Well, that was unexpected.
Over the last few issues of what was once Batman & Robin and what is currently Batman & Two-Face, Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason have been reshaping the life and times of Harvey Dent, as well as his fall to becoming Two-Face. Gone is The Long Halloween, and in its place might be the alpha and the omega coming together at the same time.
The new Harvey Dent was not the white-knight prosecutor who put so much pressure on himself to be the perfect district attorney that he snapped. Instead, he was a talented defense attorney who sometimes represented shady dealers like the McKillen crime family against Batman’s vigilante tactics, However, he had a moral line he wouldn’t cross, which caused him to play both sides of the law against Erin and Shannon, the twin McKillens he was representing, to make sure they got sent up the river. Then he was pressured by Bruce Wayne to switch sides and run for D.A. because Bruce wanted him working for Batman instead of against him. The McKillens, swearing revenge, sacrificed Shannon so Erin could escape and get revenge on Harvey by killing his wife Gilda and burning half his face, because she was angry that he was two-faced and now everyone would know it. Oh, and Bruce, Harvey and Erin were all childhood friends, and now we find out that Bruce even introduced Harvey to Gilda.
In Batman & Two-Face #28, two huge things happen (HERE THERE BE SPOYLERS) amidst this massive clusterfudge where Batman, Erin and Harvey had been forced to work together to survive a united mob front trying to take them out. Harvey has been captured, and the ‘regular folk’ crime families are trying to publicly execute him as a summary judgment against all the freaks that have taken over Gotham City. Batman and Erin are out to rescue him, except Erin isn’t. Instead, she’s deliberately stalling because she and Harvey hate each other and she wants them to take him out. Naturally, Batman susses this out, dumps Erin for the cops (in a fun way) and then races off to save Harvey from the mob of Mob.
The first huge thing happens when Batman’s saving Two-Face at a mock courthouse, and that is the revelation that Harvey Dent knows that Bruce Wayne is Batman, and has known for some time. “If you only knew the battles I’ve fought in my head to keep you alive these last few years.” That makes for an interesting moment, although it’s oddly timed in the middle of a rushed moral debate while they’re both under fire and nearly on fire thanks to the bad guys. Well, badder guys. Anyway, Batman gives him a lecture about “the third side of your coin,” which is the edge, and how it bonds opposites together. And as soon as he mentions that, you know that’s going to happen pretty quick.
So Harvey grabs a flamethrower, goes apeshit, forcing Batman to bust open a water tower to douse the flames before they kill everybody. This leaves Harvey all wet when he has to flip a coin to decide if Commissioner Gordon lives or dies while he’s making his escape. It slips out of his hand and lands in the mud. On its edge. Six pages after Batman brought it up. The resulting moment is kind of cool, as he swings back and forth intensely, until Batman saves the day again and drives him off, but can’t give chase because Gordon’ had been shot in the shoulder earlier. Epilogue: Erin McKillen is in jail, with a fresh scar under her eye thanks to Harvey, and making a speech to her fellow convicts about the two forces of light and dark warring in all of us, represented by twin wolves. This precedes the second huge thing: Two-Face blows his brains out.
You read that right. This story arc started with Harvey flipping the coin to decide whether or not to kill himself, and it ends the same way, although he doesn’t rely on the coin for it. He actually sets it on its edge and spins it before putting the gun to his head. Sure, technically, we don’t see the actual shot, we just hear it and see blood splatter all over a framed photo of Gilda, so this could wind up getting undone later in some way, but honestly, it’s sort of fitting that Peter J. Tomasi is folding the alpha and omega of Harvey Dent into the same story, because the best Two-Face story is always the first one.
I’ve said this before – I love Harvey Dent, but I’m sort of indifferent to Two-Face. At first blush, it’s a cool idea, a man divided down the middle, leaving crime or charity to absolute chance with that George-Raft-in-Scarface-style coin flip, sporting this macabre visage, specifically-tailored suits, and pulling off binary-themed capers. There have been some cool stories told with Two-Face, but the one they all come back to,is his origin. His fall from grace. The tragic onset of his madness. That stab in the heart where you see the man of integrity he was trying to be, the kind of person we’d all like to be if only we had the willpower, only to be broken by the blowback from his own drive.
Except with this new origin, his grace period wasn’t all that graceful – young Harvey kinda seems like a bit of a douche. He’s not really inspiring, especially with the flashback we see of Harvey meeting Gilda in this issue, although that might have been intended as a romantic moment that only looks creepy because of the look Patrick Gleason put on Dent’s face. Also, Harvey blames his troubles on Bruce for forcing him to be a D.A. and Batman for not stopping Erin from destroying his life, which might’ve been a good way to tie Batman more directly into things and make him feel extra guilty about it if it didn’t come off so petulantly. A guy being mad that his wife got killed and his face half-scarred shouldn’t come off as whiny. Then again, when Harvey reveals he knows about Bruce, he also notes that he earned the scars for his sins, so he’s back and forth about it. As you might expect from a two-themed madman.
All in all, while Two-Face blowing his brains out was a surprise which might underline the notion that “anything can happen in the New 52,” it may also be an acknowledgment of ‘oops, we really should have done something different with this guy from the start.’ I’d advocated reverting him back to Harvey Dent, because that’s when he was a real mover and shaker, as part of the legal structure. We could have seen a lot more of the Bat-Jim-Harvey triad and really gotten invested in it, and hell, maybe they’d never have had to go the full Two-Face. Alas, no, he was just there from the start, in Arkham, and that sealed his fate. No more Two-Face is fine with me, as much as I like Harvey Dent. Two-Face, for all his ability to be on both sides of the morality line, feels far too rigid in his gimmick structure, whereas Harvey Dent could have done anything. My guess is that Tomasi will use Erin McKillen, the sole survivor of a set of criminal twins who now has one small and easily-covered part of her face scarred, as some new-school version of Two-Face, without that rigidity. Or maybe there’s some outside chance Harvey Dent is bound for the Lazarus Pit – that thing heals scars, doesn’t it?
The story itself had some good ideas and some solid moments, and McKillen is an interesting new character, but the whole affair also felt kind of cacophonous, haphazard and lacking in style – although that may just be because it’s hard to live up to Tim Sale’s precedent, because Gleason definitely had some good stuff, too. It doesn’t quite have the oomph it wants to have, and the ‘coin landing on edge’ thing sparks eye-rolling instead of drama.
So long, Harvey Dent. You were my favorite Bat-villain, although I’m surprisingly fine with watching you go.
