We Believe in Harvey Dent

Read Part 1 here! For all previous installments of the complete Gilda retrospective, check out the tag!

For Gilda Dent, New Year’s Eve was the turning point. And for a brief time, things seem to be improving in her marriage to Harvey. 

Despite his ever-pressing work load, Harvey actually manages to come home for Valentine’s Day, surprising her with chocolates and romantic snugglebunnies. For a brief moment, despite all that’s happened before, finally everything’s comin’ up Gilda!

Meanwhile, the Holiday murders continue. Only this time, the victims aren’t the Roman’s men, but rather those of his gangland rival: Salvatore “The Boss” Maroni. This change in targets is interesting, given the fateful destiny of Harvey(’s face) and Maroni(’s bottle of acid). These murders aren’t up close and personal like the Roman’s men, but are now far more spectacular and explosive, with the killer mowing down nine men at once with the .22 as if it were a machine gun. The change in both targets and methodology would suggest a different Holiday than the first, which supports Gilda being the first and Harvey (or someone else) being the second. 

By Father’s Day, Maroni has lost everyone to Holiday, including his own father. He suspects that the Roman is behind the Holiday killings despite the first victims being the Roman’s own men, because mobsters… well, they generally ain’t deep thinkers. But then, many characters in this story become stupid for plot reasons. Take Harvey, for example. 

Over the course of these months, Harvey makes the incredibly foolish decision to target Bruce Wayne, whom he suspects of being mobbed up with the Roman. Yeah, Loeb decided against having them be friends, instead opting to have Harvey detest Bruce because of his wealth and status. When Harvey botches the case due to his sloppy work, he becomes embittered, believing that Wayne, “with all his money,” has escaped justice like so many others. The concept of the dogged civil servant persecuting the poor innocent billionaire is something which hasn’t aged too well. 

Then, in a moment that directly references Andrew Helfer’s “Eye of the Beholder” (1990), Harvey makes the horrible decision to go visit his abusive dad on Father’s Day. And he comes home with a souvenir along with, presumably, a whole lot of renewed trauma. And Gilda (who has been curiously absent for several issues by this point) is the one who has to deal with the fallout. 

Next time: Gilda the ghost, plus a surprising detour into Marvel Comics! 

Note: This is the fifth part of my Gilda Dent retrospective, analyzing the complete history of the oft-overlooked woman who loved and lost Harvey Dent. New installments will be posted weekly! Previous installments can be found at the tag or in the following links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.


Special thanks to my Henchgirl, who extensively edited the following critique. I’ve struggled for decades to articulate the following thoughts, and they wouldn’t be nearly as coherent if it weren’t for her. Also, if something is funny, that was almost certainly her contribution.

I assume pretty much anyone reading this retrospective will have already read Batman: The Long Halloween (1996-1997), as it’s still one of the most popular Batman stories of all time. On the off chance you haven’t, I will make this as accessible as possible, but it will include MAJOR SPOILERS for TLH and its sequel, Batman: Dark Victory (1998). 

But let’s start with spoiling the twist ending for a whole different story: Presumed Innocent, the 1987 best-selling legal thriller by Scott Turrow which was turned into a 1990 movie starring Harrison Ford and Raul Julia. The film is especially important, as I strongly believe it served as the basis for Jeph Loeb’s reinterpretation of Gilda for TLH. You be the judge.

Note: This is the fourth part of my retrospective of Gilda, a complete history of the oft-overlooked woman who loved and lost Harvey Dent. New installments will be posted weekly! Previous installments: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

It’s hard to imagine that the comic strips by William Messner-Loebs didn’t influence the Harvey and Gilda of Batman: The Animated Series. There are numerous similarities, such as Harvey and Bruce being best friends, the Gilda-type being friendly with Bruce, and the final takedown of Two-Face. 

Before becoming Two-Face, a couple episodes featured Harvey Dent—without a Gilda by his side. Besides Bruce, his only other meaningful relationship was with Pamela Isley in “Pretty Poison,” and she tried to kill him! Between that and his appearance in the Game Boy BTAS game, his only role was to be the happy fool Bruce Wayne pretended to be, and a hostage in need of rescuing. For the sake of Batman’s drama, Harvey Dent had taken on Gilda’s occasional role as damsel in distress!

Then came his turn in the spotlight with “Two-Face: Part 1 & 2” (1992), where we finally meet our Gilda, Harvey’s girlfriend and soon-to-be fiance. This two-parter, serving as Two-Face’s origin in the animated universe, draws on both the comics and the oft-forgotten comic strips. The roots of these episodes trace right back to the Bill Finger trilogy, “Eye of the Beholder,” and Mark Verheiden’s story from Secret Origins Special. The last in particular, as Gilda’s animated counterpart is also named Grace.

Next time: Gilda Dent in Batman: The Long Halloween. 

Note: This is the third part of my retrospective of Gilda, a  complete history of the oft-overlooked woman who loved and lost Harvey Dent. You can read Part 1 and Part 2 here, and subsequent installments will be released weekly. 

Gilda was created to serve one role, which was to save Harvey from himself, or at least to try. As far as DC was concerned, their decision to keep Harvey as Two-Face effectively rendered her obsolete. Instead of being developed and finding a place in the Post-Crisis era, she was a casualty of the status quo, seemingly fated to play bystander and/or victim. The reboot didn’t matter, since she was essentially remade and scrapped with each appearance. 

For Gilda, it wasn’t Crisis that opened the door to a fresh start. It was Tim Burton’s Batman movie in 1989. The film’s success opened the door to a new wave of Batman multimedia, the most beloved of which being Batman: The Animated Series. Original stories could now be told outside of the comics, unburdened by DC’s decades of baggage. As an added plus, these stories could reach a mainstream audience who didn’t read comics at all. At least, not comic books. 

Orrrrrr at least this is where I would start talking about BTAS, but it turns out I wrote past LJ’s word limit. Whoops! I’ll be doing that part later in its own dedicated post. 

Next time: BTAS and Grace Lamont, the woman who might have become the most famous take on Gilda.

Note: This is the second part of my retrospective of Gilda, a complete history of the oft-overlooked woman who loved and lost Harvey Dent. You can read Part 1 here, and subsequent installments will be released weekly. 

The reboot of DC Comics in the mid-80’s was a fresh start, at least that was the idea. Some writers took full advantage, taking risks with new takes on classic characters. Other writers, who grew up reading and loving the classic stories, preferred to keep writing the characters as they’d always been. Or at least, how they’d always remembered them. 

Major characters took priority, getting new origins that established the tone of the ongoing books. Supporting characters gradually caught up, with people like Two-Face not getting the overhaul treatment for years afterward. And even then, it was often by an incremental “one step forward, two steps back” method of development. Minor characters like Gilda were at the bottom of the food chain, some getting erased entirely by disinterested writers. 

But Gilda survived, although you might not have noticed at first if you didn’t squint.

In an all-new take on Bruce Wayne’s first year as Batman, Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Batman: Year One (1987) featured a quick mention of Harvey Dent having a wife, who served as his alibi when Lieutenant Jim Gordon suspected the Assistant D.A. of being the mysterious vigilante. The wife, however, was not named, nor did she appear in any capacity. 

No reason why she should, as Harvey himself was a relatively minor character in Miller’s story. Still, it was enough for other writers to build upon, should they see fit. In its small way, Miller’s version of Harvey was remarkable, as it was the first time readers ever saw him in his pre-Two-Face days. It opened the door to more stories about Harvey as a crusading prosecutor, a friend and ally of the heroes, and perhaps even as a husband. But there was no telling what kind of character Gilda would become in this new upstart continuity, if she’d even be a character at all. 

Then came Secret Origins Special (1989), a giant-size issue of Post-Crisis spins on classic Batman villains. Surrounded by a framing sequence of a sleazy tabloid show doing an expose on Gotham rogues, the final story focused on the unseen side of Harvey Dent and his transformation into Two-Face, told by the only person who really knew him as he was. 

Her name was Grace.

Next time: Alice Dent of the 1989 Batman newspaper comic strip, and how her story sets the stage for “Batman: The Animated Series.”

What must it be like, to be a villain’s love interest? 

To be a supporting player of a supporting player, vanishing into comic book limbo and emerging once every ten or thirty years to again play your role on the sidelines of someone else’s tragedy? What happens when writers think that your love isn’t enough, and that you need to be something else? That your role is better served as a suffering victim? As a killer? As dead and gone?

Her name is Gilda Gold, but that’s not how she’s best known. She’s gone by other first names, and she didn’t even get her surname until thirty-eight years after her first appearance in 1942. Even now, she’s still known only as Gilda Dent, the former (and future?) wife of Two-Face.

Since that first appearance, she’s been inextricably tied to Two-Face. But Two-Face is not inextricably tied to her, according to generations of writers. As of June 2021, Two-Face has appeared in 1,361 comics, while Gilda--who has been around exactly as long--has only appeared in 64 issues (source: comicvine.com). Many of those are reprints, or technicalities where her character has been renamed and may arguably (if not effectively) be a separate character.

Her absence has been a loss for Two-Face himself, removing a crucial element of tragic love--and possible redemption--that was baked into the character from the very start. Theirs was a love story that married Beauty and the Beast with The Phantom of the Opera, where she saw the man behind the disfigurement, and he believed himself too hideous to be loved. It was only through her love and perseverance that he was pulled back from the brink, and the two were married and supposed to live happily ever after. 

But when DC decided they wanted Two-Face back as an ongoing villain, Gilda wasn’t even considered as a factor in the tragedy. She was omitted entirely, vanishing for decades. We can only speculate as to why, but the reasons seem apparent. Gilda’s very presence and the promise of emotional healing was an existential threat to Two-Face as a villain, and DC wanted him to be evil, period. 

She didn’t appear again until the 80’s, and even then, she’s only appeared in a handful of stories. Each story changed her, tweaked her personality, her motivations, and her relationship with Harvey, almost making her a different person each time. Sometimes literally, as she’s been renamed “Grace” and “Alice.” And yet, they’re all fundamentally the same Gilda: the love of Harvey Dent’s life, who has to cope with her husband’s physical and psychological trauma. 

Which, of course, is part of the problem. 

Gilda has never been allowed to become a fully fleshed-out character in her own right. Harvey’s trauma, while necessarily central to their arc as a couple, is never reflected by an equally important trauma of her own. Over her few appearances, there are only occasional glimpses of her internal life, and all too often they’re tossed aside in favor of a familiar, one-dimensional stereotype: the grieving, fretful wife. 

She had a career in 1942--quite a rarity for wives and girlfriends of secondary characters then--but you’d never know that now. Most writers don’t even bother to include one of her few established defining characteristics: that she’s an artist, a sculptor specifically. As far as Jeph Loeb was concerned in Batman: The Long Halloween--arguably Gilda’s biggest impact on pop culture--she had literally no life or interests of her own outside of having a family with her husband. In fact, she was willing to kill for it. Maybe. 

Since then, Gilda’s become a character who is either deadly or dead, having been murdered outright in 2013’s “New 52” origin of Two-Face. But all these changes haven’t made her a stronger character. She’s never had an internal life, or any life at all outside of Harvey Dent. Even the recent Gilda story by Mariko Tamaki in Batman: Black and White (2021), which served as a feminist deconstruction for her sidelined role, failed to address who she actually was as a person. She wasn't a three-dimensional character in her own right so much as as a stand-in for “neglected wife” characters everywhere. Important commentary to be sure, but in context unfortunately feeding the reductive archetype that swallowed Gilda rather than freeing her from it. 

Instead of building on the rough sketch that Bill Finger created in 1942, Gilda has actually regressed as a character over the decades, a depressingly common symptom of how wives and girlfriends in fiction exist only as accessories to the men in their lives. As such, her absence (coupled with her mismanaged return appearances) is not only a major loss for Two-Face, but also has led to her never truly coming into her own. 

Well, in honor of her impending eightieth anniversary, let’s examine the strange, troubled history of Gilda in all her iterations, personalities, and identities. Let’s see if we can find the fundamental truth in all these different takes, to see who she was, is, could be, and perhaps should become in the future.  

Coming up in Part 2: The first Post-Crisis years, in which Gilda changes her name, changes it back again, remarries, has kids, and just generally has a bad time all around.