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Sometimes, a character can dominate a story while barely appearing in it at all. I'd call this the "Harry Lime" effect, after Orson Welles character in The Third Man. Welles' Lime only appeared on screen for about ten minutes of running time over just three scenes, yet he's the most celebrated and memorable part of the film.
Fittingly, Harvey Dent has been used this way at least twice: the first being that wonderful Aparo-drawn issue of The Brave and the Bold from the Bronze Age, and today's story, "Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry?" from Detective Comics #755, by Greg Rucka:
That cover image actually has nothing to do with what happens in the story. Hell, Two-Face's appearance is actually something of a spoiler, but the cover gave it away entirely, and I don't imagine it would have been much of a surprise to you guys here. So I'm including the image anyway, mainly because it's just a wonderful illustration by the great Dave Johnson, whose amazing work I can never fully enjoy without remembering the mishap I had trying to get a Harvey Dent sketch from him at New York Comic Con a couple years back I still love his covers for Rucka's run on 'Tec, which was a generally-solid run that seems to be strangely ignored these days.
I think the problem was that it was hindered by being in continuity, which meant that it had to tie into crossovers like Joker's Last Laugh and the tediously overlong Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive epic, which served no other purpose than to temporarily shed light on the problem of Batman being too much of a dick before ignoring his character epiphany entirely Loeb and Lee's Hush came around. To top it off, the vast majority of Rucka's run wasn't collected in trade, so it's seemingly been forgotten and/or ignored. Many stories from Rucka's run should be considered classics, including this one, so why aren't they?
I think it ties to the big problem with ongoing comics continuity, which is that some truly get stories and scenes get swallowed up by the bigger stories, thus not allowing them to stand on their own as they would in a one-shot or graphic novel. This happens to TV series as well. I mean, no one can really enjoy a great episode of The X-Files the same way without thinking about where the series eventually went from there, y'know?
Today's story itself can't stand up as a solid standalone issue, since it directly follows the events of Officer Down and also leads directly to what will become Bruce Wayne: Murderer, but it still features wonderful moments nonetheless, and perhaps one of the all-time greatest Two-Face bits ever.
( Two-Face crashes Jim Gordon's retirement party behind the cut )
P.S. Hey guys, sorry for the utter lack of any updates, but I imagine you can guess why. Updates will be slow going for the next few weeks, as will new chapters of Dent. Henchgirl's helping me edit the next chapter during the rare moments when we're feeling intelligent enough while Hal is fleetingly sleeping. It'll be a huge-ass chapter, though, enough to tide you over, but we just need to get it edited just right before then. Silly me, thinking I could actually stick to a weekly deadline with a baby! How could this possibly have gone wrong?
Fittingly, Harvey Dent has been used this way at least twice: the first being that wonderful Aparo-drawn issue of The Brave and the Bold from the Bronze Age, and today's story, "Here's Your Hat, What's Your Hurry?" from Detective Comics #755, by Greg Rucka:
That cover image actually has nothing to do with what happens in the story. Hell, Two-Face's appearance is actually something of a spoiler, but the cover gave it away entirely, and I don't imagine it would have been much of a surprise to you guys here. So I'm including the image anyway, mainly because it's just a wonderful illustration by the great Dave Johnson, whose amazing work I can never fully enjoy without remembering the mishap I had trying to get a Harvey Dent sketch from him at New York Comic Con a couple years back I still love his covers for Rucka's run on 'Tec, which was a generally-solid run that seems to be strangely ignored these days.
I think the problem was that it was hindered by being in continuity, which meant that it had to tie into crossovers like Joker's Last Laugh and the tediously overlong Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive epic, which served no other purpose than to temporarily shed light on the problem of Batman being too much of a dick before ignoring his character epiphany entirely Loeb and Lee's Hush came around. To top it off, the vast majority of Rucka's run wasn't collected in trade, so it's seemingly been forgotten and/or ignored. Many stories from Rucka's run should be considered classics, including this one, so why aren't they?
I think it ties to the big problem with ongoing comics continuity, which is that some truly get stories and scenes get swallowed up by the bigger stories, thus not allowing them to stand on their own as they would in a one-shot or graphic novel. This happens to TV series as well. I mean, no one can really enjoy a great episode of The X-Files the same way without thinking about where the series eventually went from there, y'know?
Today's story itself can't stand up as a solid standalone issue, since it directly follows the events of Officer Down and also leads directly to what will become Bruce Wayne: Murderer, but it still features wonderful moments nonetheless, and perhaps one of the all-time greatest Two-Face bits ever.
( Two-Face crashes Jim Gordon's retirement party behind the cut )
P.S. Hey guys, sorry for the utter lack of any updates, but I imagine you can guess why. Updates will be slow going for the next few weeks, as will new chapters of Dent. Henchgirl's helping me edit the next chapter during the rare moments when we're feeling intelligent enough while Hal is fleetingly sleeping. It'll be a huge-ass chapter, though, enough to tide you over, but we just need to get it edited just right before then. Silly me, thinking I could actually stick to a weekly deadline with a baby! How could this possibly have gone wrong?
