Audiobook: "Batman Meets Two-Face": the most gloriously hilariously terrible Two-Face origin ever?

[about_faces]

A few months back, the intrepid killermoth alerted me to the existence of an obscure Two-Face/Riddler audio cassette that was released to tie in with Batman Forever, and he was awesome enough to mail me his own copy. This is by far one of the coolest things to have happened to me since starting this blog, so thank you again, Mothy! The tape was one of those audio drama storybook dealie-do cassettes that was released in that kind of thick, impenetrable plastic case that you couldn't open without tearing it to shreds, plus is supposedly came with trading cards, thus making it a doubly-dated 90's artifact.


Source: hux777, who is selling this card on eBay right now!

But most surprising, most intriguing, most goddamn exciting of all was the discovery that the stories on this tape are adapted from two of the very best stories for Eddie and Harvey: Questions Multiply the Mystery, and Eye of the Beholder.. I don't just mean that aspects from the comics show up in the stories, I mean that those two issues are directly, explicitly credited in the tape's liner notes as the source material for the adaptations! Holy. CRAP. The first one would have been intriguing enough, but an adaptation of EOTB? My all-time favorite comic, the one that set the standard for everything I love about Harvey to this very day? Ohmigodohmygodohmigod!



... So just how bad is it? I mean, that's probably what many of you are wondering, right? I know I was! Well, I suppose I should get the obvious disappoint out of the way: these are very, very loose adaptations of EOTB and QMTM, and what's worse, the Riddler segment is really boring and tedious all around, pretty much everything you might expect from such a tape. The Two-Face one, on the other hand, is gloriously, gloriously awful, so laughably acted and terribly written that I wish I had the Satellite of Love crowd to come and mock it with me. Thankfully, I have the next best thing: you guys!

As such, I have uploaded the entire "Batman Meets Two-Face" segment to SoundCloud for your listening pleasure! Go, go now! I tried it figure out how to embed it on LJ, but since LJ is--as Warren Ellis once said--run on steampipes and rubber bands, you'll have to visit my Tumblr to hear the whole glorious thing. But really, you folks should be following my Tumblr blog anyway, since I update it more often with neat little things and stray thoughts in between composing the bigger, more in-depth reviews over here. Speaking of which, let's tear into this bad (I mean, really, really bad) boy already!



God, where do I even start? Overall, I get the impression that the people behind this realized early on that they couldn't do this story justice, so they just went for over-the-top wackiness and camp at every turn, because the best thing I can say about this is that the actors sure as hell seem to be having fun. They might as well, since script certainly wasn't doing them any favors. If I may be permitted to exhibit the same level of wit as this script, that sentiment goes DOUBLE for David Bryant, who plays Harvey.

I hesitate to say this, but his performance makes Tommy Lee Jones look restrained. Oh my god, if there's any reason you should actually listen to this rather than just read my review, it's Bryant's performance. There's no way here that I can recreate his delivery of lines like "CURSE THAT STUPID JUDGE" and "Yes. I *could* do it. Why bring Boss Moroni to trial? I could just... KILL HIM MYSELF." But how can I blame him for hamming it up when the script is hellbent on writing the most ridiculous, over-the-top Two-Face this side of the Silver Age? It's peppered with every single hoary cliche that's hounded the character for decades, with lines like "You and I are TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN, Batman!" and

While there are definitely traces of Eye of the Beholder to be found here and there in the script (the rooftop meeting, being tempted towards planing evidence, Harvey in the hospital and his subsequent escape), they're tweaked, changed, and/or overacted with hilarious sound effects like out of Tex Avery short. Take, for just one example, this scene from the comic, with Harvey's escape. While I have no problem changing the orderly to Jim Gordon, it's pretty impressive to take such a serious moment and turn it into something that makes me laugh my ass off with "NO. WE STAY OUTSIDE." *CARTOON PUNCH*

While I could lament all the ways that this adaptation has trashed everything great about EOTB, it feels like criticizing the paint job on the Titanic. This adaptation strays so far from the source material and becomes so ridiculous thanks to Bryant's performance that even the Dick Sprang Two-Face of the late Golden Age would be all like, "Dude, dial it back a little!" In keeping with those roots, Harvey becomes a giddy, giggling, pun-obsessed madman, and while his plan to rob the Twin Towers Banks is a direct lift from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, his ultimate plan of stealing rare editions of Mark Twain books sure seems to be reminiscent of the retro, purposely-campy segment of Two-Face Strikes Twice! Just like with Tommy Lee Jones in Batman Forever, this tape makes even Mike W. Barr's retro-plus pun-filled gimmick-obsessed Harvey look restrained by comparison. And in the true fashion of the 90's trifecta of Chuck Dixon, Alan Grant, and Doug Moench, it all ends with Harvey left broken and muttering indecisively. This is everything I love to hate about bad Two-Face stories cranked up to 11.

God, there's just so much crack here to disseminate. Honestly, so many of my thoughts were covered perfectly by Asstralplane over on Tumblr, for which I have damn grateful. Man, why can't more Tumblrites be like her? If there's a main reason why I stick with you folks here rather than move to Tumblr entirely, it's because Tumblr is populated by people who are either too shy to comment or else actively hold comments in contempt. So if I don't say it enough, I want to thank everyone who chimes in here, and remind everyone else that you are always welcome to share your thoughts if you have any to share.


I really look forward to hearing what you folks come away with from this trainwreck. In a better world, this tape would become a meme right alongside the whole "DEUCES!" thing from that Batman parody musical thing that I still haven't been able to bring myself to watch. I'm just terribly afraid that I'm going to find it unfunny and hate the songs, since I've learned the hard way how much I hate superhero musical numbers which the rest of fandom seems to embrace.

If you'd also like to hear the Riddler segment, I've uploaded that too, but it's not nearly as entertaining. This is doubly disappointing since it's based on one of my favorite Riddler stories ever (which you can and should read at the link in its entirety while it's still up), and Eddie himself is played by a great playwright and actor named Everett Quinton, who created or co-created such awesome bits of insane theatre such as The Mystery of Irma Vep and wrote/starred in a one-man adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities, as performed by a drag queen trying to entertain a crying baby. Fun IRL fact: my Mom saw a performance of that nearly twenty years ago now, and she still wants to see me in that role. I can already hear surrealname going, "Well, of COURSE she does."

Once again, major thanks to killermoth for bringing this to our attentions and for sending me the tape. It's certainly one of the most interesting and fun lost Bat-artifacts I've ever found. Ultimately, I just have to puzzle over what TimeWarner's logic was in making this, since I cannot imagine any actual child of the 90's preferring this take on Two-Face's origin to the powerful, haunting episodes of Batman: The Animated Series. I guess the lesson here is just to not underestimate the tastes of kids.




On the plus side, I do rather like the cassette art, even if Harvey does look like Treat Williams circa Deep Rising by way of the make-up work in Alex Winter's Freaked.




Why yes, I have wanted to mention how much I love the make-up effects in Freaked, and how they're proof that you could theoretically pull of an absolutely amazing Two-Face with practical prosthetics, but I've never found the excuse to bring it up until now, why do you ask?