Batman and Two-Face #26 continues the ‘oh by the way’ brand new origin for Two-Face, who seems to be a secondary character in his own story. The main character is Erin McKillen of the McKillen crime family, who blames Harvey Dent’s shady lawyering for being thrown into prison with her twin sister Shannon and for Shannon’s subsequent death. McKillen’s gotten the majority of the panel time in the last couple of issues, and as written by Peter J. Tomasi, she’s a pretty compelling character – considered a bi-polar loose cannon by the mob at large and even by her own family – but it’s unfortunate that it’s had to come at the expense of everything interesting about Dent.
McKillen also happens to be a childhood friend of Bruce Wayne, and when she got pinched, she called him up to try and wrangle a bodyguard to keep herself safe from Two-Face, who is out to kill her because she killed his wife Gilda and dumped acid on his face as revenge for the aforementioned shady lawyering. Bruce “sent” Matches Malone to spring her from the clink and bring her to Wayne Manor, and #26 starts with McKillen tied to a chair as Bruce tries to convince her to stop being a murderous criminal. Trying to get her to realize that Dent isn’t the root of her problems, but rather her life of crime is – just as Shannon’s death was self-inflicted as a means to spring her sister from prison the first time – and Alfred adds some contemputous snark to that effort as well. She doesn’t want to hear it, but she might have to now that her cousin Kieron has turned on her and served her right up to Two-Face, planning to eliminate them both at once. Two-Face ain’t down with that, and neither is Batman, and things go nuts at Gilda’s gravesite.
We’re really getting into McKillen’s head, and she’s a very energetic kind of hardass, who would prefer to continue running the operation from Belfast but has had to come to Gotham to maintain peace with the other mob families, and is now caught up in shit she can’t wait to get away from. She works fast and loose, riding the edge and always feeling like she’s barely keeping her head above water, and that’s interesting to watch. Tomasi is also making sure she’s firmly entrenched in the new Gotham history, revealing that Bruce is the one who encouraged Harvey to run for D.A. in the first place as a response to McKillen trying to murder Commissioner Gordon. It’s an interesting line Tomasi is walking here, giving us compassion or McKillen while insisting she’s also a career killer and a monster.
The problem is that he’s depicting Harvey Dent as almost entirely a monster. Every time we’ve seen the old Harvey, he’s been gloating like a malevolent bastard over convicting the sisters, visiting them in prison just to rub it in that he may or may not have violated attorney/client privilege to throw the book at the McKillen twins, seemingly proud of his malfeasance. Yes, this could be filtered through Erin’s perspective, and it’s implied that there’s a history of bad blood, and if we were seeing things from Harvey’s perspective, it might be the triumphant moment of justice over entrenched crime that we wouldn’t mind him fudging the law a bit to get done. But his characterization seems off – he was just a dirty prick then and he’s just a dirty prick now. That takes away the gut-wrenching tragedy of his fall from grace if he never had the grace to begin with. Some of this might have to do with Patrick Gleason’s artwork making Harvey look absolutely sinister at all times, too.
We’ll have to see how this shakes out now that everything’s coming to a head, but there’s not a lot of cause for optimism that the new status quo for Harvey Dent will be anything but lame. However, Erin McKillen makes for an interesting character , so it’s up to you to decide whether or not the new blood is worth the sacrifice of the venerable classic.
