Two-Face (DC Comics) Character Review
Two-Face is a fictional Character, a comic book supervillain who appears in comic books published by DC Comics, and is an enemy of Batman. The character first appeared in Detective Comics (August 1942), and was created by Bob Kane. Two-Face was once Harvey Dent, the clean-cut district attorney of Gotham City and an ally of Batman. However, Dent goes insane after mob boss Sal Maroni throws acid
at him during a trial, hideously scarring the left side of his face.
Dent adopts the "Two-Face" persona and becomes a criminal, choosing to
bring about good or evil based upon the outcome of a coin flip. Originally, Two-Face was one of many gimmick-focused comic book villains, plotting crimes based around the number two, such as robbing Gotham Second National Bank at 2:00 on February 2. More about Two-Face (DC Comics) Character Review - keep on reading !!
In his autobiography, Batman creator Bob Kane claims to have been inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, specifically the 1931 film version which he saw as a boy. Some inspiration was also derived from the pulp magazine character the Black Bat, whose origin story included having acid splashed in his face. In later years, writers have portrayed his obsession with duality and fate as the result of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and multiple personality disorder.
He obsessively makes all important decisions by flipping a two-headed
coin, one side scratched over with an X. The modern version is
established as having once been a personal friend and ally of Commissioner James Gordon and Batman.
The character has appeared in multiple Batman media forms, including video games, animation, and the Batman film series. Billy Dee Williams portrayed Harvey Dent in Batman, Tommy Lee Jones portrayed Two-Face in Batman Forever, Richard Moll voiced the character in Batman: The Animated Series, and Aaron Eckhart played both the district attorney and his villainous alter ego in The Dark Knight. Two-Face was ranked #12 in IGN's list of the Top 100 Comic Book Villains of All Time.
Fictional Character Biography
At 26, Dent is the youngest district attorney ever to serve Gotham City, and is nicknamed "Apollo" for his clean-cut image. He is elected about six months before Batman begins his war on crime. For a time, Gordon speculated that Dent might have been Batman, but
eventually dismissed him as a candidate as Dent lacked the Batman's
financial resources even if he possessed his desire for justice.
Dent, Captain James Gordon, and Batman forge an alliance to rid Gotham of crime boss Sal Maroni and Carmine Falcone, with Maroni being eventually murdered by Carmine Falcone's son Alberto. Falcone hires the corrupt Assistant District Attorney Fields to disfigure Dent with sulfuric acid. Two-Face gets his trademark coin from his abusive
father, who would employ the coin in a perverse nightly "game" that
would always end with a beating. This would instill in Dent his lifelong
struggle with free will and his eventual inability to make choices on his own, relying on the coin to make all of his decisions. Eventually, the scarred Dent takes his revenge on Fields and Carmine Falcone, leading to his incarceration in Arkham Asylum.
Although Batman initially attempted to get Harvey help, during the later Hangman
murders, as the Hang-Man targets various cops who assisted in Harvey
Dent's rise to the D.A. position, Two-Face gathers Gotham's criminals to
assist in the destruction of the city's former crime lords. After a
climatic struggle in the Batcave,
Two-Face falls into a chasm when he is betrayed by the Joker, Batman
admitting in the aftermath that, even if Two-Face has survived, he is
now certain that the man he and Gordon knew as Harvey Dent is gone.
During a much later period, Two-Face is revealed to have murdered Jason Todd's
father, who had been one of his henchmen. When attempting to apprehend
Two-Face, Jason briefly has the criminal at his mercy, but lets
Two-Face's punishment be decided by the law, which Batman regards as a
significantly positive step in their relationship. Two-Face later serves
as a 'baptism of fire' for new Robin Tim Drake, Tim donning the Robin suit to help save Batman from a trap set by the criminal.
Eventually, in Arkham, the doctors in the asylum attempt to wean him off the coin by replacing it with a die and eventually a tarot
deck, giving him 78 options. The treatment fails due to Dent being
unable to make even the smallest of decisions - such as going to the
bathroom. Batman returns the coin, telling him to use it to decide
whether to kill him. He tells Batman that the coin landed scar face
down, and Batman leaves safely, but the next scene shows the scar face
up, meaning that he chose to let Batman live.
After the Gotham earthquake, Two-Face carves out a portion of the
ruined city for himself and takes up residence in Gotham City Hall,
maintaining a sophisticated lifestyle; he even forms a temporary
alliance with Gordon to share out certain territory. His empire is
brought down by Bane (employed by Lex Luthor)
who destroys Two-Face's gang during his destruction of the city's Hall
of Records. Two-Face kidnaps Commissioner Gordon and puts him on trial
for his activities after Gotham City was declared a No Man's Land, with Two-Face as both judge and prosecutor for Gordon's illegal alliance with him. Gordon plays upon Two-Face's split psyche to demand Harvey Dent as his defense attorney. Dent cross-examines Two-Face and wins an acquittal for Gordon, determining that Two-Face has effectively blackmailed Gordon by implying that he had committed murders to aid the Commissioner.
During all this, Two-Face meets detective Renee Montoya. Montoya reaches the Dent persona in Two-Face, and is kind to him. He falls in love with her, though the romance is one-sided. and eventually, in the Gotham Central series, he outs her as a lesbian
and frames her for murder, hoping that if he takes everything from her,
she will be left with no choice but to be with him. She is furious, and
the two fight for control of his gun until Batman intervenes, putting
Two-Face back in Arkham.
In the Two-Face: Crime and Punishment one-shot book, Two-Face
leads a crusade against Gotham City, culminating in the capturing of his
own father to humiliate and kill on live television for the years of
abuse he suffered. This story reveals that, despite his apparent hatred
for his father, Dent still supports him, paying for an expensive home
rather than allowing him to live in a slum. At the end of the book,
Harvey and Two-Face argue in thought, Two-Face calling Harvey
"spineless." Dent proves Two-Face wrong, however, choosing to jump off a
building and commit suicide just to put a stop to his alter ego's
crime spree. Two-Face is surprised when the coin flip comes up scarred,
but abides by the decision and jumps. Batman catches him, but the shock
of the fall seems to (at least temporarily) destroy the Two-Face side
of his psyche.
In Two-Face Strikes Twice, Two-Face is at odds with his
ex-wife Gilda, as he believes their marriage failed because he was
unable to give her children. She later marries Paul Janus, a reference
to the Roman god of doors
who had two faces, one facing forward, the other backward. Two-Face
attempts to frame Janus as a criminal by kidnapping him and replacing
him with a stand-in, whom Two-Face "disfigures" with makeup to make it
look as if Janus has gone insane just as Two-Face had. Batman eventually
catches Two-Face and puts him away, and Gilda and Janus reunite. Years
later, Gilda gives birth to twins, prompting Two-Face to escape once
more and take the twins hostage, as he erroneously believes them to be
conceived by Janus using an experimental fertility drug. The end of the
book reveals a surprise twist; Batman learns from Gilda that Janus is
not the father of Gilda's twins—Two-Face is. Some of his sperm had been frozen after a death threat had been made against him, and she used some of it to get pregnant. Batman uses this information to convince Two-Face to free the twins and turn himself in.
In the Batman: Hush storyline, his face is repaired once more via plastic surgery.
This time around, only the Harvey Dent persona exists. However, he
takes the law into his own hands twice: once by using his ability to
manipulate the legal system to free the Joker, and then again by shooting the serial killer Hush. He manipulates the courts into setting him free, as Gotham's prosecutors wouldn't attempt to charge him without a body.
In the Batman story arc Batman: Face the Face, that started in Detective Comics #817, and was part of DC's One Year Later storyline, it is revealed that, at Batman's request and with his training, Dent becomes a vigilante
protector of Gotham City in most of Batman's absence of nearly a year.
He is reluctant to take the job, but Batman assures him it would serve
as atonement for his past crimes. After a month of training, they fight Firebug and Mr. Freeze, before Batman leaves for a year.
Dent enjoys his new role, but his methods are seemingly more extreme
and less refined than Batman's. Upon Batman's return, Dent begins to
feel unnecessary and unappreciated, which prompts the return of the
"Two-Face" persona (seen and heard by Dent through hallucinations). In Face the Face, his frustration is compounded by a series of mysterious murders that seem to have been committed by Two-Face; the villains KGBeast, Magpie, The Ventriloquist, and Orca
are all shot twice in the head with a double-barreled pistol. When
Batman confronts Dent about these deaths, asking him to confirm that he
was not responsible, Dent refuses to give a definite answer. He then
detonates a bomb in his apartment and leaves Batman dazed as he flees.
Despite escaping the explosion physically unscathed to a motel, Dent suffers a crisis of conscience
and a mental battle with his "Two-Face" personality. Although evidence
is later uncovered by Batman that exonerates Dent for the murders, it is
too late to save him. Prompted by resentment and a paranoid reaction to Batman's questioning, Dent scars half his face with nitric acid and a scalpel, becoming Two-Face once again. Blaming Batman for his return, Two-Face immediately goes on a rampage,
threatening to destroy the Gotham Zoo (having retained two of every
animal - including two humans) before escaping to fight Batman another
day.
On the cover of Justice League of America vol. 2, Two-Face is shown as a member of the new Injustice League. He can be seen in Salvation Run. He appears in Battle for the Cowl: The Underground, which shows the effects of Batman's death on his enemies. In Judd Winick's Long Shadow arc, Two-Face realizes that there's another person under the cowl (Dick Grayson). He hires a teleporter and manages to infiltrate the Batcave. When the
new Batman investigates the cave, he is ambushed by Two-Face with
tranquilizer darts, and in a hallucination he sees Dent in a red and black Two-Face themed Batman costume. However, Alfred Pennyworth
saved the hero from Two-Face's torture after he subdues his accomplice,
and with his help Batman convinces Two-Face that he is the real,
original Dark Knight Detective, informing Dent that his problem is that
he cannot imagine Batman changing because he himself is incapable of
seeing the world in anything other than black and white. In Streets of Gotham, Two-Face has been at odds with Gotham's latest district attorney, Kate Spencer, also known as the vigilante Manhunter. Two-Face has recently been driven out of Gotham City by Jeremiah Arkham.
Weapons and Abilities (Two-Face)
Before his transformation into Two-Face, Harvey Dent had a reputation
as one of the best attorneys in Gotham City, and as proficient in
nearly all matters pertaining to criminal law.
Following his disfigurement he developed multiple-personality
disorder and became obsessed with duality. He staged crimes centred
around the number two - such as robbing buildings with '2' in the
address or staging events so that he will take action at 10:22 p.m.
(22:22 in military time) - and carried and used dual firearms (such as
.22 semiautomatics or a double barreled shotgun). Two-Face does things according to chance and therefore leaves all the decisions he makes to fate
at the flip of his two-headed coin in an almost obsessive-compulsive
manner, to the point that the Bat-family have exploited his "need" for
the coin to their advantage more than once by depriving him of the coin
mid-toss to delay his ability to make decisions. On other occasions
Two-Face has even helped them when a coin-toss turns out in their
favour, such as providing Batman with the antidote to a poison even
after he, Joker and Penguin had poisoned the Dark Knight.
The Batman: Face to Face story-arc reveals that Batman has
trained Dent extensively in hand-to-hand combat and in detective work,
enhancing his already proficient talent in both. Two-Face tends to carry
with him a large assortment of conventional weaponry, including guns,
knives, rocket launchers, and poison gases; he has expert marksmanship
skills.
In Other Media (Animated)
- Harvey Dent appears in Batman: Year One, voiced by Robin Atkin Downes.
- Although he doesn't make a physical appearance, Harvey Dent is mentioned in the 2010 straight-to-video animated film Batman: Under the Red Hood. In it, the new Red Hood (Jason Todd) questions Batman's inability to bring himself to kill the Joker while stating "I'm not talking about killing Penguin or Scarecrow or Dent" while holding a gun to the Joker's temple.
- Two-Face appears in the two-part animated adaptation of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns voiced by Wade Williams. Two-Face undergoes plastic surgery to repair his disfigured face. Although he is declared sane, he quickly goes into hiding following his release. Dent resurfaces threatening to blow up a building unless he is paid a ransom. Batman defeats Dent's henchmen learning that the bombs will explode even if the ransom is paid. He realizes that Dent intends to kill himself. Batman disables one bomb and the other detonates harmlessly. After Batman defeats Dent, he reveals that his face was repaired but he still thinks of himself as Two-Face.
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