Batchat Chapter Four: Two-Face

Before we get into this article, I owe you an apology. I have not been holding up my end of the bargain with the Meisterblog, more specifically the Batchat series. That changes today with the announcement that Batchat will be releasing every Monday for the foreseeable future! Now that that is over with, let’s once again visit the world of Gotham and talk about the villain known as Two-Face. Fun Fact: I used to think his name was Toothpaste because of his blue skin in the animated series. I don’t know about you humble reader, but I could use a refresher on how this series is written. There are five parts to this article. Origins, Powers and Abilities, Best Adaptations, Pitch, and Rating. I’ll go into more detail with what all of these mean once we get to them, but for now, lets start with Origins.

Part One: Origins

This is a pretty self explanatory section. I’ll be telling you the origin of Two-Face, but without the fat. I’ll partly be using Wikipedia to get it right, but most of this will be my understanding of the characters origins. Don’t worry though, you’re in good hands, I’m an expert. No really I am, I’ve put in my thousand hours. Harvey Dent was the District Attorney of Gotham City and he was good at his job. He single handedly dropped the crime rate to lower than it’s ever been. For all intents and purposes, Harvey Dent was a good man. That was until he messed with the wrong man, a mob boss named Sal Moroni splashed acid on Dent’s face in the middle of court. Which by the way, how is that the best method you could think of for taking someone out? Anyways, the acid didn’t end up killing Dent, however, it did leave him with half of his face scarred and mutilated. Yes, exactly half of his face. That was the original origin, but it gets changed a lot, mostly because it’s dumb. Nowadays Harvey could get his scarring from a car wreck to the Joker slicing off half of his face. The thing is, how he got his scarring isn’t what’s important, it's what comes next that matters. Harvey Dent eventually becomes a mad-man named Two-Face who is fixated on the number 2, more specifically, a two-sided coin. He uses this coin to decide the fate of his victims. If it’s a main character, they usually get the good side of the coin, but you’re f***ed if you’re a minor character. The original Two-face was driven by anger, but this has been changed in recent years. It’s now widely accepted that Harvey Dent has a lot of emotional trauma and mental illness hidden within him. The scarring on his face helps these issues come to surface. In my opinion this makes Two-Face a much better character, albeit, a very sad one. At the bare bones of it all, Harvey Dent is a man who gave up, a man who stopped trying. He stopped taking control of his issues and let them control him. Harvey Dent is a character filled with tragedy

Part Two: Powers and Abilities

A gun.

Part Three: Best Adaptations

As always, when it comes to best adaptations, I would always start with the original Lego Batman video game. That was my first introduction to the character, and I still stand by the fact that game is the best introduction to Batman you could have. Since we are on the topic of video games, Two-Face makes an appearance in the second installment of the Arkham franchise, Batman: Arkham City. His interaction is brief and effective. I will however warn you that his appearance in Batman: Arkham Knight isn’t as good. This is a bit of a digression, but one problem I have with Arkham Knight is some of the main bad guys are incredibly easy to beat. When you think about it, it all makes sense. These are only people against Batman, but it still doesn’t really sit right with me. In this game, you can defeat Two-face like any other thug. You can even defeat him before his henchmen, and that’s just wrong. Next up is television and movies. Batman: The animated series, has never done anything wrong, so I would recommend watching in Two-face episodes of that, but honestly, I’ve never loved his depiction in that show. My personal favorite is the Tommy Lee Jones portrayal in Batman forever. It’s hilariously terrible and frankly a lot of fun. I almost forgot to mention the first season of the Batman: telltale game. I don’t love Harvey Dent in this game, but for veteran Two-Face fans, it does something new with the character, and it’s really good. Oh and those who are saying “Woah woah woah you forgot about The Dark Knight”. Yeah.

Part Four: Pitch

1) Joker Style: As much as I love Harvey Dent, I will be the first to admit there isn’t a lot to do with his character. He doesn’t have a ton of “meat” when he becomes Two-Face. That being said, every character has the potential to be a good character. I have never been a fan of the Joker. He’s too chaotic and he has the same character development problem that Two-Face has, but worse. When the Joker movie was announced, there was no hype for me. When it was released, no hype. When I watched it, a little hype, but not a lot. It never felt right to me that he’s the one who gets the solo movie when there are arguably better characters. I think a Harvey Dent solo movie instead of the Joker movie would have been loads better. I believe that he would have been the better choice for a film, but admittedly it wouldn’t have made nearly as much money in the box office. I hate to say it, but this is the only pitch I have for Two-Face. I obviously want to see him in another Batman movie at some point, but I don’t think he’s a good enough character to carry a movie as the main antagonist.

Part Five: Rating:

If I didn’t make it obvious during this article, I’m a big Two-Face fan, but something I learned while writing this is that he’s actually not that interesting, which is disappointing. Before writing, I would have given him maybe an 8/10 rating, but now I’m pretty sure I’d give him a 6/10. In my first Batchat, I gave Clayface a 5/10 because of how little he’s used. I’m giving Two-Face a little bit of a higher rating because he’s used more, and somewhat more effectively than Clayface, but not by much.

Here we are folks, the end of the article. It’s good to be back, but I know I’m rusty. I can tell I am by how much my hands hurt from typing. I also feel like now that we are finishing chapter 4, we can start doing some different stuff and stop recapping how we do things. Please let me know what type of things you’d like to read on Batchat in the comments. I’ll leave you with that thought until next Monday when we will be discussing one of my favorite villains, The Riddler! .