We Believe in Harvey Dent

Whew, made it! And just in time for Twelfth Night, too!

Doing this series of posts has been one of the most exhausting, draining, frustrating, and goddamned fun projects I've ever done on this blog. It's a shame that it has to end this way, with an assortment that largely covers some of my least favorite Batman eras and characters.

That's not to say there isn't anything I love about Batman from 1997 to 2006. Sure, the days of the great Bat-trio of Moench/Grant/Dixon were starting to wind down, with many good stories hindered by one big crossover after another after another. The fact that they were all fired to make way for the next big crossover would haven been bitterly misguided if that crossover hadn't been No Man's Land. Far as I'm concerned, NML the highest achievement for Batman since Batman: Year One, since it was an event that was mostly focused on character rather than... well, events. It wasn't perfect, but it was better than any other major Batman crossover I have ever read, and thus I was greatly excited with the prospect of NML mastermind Greg Rucka continuing to write the ongoing Detective Comics.

While I loved Rucka's run, as well as Brubaker's Batman and Devin Grayon's Gotham Knights, the changes they made to Batman's character and supporting cast led the series down a path that I didn't necessarily like, but stuck with because I trusted the creative teams involved. And then they were all gone, with Loeb and Lee giving us Hush. After that, new writers followed the threads left by Rucka, Brubaker, and Grayson, and it all went to hell. The stories that followed left me cold, and much as I rag on Grant Morrison's run, I think I might honestly prefer it to the era of Black Mask. Don't force me to choose, please.

So now, at the end of a project that I started to celebrate the characters I love, I shall see if I can muster any of the same kind of enthusiasm for some of my favorite and least favorite eras alike.


( Rassum frassum get off my lawn behind the cut )


So here's to another year for about_faces. The output will be infrequent, but I'm not going anywhere. There are too many stories left to look at, too many stupid things to rant about, too many comics and characters and ideas worth celebrating. Hope you'll stick around, and as always, keep the comments coming. You're the smartest damn bunch of fans I know, and that's no lie, no flattery, it's the damn truth. So thank you, and be seeing you.

I wonder... when people think of the best Two-Face stories, how many think of Batman/Two-Face: Crime and Punishment? It seems to have fallen into obscurity, and then, being out-of-print for over a decade certainly doesn't help matters,* but it’s one of the few to directly tackle the war inside Harvey’s head, and the years of child abuse which caused that division in the first place.

Why have no other stories looked at the abuse angle with Two-Face? I’d imagine it’s because “angsty, abused childhood” is the #1 cliched origin for villains. Now, I love how Eye of the Beholder made that cliche work perfectly for Harvey in a way that was fitting and deeply emphasized the tragic aspect of the character, but it’s such a complex, nuanced backstory that I fear for how other writers would screw it up. Thus, it’s probably best that it’s avoided by most writers... but then, J.M. DeMatteis is not like most writers. The world of comics is poorer for that.





That said, my personal opinion of this story has fluctuated over the years, all the more so recently after reading DeMatteis' Spectacular Spider-Man story, "The Child Within. So I will especially welcome your comments for this review, especially from those who've read the story in full. Is this a powerful take on Two-Face, or yet another half-baked child abuse origin?


( Someone has got to pay, behind the cut... )




*Maybe that's why Penguin Triumphant (which, like B/TF:C&P, was published to coincide with the release of a Batman movie) isn't even remembered by comic fans at large, much less rightly hailed as the greatest Penguin comic ever.

Text by Scott Beatty (editor and co-author of ROBIN: YEAR ONE) and drawn by Scott McDaniel, who was already well-known for drawing the character in TWO-FACE: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT and the DAREDEVIL AND BATMAN crossover.





It's easy to see why so many people hate Scott McDaniel's artwork, but I've always been fond of it. He's just so beautifully kinetic in how he draws action, making him dead perfect for characters like Nightwing, Daredevil, and Spider-Man. Two-Face, however, is another case. This is a character who's not all about the fight scenes and action, and as such, he doesn't play to McDaniel's strengths.

That said, I still like his Two-Face... usually. CRIME & PUNISHMENT was pretty darn great, and there were some excellent pages from the DD/BATMAN crossover, both of which greatly deserve posting here down the line. Hell, he even drew a flashback cameo of Harvey in NIGHTWING that I adore. But this? Ugh, I really don't like this piece, all the less so because it was the Two-Face profile pic online back in the late 90's, no matter what site you frequented.

There are things I like about it, particularly the scarred side, the detail on the gray hairs, and especially the fact that the division is jagged, not a clean cut. I love it when artists actually show some gradation between the scarred and unscarred sides. If I have one big pet peeve with Two-Face art, it's when artists draw it as a clear division between "good" and "bad" sides. That was fine in the Golden Age, and that's where it should stay.

But man, everything else is stylized to a point of inhumanity, as if Harvey never had any human facial dimensions before the acid hit. The clean circumference face is unnatural (what is he, a Charles Schulz character?) and the similarly curved hairline makes him look like he's suffering male pattern baldness.

And while we're on the subject of nit-picky, petty annoyances... seriously, what's with so many artists scarring up his left hand? People were doing this even before THE ANIMATED SERIES, where it made sense with his origin there, but there's no reason why his whole hand should be scarred. At most, his palm should be the only thing that's scarred, from reaching up to touch his burning face, but, eh, I guess that's the kind of specific consistency one can't expect from artists-for-hire.

As for the profile itself, there's not much to say. Pretty straight-forward. Although I like his occupation. He's a professional!

One thing, though: notice the lack of what the coin meant to Harvey, and its connections to his father. That was present in the Sprouce-drawn profile by Mark Waid, but that whole vital subplot is absent here, as it was in CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. All we get is the abuse, which robs this origin of anything uniquely powerful about Helfer's origin, essentially making Harvey yet another supervillain case of "I was beaten as a child and now I'm evil!"

It's the single biggest origin cliche for villains, but Helfer actually made it work by adding the psychological element, which was even worse than the physical abuse itself. That's forgotten here, as it will be by pretty much every single other writer to this day, aside from the briefest of allusions in both THE LONG HALLOWEEN and THE DARK KNIGHT.

Maybe it's just as well, as I worry what a lesser writer would do with that complex material. But the fact that it's rarely observed is saddening nonetheless, as that's one of the key things that keeps the character from being just another gimmicky villain with a skin condition.