Some of the worst enemies a hero
can have are former friends. Someone they once confided in, someone that they
may have revealed secret’s to, someone that they trusted. They might not have incite into weaknesses, but the psychological pain of fighting a friend is usually enough to unbalance even the most solid of heroes. It’s happened a few
times, Superman’s close friend Dr. Emil Hamilton has in recent years taken on
the ID of Ruin and using his extensive knowledge of Superman’s weaknesses to
torment the big blue Boy Scout, Spider-man has duked it out with former best
friend Harry Osborn in one Goblin Guise or the other, and I think we all know
Captain America’s sidekick turned insane assassin Winter Soldier. I think the most iconic of
friend/ally turned enemy is none other than Harvey Dent. Let’s get to it.
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| Ugh, his costume hurts my eyes. |
Harvey Dent, like so many heroes
and villains in comics, grew up with an abusive father. Mr. Dent apparently had
this rather sick game of using a trick coin to decide if Harvey would get a
beating that night. The trick coin always came up heads, obviously. This abusive
past led to Harvey developing anger management issues, bipolar disorder and
schizophrenia. He was able to keep things in check for many years via strength
of will, he even kept his father’s trick coin as a reminder of his past. Harvey
became the youngest district attorney in the most corrupt city in the world,
Gotham. Back before the incident that gave him his famous alias he was
nicknamed Apollo, for his pretty face and spotless record. His dream was to see
Gotham City returned to its former glory, and to do so worked with at the time
Captain James Gordon and Batman to defeat the biggest crime bosses in Gotham
City, Salvatore “Sal” Maroni and Carmine “The Roman” Falcone. Despite the fact that Dent had an occasional bout of unusually intense anger, things were going
really well with their plan, until Falcone decided to take out Dent. He paid
off the corrupt Assistant District Attorney Fields to do the dirty deed.
Getting Dent alone, Fields sprayed Dent in the face with sulfuric acid. The
acid also spilled onto one side of the trick coin in his pocket, giving it a
similar scarred appearance.
The trauma of the attack drove
Harvey off the deep end, causing him to create the alternative persona of
Two-Face. While Harvey remained a staunch advocate for Law and Order, Two-Face
was obsessed with Anarchy and Chaos. Obsessed with duality, and chance,
Two-Face began a career of villainy centering on the number two. He used his
trick coin to make every decision, the scarred side up meant do something evil,
take the money, shoot the hostage, and so on, and the clean side meant to do
something good, return the money, release the hostage and so on. Two-Face also
had an obsession with Falcone and Maroni, the two men he blamed most for his
scarred face. He get’s his vengeance, but is captured by Batman and sent to
Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. He escapes, of course, dozens of times
and becomes one of the most well-known gangsters in Gotham City. Hm… I think
this is ironic. Not a hundred percent on that though. He had Jason Todd’s
father killed after botching a job for him, tormented his ex-wife, and just generally caused havoc in the
place whenever his coin landed scar up.
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| Batman should just carry a magnet around or something. |
During one of his stints at Arkham,
the doctors there took away his coin and replaced it with a die and tarot
cards. The idea was that giving him more options than absolute evil and
absolute good would help Dent recover. It’s not the worst theory that the worst
protected pseudo-prison has ever come up with. Unfortunately, Dent was
completely incapable of making decisions, the sheer multitude of options and
lack of “clarity” that his coin gave let him all but paralyzed with fear. He
couldn’t even decide if he should do basics things like eat, or sleep, or if he should use the bathroom. Needless to say, it was pathetic and a little heartbreaking. Batman, seeing his former
ally in such a state, gave Dent his coin back and told Two-Face to decide to
kill him or not. Batman leaves, and it’s generally implied that Two-Face made
the decision on his own. It was a positive step forward for the villain, but he
unfortunately relapses again.
Sometime later, Gotham is
devastated by an Earthquake, and the various criminal elements carve out
territory in the ruined city. Two-Face formed a temporary alliance with Gordon, a sort of non-aggression pact,
but Dent ultimately betrays him. Shocking right. Gordon is put on “trial” with the worst of Gotham
present. Two-Face is both the Judge and Prosecuting Attorney. During the
proceedings, Gordon has the rather brilliant idea of naming Harvey Dent as his
lawyer. While initially stunned by this, Harvey Dent does represent Gordon... against Two-Face Dent, Judge Dent presiding. It’s kind of the most bizarre trial ever, more like a one man show than
a trial with Dent shouting Objection and Overruled at himself, but Dent gets
Gordon an acquittal. Completely nuts or not, he’s still the best attorney in Gotham.
Batman arrives and makes sure the other villains or crooks decided to go
against Two-Face’s judgement. Two-Face has had his face and sanity restored on
a number of occasions, he even became a replacement Batman for a bit, but he
has always been re-scarred and insane again. Once he even did it himself, using
a surgical knife to carve chunks out of his flesh. Shudder, so creepy. Just another chapter in the
tragic tale of Harvey Dent.
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| Okay, wounds like that, and I don't think he could be conscious without painkillers, let alone create an evil revenge scheme. |
Harvey “Two-Face” Dent has no
superhuman powers. He has over the years developed skills with firearms and
hand to hand combat. Two-Face has an obsession with the number two, which
spills over into his attire. He usually wears a suit comprised of two different
suits stitched together, sometimes the colors are just inverted, other times he
uses drastically different materials for the Two-Face side. He usually has two
.22 semiautomatic pistols or a double barreled shotgun on hand as well. He also
has his two faced coin, of which he bases all of his decisions on. His ‘need’
for the coin is perhaps his greatest weakness, as he’s been beaten more than
once by one of the Bat Family knocking it out of the air mid toss. Also, if it
lands on the “good” side he is compelled to helping Batman and his allies, even
screwing up foolproof plans to obey the coin. His obsession with the number 2
is pretty terrifying. He plans crimes around it, initiating plans at 10:22, or
22:22 in military time. All buildings on 2nd street or the 2200
block are in jeopardy as well.
Harvey Dent has appeared in a
number of Batman related franchises. He always follows the usual chain, heroic
ally of Batman turned supervillain after acid, or similar face destroying
thing, to face.
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| Ever wanted to see Tommy Lee Jones acting goofy? Batman Forever is for you. |
Harvey was a major villain in the
TV series Batman: The Animated Series.
This version portrays Harvey as an old and close friend of Bruce Wayne. He’s a
background character initially, working with the GCPD and at one point dating
Poison Ivy. Shockingly, she was using him. He’s often saved by Bruce’s alter
ego. The first hints of Two-Face appeared in the two part “Two-Face.” How original.
It’s revealed that Harvey has been repressing his anger for years, which
eventually caused a new personality to manifest that called himself Big Bad
Harvey. Mob boss Rupert Thorne gets his hands on Dent’s psychiatric profile and
plans to blackmail Dent. Big Bad Harvey takes over and chases Thorne through a
chemical plant. During the confrontation Harvey gets sprayed in the face by
chemicals. He escapes from the hospital and starts a life a crime going by
Two-Face, much to Bruce Wayne and Harvey’s fiancé Grace’s horror. Grace is
kidnapped by Thorne and forced to call Harvey. He arrives to save her, but
Thorne has them both at gunpoint. Two-Face overpowers Thorne and flips his coin
to decide Thorne’s fate. Batman, at the last moment, flings a bag of coins at
Dent. The coins knock Harvey’s coin out of the air, and hides the coin from
Dent. After this point Two-Face becomes a recurring villain, and a long lasting
psychological scar for Batman. But, it’s Harvey’s familiarity with Bruce that
protects his secret id. In the episode “The Strange Secret of Bruce Wayne,”
psychotic shrink Hugo Strange gets his hands on proof of Bruce Wayne’s double
life as Batman. He planned on auctioning off the secret to Gotham’s three
biggest crime bosses, The Joker, The Penguin, and Two-Face. Batman destroys the
tape, but Hugo tries to tell the villains any way. Hearing that Bruce Wayne is Batman stuns the villains for a moment, but not much longre. Two-Face is the first to
discredit this idea by saying “That’s absurd. I know Bruce Wayne. If he’s
Batman, I’m the King of England.” The other crooks agree. Saved by familiarity.
Harvey Dent appeared in Tim
Burton’s Batman, portrayed by Billy
Dee Williams. He’s the newly elected DA for Gotham, and is a supporting
character. Two-Face appears a few movies later in Batman Forever, this time portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones… Not sure
how we’re supposed to take the ethnic shift. He kills Dick Grayson’s (Robin)
parents, and later teams up with the Riddler. This version is surprisingly lighthearted
and zany for Tommy Lee Jones, cracking more than his fair share of jokes. It
was a little weird. He falls to his death in the climax.
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| His tailor must be as nuts as he is. |
Aaron Eckhart takes up the role in The Dark Knight. This version is again
the new DA in Gotham, and is dating Batman’s sort of ex-girlfriend Rachel
Dawes. He is a very noble man, claiming he is Batman in an attempt to help the
Dark Knight capture The Joker and his associates. Their plan initially works,
but Dent and Dawes are kidnapped by corrupt cops a short time later. Placed in
two different locations at opposite sides of Gotham with Bombs, the Joker gives
Batman the locations. Batman opts to save Dent, leaving Rachel to be saved by
the GCPD. While pulling Dent from the building the left side of his face is
doused in oil. The buildings explode, killing Rachel, and burning the left side
of Harvey’s face. I’m calling BS on the whole “oil insured his face was burned
perfectly in half,” but that’s me being nitpicky. In the hospital he mentions
that his nickname back when he worked in Internal Affairs of the GCPD was “Harvey
Two-Face,” and how fitting that name is now when Gordon visits him. They don’t
really elaborate on that, to my knowledge, but I think we can assume he earned
the name for seeming to be kind and benevolent but being ruthless to dirty cops
or cops even rumored to be dirty. Just my guess though. The Joker visits Dent
in the hospital and encourages him to get payback. Apparently toppling Gotham’s
“white knight” was his ace in the whole for creating anarchy. Dent gets payback
on the corrupt cops that put he and Rachel in that death trap and Sal Maroni,
and then sets his sights on Gordon’s family. Batman arrives and saves Gordon,
knocking Dent off a ledge, killing him. Batman takes the fall for Dent’s
crimes, to ensure his bout of insanity doesn’t undo all the good he did in
life.
Two-Face is one of many villains
who appeared in Batman: Arkham City. He
planned on killing Catwoman in his hideout at the Solomon Wayne Courthouse.
He’s defeated by Catwoman and Batman, earning another set of scars on his face
for his trouble.
Two-Face is an interesting villain.
Like Batman there’s a duality to him that makes him both terrible and noble.
The idea of a hero driven insane is an old one, but Dent is kind of the guy
that started the trend. One of the images that sticks with me most is at the
end of the “Two-Face” two-parter in Batman:
TAS, where he is vigorously and futilely searching through the pile of
coins to find his coin. He keeps screaming “I need it,” as he all but sobs. It’s
one of those scenes that I think of whenever I hear someone say that cartoons
are just for kids. Dent was a good man in a cruel world, he tried hard but was
unfortunately broken along the way. He has tried to get beyond his psychosis
but is always pulled back into the depths of insanity. He’s the Broken and
Brutal former prosecutor, Harvey “Two-Face” Dent. Next time, Update on the
Reverse-Flash, what we know now.
http://batman.wikia.com/wiki/Two-Face
http://dcanimated.wikia.com/wiki/File:Two-Face.png
http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/File:Two_Face.jpg
http://batman.wikia.com/wiki/File:Tommy_lee_jones_2_face.jpg
http://batman.wikia.com/wiki/Two-Face_%28Batman:_Arkham_City%29
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