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I really jumped the gun with my "Two-Face Impostors" series... in more ways than one! Appropriate enough, I suppose.
When I first started off, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with all these Impostor appearances. Should I do full looks at each individual Impostor story? One big post with superficial looks at them all, and seeing how they match up? Or that same idea, but broken up over individual posts? It seemed that I initially opted for that last option, based on the wimpy treatment I gave to the very first Impostor Two-Face: Wilkins the Butler.
This, I now realize, was a grave injustice. Not only did I give the short-thrift to the very first of a long line of Impostor Two-Faces, but his own story has never been reprinted! While I've never read the whole issue myself, and the scans I have on hand are incomplete, I would be remiss in not chronicling that story here for posterity's sake! Batman #50 is notable not just for featuring the first impostor, but also the first time that Harvey Dent was named Harvey Dent, not Kent.
But more than that, I think it's actually the most interesting of the Golden Age "impostor" stories, largely because it creates a genuine psychological crisis for the real Harvey Dent in a story which simply could not be retold today.
( The Return of Two-Face (well, obviously, not REALLY, but pretend like you don't know that) behind the cut... )
There, poor Wilkins finally received the proper about_faces treatment. If Impostor #2 Paul Sloane can get a great modern age revision, I wonder if there'd ever be a way to bring back Wilkins in some capacity. It'd be even better if we could also throw Impostor #3 into the mix, whom I'll FINALLY be looking at in the next post or two.
When I first started off, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with all these Impostor appearances. Should I do full looks at each individual Impostor story? One big post with superficial looks at them all, and seeing how they match up? Or that same idea, but broken up over individual posts? It seemed that I initially opted for that last option, based on the wimpy treatment I gave to the very first Impostor Two-Face: Wilkins the Butler.
This, I now realize, was a grave injustice. Not only did I give the short-thrift to the very first of a long line of Impostor Two-Faces, but his own story has never been reprinted! While I've never read the whole issue myself, and the scans I have on hand are incomplete, I would be remiss in not chronicling that story here for posterity's sake! Batman #50 is notable not just for featuring the first impostor, but also the first time that Harvey Dent was named Harvey Dent, not Kent.
But more than that, I think it's actually the most interesting of the Golden Age "impostor" stories, largely because it creates a genuine psychological crisis for the real Harvey Dent in a story which simply could not be retold today.
( The Return of Two-Face (well, obviously, not REALLY, but pretend like you don't know that) behind the cut... )
There, poor Wilkins finally received the proper about_faces treatment. If Impostor #2 Paul Sloane can get a great modern age revision, I wonder if there'd ever be a way to bring back Wilkins in some capacity. It'd be even better if we could also throw Impostor #3 into the mix, whom I'll FINALLY be looking at in the next post or two.
