Character redesign: Two-Face

[seriousfic]

Two-Face, as a character, gets an inconsistent treatment. Everyone loves the pathos of his origin, but how it translates into ongoing villainy isn't so hot. You could get away with "I was scarred, so I'm going from Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil!" in the old days, but nowadays you need something more subtle. Unfortunately, it's hard to come up with something more subtle, so the best stories about Two-Face tend to deal with his scarring, which is the reason why he's been scarred, cured, and rescarred about fifty times. I think his latest "plastic surgery restoration" is going to look like Mickey Rourke circa The Wrestler.

Now, don't get me wrong, the "commits crimes based around the number two" is a fun gimmick, but it works best as a throwback. It's just too odd to go from "I lost my wife! My career! My face!" to "A museum exhibit on two dollar bills? Yes! That is how I should express my angst!" So, what's a better use for a character all about duality?

Vigilante. As awful as Jeph Loeb was and is, the idea of Two-Face as an anti-hero makes sense. Harvey Dent believes in the system, why shouldn't Two-Face believe in taking the law into your own hands? There's even a great subtext to give the character: what is justice about? Rehabilitation or punishment? Harvey believes in rehabilitation. If the coin comes up heads, he's going to get that meth addict who just gunned down a convenience store clerk into a nice treatment program; after all, he's a victim of society. But if it comes up tails, Two-Face is blowing the sucker away. He is Harvey's suppressed urges, after all, and what would a good attorney want more than to deliver justice to crooks the law can't touch?

Now, not to get too fan-wanky, but I thought up a good way for this to fit into that Fourth World AU I'm always going on about, where Batman is dead, Dick Grayson leads the no-kill vigilantes, and Jason leads a gang of executioners. This Two-Face is exactly the kind of heroic sociopath Jason would love to have in his corner. Only when his coin comes up heads, Harvey Dent puts in a call to Dick with a little sensitive information.

Who better than Two-Face to play both sides?

Comments

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

You should suggest this to thehefner/about_faces. If nothing else, it'd make for a fascinating conversation.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the heads-up! My thoughts, I has finally posted them.

[mcity.livejournal.com]

>Vigilante. As awful as Jeph Loeb was and is, the idea of Two-Face as an anti-hero makes sense.

Which is why he stole it from B:TAS. Harvey gets a third personality, a judge, who goes after various criminals. He even tries to kill himself.

[about-faces.livejournal.com]

I don't think anybody has ever come up with a satisfactory explanation for his obsession with the number two beyond, like, "I now have two faces! Say, now that I think about it, everything is two, not just me!" (Phase Two: ?) "I am now obsessed with two!" The only writers I've ever seen even try to make it work were William Messner-Loebs in the wonderful and little-read Batman newspaper comic strip of 1990 and Mark Waid in one of those two-page origins from Countdown that described Harvey as having been a schizophrenic child who was already obsessed with two. Yeah, neither is really satisfactory. The theory, I suppose, is that it helps to give his new life some semblance of structure, but we've yet to see someone really develop that in a logical way.

As far as Loeb and Harvey being a vigilante, well, Loeb didn't really come up with that idea. Really, chances are good that if something is good in a Jeph Loeb story, he got it from somewhere else. Most likely, he probably did as mcity suggested and was, shall we say, "inspired" by Batman: The Animated Series. In the Two-Face origin episode, Harvey doesn't become a mob boss or gang leader to establish power, but for the express purpose of taking down Rupert Thore, expressly tackling Thorne's businesses and trying to ruin the mobster responsible for ruining his life. It wasn't until later that Two-Face became a gangster in his own right because of... well, it's never explained why he goes from "revenge vigilante" to "Imma be my own boss now because crime is teh awesome!" But yeah, the Two-Face of TLH/DV is pretty much an expansion of that.

But hell, let's go back even earlier! In Two-Face's very first appearance, he donated his crime money to charity whenever the coin came up good heads:



Bear in mind, this is right after Harvey flips the coin on himself and it comes up scarred side, which means that "evil wins" and he has to become a criminal. Even as a criminal, he's still a good guy half the time! In fact, considering that Batman never publicly gives to charity, you could easily imagine Two-Face becoming something of a folk hero to the people of Gotham!

And yet, save for one comic in 1992 that was written as a throwback to the Golden Age, literally NO WRITERS SINCE have remembered that Two-Face used to do this. Ever since the character was unceremoniously brought back in the early 50's, he's largely been written as evil-default with occasional acts of mercy if the coin tells him so, and even then, some writers like Chuck Dixon have Harvey cheat. I hate that. Not only should Two-Face always play fair--since after all, he HAS to be true to the system that has given his life the only meaning he knows anymore--but he should actually do legitimately good things.

Because it's one thing to have him be the Punisher of Gotham. It's another if he's also looking into actively helping others, such as the time he helped Renee Montoya and her brother rescue survivors after the earthquake. That right there would set him apart from the other heroes, committing acts of charity that even they rarely do, while at the same time, the darker side of him dispenses a much harsher (and more permanent) form of "justice" whenever the coin comes up scarred.

As for Jason, I've often thought that if Harvey became a vigilante/boss, he'd have become the kind that Jason was as the Red Hood. As it is, I'd love to see them meet again, but I doubt that Jason would ever willingly work with the man who murdered his father. As for Dick, Dick and Harvey hate each other in a way that few other heroes and villains do. Dick, more than anybody else, holds Harvey in nothing but contempt, and sees only the worst in Two-Face. I'm not saying that couldn't work together, but man, circumstances would really have to be dire, and even then...

[seriousfic.livejournal.com]

Well, the good thing about the elaborate Elseworlds set-up is that things aren't beholden to continuity so much as suggested by them. In this AU, there's no reason for Two-Face to have killed Jason's father; the Joker or some such would have more resonance, for contrasting how Bruce dealt with his parents' murder with Jason's approach. Mr. Freeze might be best, to contrast his sympathetic backstory with how Jason deals with him (happy go lucky as I am, I have a visual of Mr. Freeze getting splattered to the inside of his own dome, literally making a red hood).

As for Dick and Two-Face, the idea was more than Harvey would simply give information, not that Dick would be his handler or anything, but what would work even better is for him to go through Gordon. With Bruce gone, Jim's the last person who really remembers Harvey Dent, automatically giving their relationship some pathos.

If the characterization of Harvey ever did canon immigrate to New New Earth continuity, Harvey giving to charity would be a good story engine in lieu of the whole Red Hood vs. Nightwing thing. Just have the Joker find out who he's sending money to (something to do with Gilda?) and screw with him.