about_faces

January 24, 2013 4:32 am @mark. Everything surrounding Two-Face's history and psychology from "The Long Halloween" was directly lifted from "Batman Annual" #14, which was talked about above. In fact, what we got in TLH was incredibly superficial and watered-down by comparison to the original story. TLH added nothing new to the character, and as such, doesn't warrant a mention here. It's a really great story, and it's a shame that the issue isn't more well-known or in print anywhere. Save the nerd rage and try to track down a copy, if you can find it.

January 24, 2013 4:27 am A great write-up of a great character, but I must take issue with one part: "This was a too-pat explanation, but it at least attempted to explain Harvey’s underlying problems." "Too-pat" doesn't do justice to what writer Andrew Helfer did with Two-Face's origin. It's not just that Harvey was abused, it's HOW he was abused that really matters, much more than just that he was beaten. In that story, we learn that Harvey's father would play a sick “game” where he would flip a coin, and whenever Harvey lost, he would get beaten. However, in the original story, the coin wasn’t scratched up, and the game wasn’t “fair.” Instead, the coin was a two-headed trick coin, and the father would always call the toss FOR Harvey, forcing him to be tails every time. Which, of course, meant that Harvey would be beaten every single time. It's this psychological aspect which really screwed him up, far more than the physical abuse itself. One part of him loved his father and desperately wanted to believe that the game is fair, that he deserved the abuse, that his father would never, ever lie to him. The other part of him knew the game was rigged all along, that there never was a choice, and hated his father for it. This was the part of him that festered into his "bad side," and this was the irreconcilable conflict that eventually tore his psyche apart when the acid hit. As such, when Harvey becomes Two-Face and confronts his father, forcing him to play the game himself, the fact that he’s using a scarred coin is now incredibly poignant. As Two-Face, he makes everyone else play the game his father used to make him play (because like the above, he’s learned that much from the twisted old bastard), but the difference is that at least his game is *fair.* On top of that, this origin accurately deals with the psychological scars of childhood abuse at the hands of a mentally unstable alcoholic. These kinds of abusers have a particularly nasty Jekyll-and-Hyde thing where their personalities can switch on a dime, and they can cause a child to question their own memories of the abuse. Again, this is the psychological aspect that really screwed Harvey up in this new origin. It makes perfect sense that Two-Face should be the result of a division between the Harvey who loved his father and the Harvey who hated him. There's so much more going on with that origin than just "he was beaten by his dad and then grew up crazy/evil," which is usually the case when villains get backgrounds in abuse. In fact, I'd argue that this Two-Face origin is one of the only times that the use of the abusive alcoholic dad stereotype actually works perfectly. So yeah, I don't think that this story simply "attempted to explain Harvey’s underlying problems." I think it succeeded in a powerful damn way.