![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
about_facesWhile the risque Birds of Prey musical number from Batman: The Brave and the Bold has become a viral hit among comic sites (Birds of Prey + Gail Simone + dick jokes = success, apparently), the actual episode it's from, "The Mask of Matches Malone!" has still never aired in the US. This is supposedly because for some reason TV censors have some problem airing a kid's show with an entire segment devoted to dick jokes (plus a vagina joke in the opening sequence with Poison Ivy), some of which are so obvious that they're just single entendres. Go figure, right?
Personally, I don't care that much for the most part. I adore that show, but I feel like the musical number left me cold. No matter how effectively it's gotten stuck in my head (In my head right now: "Dum dum da dada, Birds of Preyyy, theoneanonly Birds of Pr--" DAMMIT! STOP THAT, BRAIN! DON'T MAKE ME PUNISH YOU WITH KE$HA!), I just kinda find it mildly irritating, less clever and more "tee-hee, we're being dirty!" As a sexy burlesque for superheroes, Red Hot Riding Hood it ain't. On top of that, I am in the extreme minority in haaaaaating every single musical number from The Brave and the Bold.
Thing is, I adore musicals, and I always wince whenever I hear somebody talk about how much they hate musicals, because while I can understand hating SPECIFIC musicals, I cannot wrap my head around someone hating an entire genre. The work of Sondheim, Rogers & Hammerstein, Webber, Kander & Ebb, Menken & Ashman, Trey Parker & Matt Stone, Seth McFarlane, and Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog are not all the same thing, yet they're cut from the same cloth. And chances are, most everybody loves some part of that... um... musical fabric. Yeah. *cough*
I swear, I'm going to explain why all this is relevant to Two-Face. I'm getting there. Promise. I just need to rant a LITTLE bit longer about musicals.
At the same time, there are parts of that (fill in additional awkward metaphor here) which I also loathe. Webber, for one. Fuck Webber. And man oh man, I hate the musical numbers from The Brave and the Bold almost as much as I hate Webber. Maybe moreso, because at least with Webber, there's no crossover in the comics world, where most of my fellow fans are head-over-heels in love with stuff like the entire Music Meister episode. Of course, having NPH doesn't hurt, but ugh, I detested those songs, just as I detested the scene in the otherwise-great "Emperor Joker!" episode, where the Joker sang this atrocity. The fact that it's entitled "Smile, Darn Ya, Smile," makes me wish to god that they'd actually just gone ahead and had him sing the actual fucking song, which would have given the scene fifteen more layers of sadistic delightfulness. You know something is bad when The Batman actually did it BETTER.
But eh, what do I know about music? I'm the guy who thinks the beloved theme song for The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes--which has been hailed as "epic" and "metal," actual quotes--sounds like mall-punk Hot Topic Nickelback claptrap. So YMMV.
Which FINALLY brings us to the actual Two-Face-related reason I am posting the entirety of "The Mask of Matches Malone!" here, for those who haven't seen it. I'm guessing that's most of you. As we've previously seen, the Two-Face of Batman: The Brave and the Bold is awesome. It's one of the very best takes on Harvey that I have EVER seen, managing to be poignant and tragic without ever being angsty or gritty. In TMoMM!, Gail Simone gives us the second major appearance of Harvey in B:TB&TB, using him in a way which...
... well... just watch it for yourself. And do it soon, before it's taken down by WB.
If this were any other comics site, I'd be all about discussing Gail, the Birds, the Bat/Cat sexual tension, and/or the musical number, because that's what most fans generally care about, and I'm sure those'll come up in the comments. But here? Yeah, screw all that.
As always, let's talk about Harvey.
Man, at first, I had assumed that Harvey was just going to be used as a standard villain, since there were four heroes to take up the spotlight. The fact that we only hear him in the snarly Two-Face voice certainly indicated that's where Gail was going. So imagine my delight with where it actually went!
I was hoping that we'd see Harvey return for the third act thanks to the montage sequence, where he became increasingly brooding and furious during Matches' reign of terror, but once I heard him scream in exasperation, "WHERE'S BATMAN WHEN YOU NEED HIM?!" I immediate thought, "... No, Gail wouldn't. ... Would she?" So I was very happy to see that's exactly what she did, with Bat!Harvey sweeping in to save the day! Sort of!
But even as Batman, Harvey's intentions here are hardly heroic (awesome alliteration, true believer!), and the fact that he helps save the Birds of Prey is entirely unintentional. No matter, it's still fun and refreshing to see him used in a capacity like this, especially since he's not even the real villain of the episode. He's just another screwed-over victim of Matches Malone, even if he's hardly an innocent victim.
I think this is the fifth of sixth instance I've seen of a story where Harvey poses as Batman in some capacity. Strangely, I've seen it happen in two Elseworlds specials, one movie, one newspaper comic strip, and here, but the only time he's come close to doing it in the actual comics continuity is in a hallucination by somebody else, so that probably doesn't count. Either way, I don't think any of the villains have done this so often, which I think really says something about how similar Bruce and Harvey are to one another. It's just another reminder of what might have been for Harvey Dent if things went differently.
Personally, I don't care that much for the most part. I adore that show, but I feel like the musical number left me cold. No matter how effectively it's gotten stuck in my head (In my head right now: "Dum dum da dada, Birds of Preyyy, theoneanonly Birds of Pr--" DAMMIT! STOP THAT, BRAIN! DON'T MAKE ME PUNISH YOU WITH KE$HA!), I just kinda find it mildly irritating, less clever and more "tee-hee, we're being dirty!" As a sexy burlesque for superheroes, Red Hot Riding Hood it ain't. On top of that, I am in the extreme minority in haaaaaating every single musical number from The Brave and the Bold.
Thing is, I adore musicals, and I always wince whenever I hear somebody talk about how much they hate musicals, because while I can understand hating SPECIFIC musicals, I cannot wrap my head around someone hating an entire genre. The work of Sondheim, Rogers & Hammerstein, Webber, Kander & Ebb, Menken & Ashman, Trey Parker & Matt Stone, Seth McFarlane, and Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog are not all the same thing, yet they're cut from the same cloth. And chances are, most everybody loves some part of that... um... musical fabric. Yeah. *cough*
I swear, I'm going to explain why all this is relevant to Two-Face. I'm getting there. Promise. I just need to rant a LITTLE bit longer about musicals.
At the same time, there are parts of that (fill in additional awkward metaphor here) which I also loathe. Webber, for one. Fuck Webber. And man oh man, I hate the musical numbers from The Brave and the Bold almost as much as I hate Webber. Maybe moreso, because at least with Webber, there's no crossover in the comics world, where most of my fellow fans are head-over-heels in love with stuff like the entire Music Meister episode. Of course, having NPH doesn't hurt, but ugh, I detested those songs, just as I detested the scene in the otherwise-great "Emperor Joker!" episode, where the Joker sang this atrocity. The fact that it's entitled "Smile, Darn Ya, Smile," makes me wish to god that they'd actually just gone ahead and had him sing the actual fucking song, which would have given the scene fifteen more layers of sadistic delightfulness. You know something is bad when The Batman actually did it BETTER.
But eh, what do I know about music? I'm the guy who thinks the beloved theme song for The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes--which has been hailed as "epic" and "metal," actual quotes--sounds like mall-punk Hot Topic Nickelback claptrap. So YMMV.
Which FINALLY brings us to the actual Two-Face-related reason I am posting the entirety of "The Mask of Matches Malone!" here, for those who haven't seen it. I'm guessing that's most of you. As we've previously seen, the Two-Face of Batman: The Brave and the Bold is awesome. It's one of the very best takes on Harvey that I have EVER seen, managing to be poignant and tragic without ever being angsty or gritty. In TMoMM!, Gail Simone gives us the second major appearance of Harvey in B:TB&TB, using him in a way which...
... well... just watch it for yourself. And do it soon, before it's taken down by WB.
If this were any other comics site, I'd be all about discussing Gail, the Birds, the Bat/Cat sexual tension, and/or the musical number, because that's what most fans generally care about, and I'm sure those'll come up in the comments. But here? Yeah, screw all that.
As always, let's talk about Harvey.
Man, at first, I had assumed that Harvey was just going to be used as a standard villain, since there were four heroes to take up the spotlight. The fact that we only hear him in the snarly Two-Face voice certainly indicated that's where Gail was going. So imagine my delight with where it actually went!
I was hoping that we'd see Harvey return for the third act thanks to the montage sequence, where he became increasingly brooding and furious during Matches' reign of terror, but once I heard him scream in exasperation, "WHERE'S BATMAN WHEN YOU NEED HIM?!" I immediate thought, "... No, Gail wouldn't. ... Would she?" So I was very happy to see that's exactly what she did, with Bat!Harvey sweeping in to save the day! Sort of!
But even as Batman, Harvey's intentions here are hardly heroic (awesome alliteration, true believer!), and the fact that he helps save the Birds of Prey is entirely unintentional. No matter, it's still fun and refreshing to see him used in a capacity like this, especially since he's not even the real villain of the episode. He's just another screwed-over victim of Matches Malone, even if he's hardly an innocent victim.
I think this is the fifth of sixth instance I've seen of a story where Harvey poses as Batman in some capacity. Strangely, I've seen it happen in two Elseworlds specials, one movie, one newspaper comic strip, and here, but the only time he's come close to doing it in the actual comics continuity is in a hallucination by somebody else, so that probably doesn't count. Either way, I don't think any of the villains have done this so often, which I think really says something about how similar Bruce and Harvey are to one another. It's just another reminder of what might have been for Harvey Dent if things went differently.
