Excited by The Dark Knight and largely ignorant of the Batman universe (I’ve always been more of a Superman guy myself), I picked up Two-Face Year One # 1 hoping for a gripping, exciting story that would bring me up to speed on one of Batman’s classic “rogues.”  Unfortunately, for a relative Batman “newbie” such as myself, this issue may not be the best jumping-on point.

The artwork is generally quite solid — an especially nice touch is the way in which the flashback portions of the story are painted in a muted, gray, sepia tone, making it easy to determine the chronology.  Several characters look similar enough, however, that this new Batman reader was at times confused.  (I even had to look twice in one flashback scene to tell between Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent — thematically appropriate, perhaps, but probably not what the creators were going for!)

The basic plot makes sense, but I wonder if it relies to much on previous knowledge of the Batman world. It is set during the events of The Long Halloween, and readers would probably do well to review that book before starting this one. One aspect of the plot I really did like was Gordon and Dent’s formation of a special team to go after mob boss Maroni.  Each of these three “task force” characters is well-developed in an economical way, and I would like to follow them further (are they the characters in “Gotham Central”? Even here, I fear my ignorance of other Bat-titles hinders me a bit).

But the Harvey Dent story is not terribly engaging.  Although the story asserts that “there is another side to you, Harvey” on several occasions, we are largey told, not shown, this, with the exception of one incident near the end.  The inevitable change to Two-Face comes quickly and abruptly, with little emotional preparation.

I hope my estimation of the story will go up with the second issue. If you haven’t read Two-Face Year One yet and are interested, wait until both halves are available.