considered by 1982, and Brennert answered them by throwing in an additional question: "What if that alternate Earth's Hugo Strange didn't escape unscathed from his final Golden Age adventure?"
This is one of the finest comics by Alan Brennert, who wrote only about nine DC stories over twenty years, including the wonderful Batman classic, To Kill A Legend.
It is a testament to his abilities that I've had an insanely hard time editing these scans, so while scans_daily shall receive a butchered edition of this post, you readers here shall get the expanded version which does better justice to the story. At least, until such time as DC reprints it someday (probably in a theoretical fourth or fifth volume of DC Showcase Presents the Brave and the Bold).

( When even the cover has to ask that question, you know it's either gonna be a confusing mess, or something awesome... )
As I said before, Alan Brennert only wrote nine stories for DC Comics over about twenty years. His career there rivals only Alan Moore's for most prolific body of work over a very limited tenure, and if there were any justice, fans would be clamoring for DC to publish a Complete DC Comics Stories of Alan Brennert collection. Doing this past makes me want to write about them all in a Brennert Master Post. Perhaps I will, once I've tracked down the last three I have yet to read.
With "Interlude on Earth-Two," Alan Brennert was the first DC Comics writer to asked the questions, "If you go to a world where an alternate version of yourself got older, married, had a full life, and died... wouldn't that be kinda upsetting? Not just for you, but the people who knew and loved your alternate self?"
They're questions that no DC writer had considered by 1982, and Brennert answered them by throwing in an additional question: "What if that alternate Earth's Hugo Strange didn't escape unscathed from his final Golden Age adventure?"
This is one of the finest comics by Alan Brennert, who wrote only about nine DC stories over twenty years, including the wonderful Batman classic, To Kill A Legend.
It is a testament to his abilities that I've had an insanely hard time editing these scans, so while scans_daily shall receive a butchered edition of this post, you readers here shall get the expanded version which does better justice to the story. At least, until such time as DC reprints it someday (probably in a theoretical fourth or fifth volume of DC Showcase Presents the Brave and the Bold).

( When even the cover has to ask that question, you know it's either gonna be a confusing mess, or something awesome... )
As I said before, Alan Brennert only wrote nine stories for DC Comics over about twenty years. His career there rivals only Alan Moore's for most prolific body of work over a very limited tenure, and if there were any justice, fans would be clamoring for DC to publish a Complete DC Comics Stories of Alan Brennert collection. Doing this past makes me want to write about them all in a Brennert Master Post. Perhaps I will, once I've tracked down the last three I have yet to read.