We Believe in Harvey Dent

Up to this point, Harvey Dent had been blindly barrelling ahead along a single road, ignoring the warning lights on his dashboard and the signposts with "NO OUTLET" and "CLIFF AHEAD, DUMMY." He thought he'd left his past behind, but all this time, it's been lying low in the backseat. Whenever Harvey pulled over to rest, his Dark Passenger would take the wheel and drive back, undoing each day's work. That's why he never seemed to make any real progress, why "the closer we get, the further away it seems." Half the time, he's been the passenger in his own car. 

Now, the car's broken down, his stowaway has been discovered and dismissed, he finds himself at a crossroads. He knows it's only a matter of time before the Devil shows up, contract in hand, ready to strike a deal. He has a choice to make. And Harvey's never been good with choices. So he's going to try lying in the middle of the road for a while, curled up in the fetal position, and see where that takes him. 

Thread #11: Who Was Harvey Dent?

Over the course of Harvey Dent's magical mystery trial inside his own brain, we've heard Scarvey testify on why he was created and how he became the scarred, malignant gremlin he is today. Over the course of Two-Face's 80+ years in media, no one has ever given the bad side of Harvey a chance to advocate for himself, much less to make a case against Harvey. 

Given how many fans don't see any reason to care for or sympathize with Two-Face in general, I'd be curious to know how a wide variety of readers would react to this testimony, and how many would feel empathy for the little red devil inside Harvey Dent. If this series has proven anything, it's validated my long-held conviction that Two-Face is a richly complex character who could/should fill whole theses of study. Some, more flattering than others. 

A lot of it depends on one's conception of Two-Face, right down to a fundamental question asked way back in 1942 on his first cover appearance.

Is he one man or two? Either answer branches out into an extensive flowchart of further questions, as generations of writers and readers have all explored their own interpretations of this seemingly-simplistic character. For a guy who explicitly represents good and evil, and all other dichotomies as an extension, he cannot be so easily defined. 

I myself keep waffling between distinctions when discussing Harvey and Scarvey in this series. Sometimes, I treat Scarvey like an anthropomorphized metaphor, and others, as a distinct alter with his own identity. All of this uncertainty and ambiguity about Harvey is one reason why I'm still so fascinated by Two-Face, with all his complexity and contradictions (even if many of those come from decades of inconsistent writing).

One man or two men? Are Harvey and Scarvey two distinct people or two separated halves of a single person? Or is Scarvey more like a malignant offshoot of Harvey's whole self: a dark and amoral cancer like the talking boil on Richard E. Grant's shoulder in How to Get Ahead in Advertising, threatening to consume and replace his entire identity? Does Scarvey have or even deserve agency, or is he just a personified representation of disordered thinking like negative self-talk? Is Scarvey his own person, or is he Harvey Dent? What, if any, responsibility does Harvey owe to Scarvey and/or himself? Was Two-Face an identity that was forced upon Harvey, or is it something he chose to become?

In the end, the Judge may pass sentence on Harvey Dent. But we have to judge him and Scarvey alike for ourselves. Which brings us to the birth of Two-Face, and Scarvey's most damning testimony yet.

Thread #10: The Truth(?) About Two-Face

Continuing from last post, because the draft got way too long, we rejoin the Trial of Harvey Dent (featuring Harvey Dent and maybe also Harvey Dent in a wig and gown) already in progress. 

We saw Christian Ward's take on Harvey's father, how it compared with previous versions in canon, plus the first true introduction of Harvey's mother in comics canon. But we've barely begun to scratch the surface of her, and the roles she and the father played in the damage to Harvey and the creation of Scarvey. 

Which brings us to Exhibit C.

Thread #9: Harvey's Mom, and the Origin of Scarvey

Thanks to everybody who has been following along (and hopefully keeping up) this far. I know it's been a roundabout journey, with lots of backtracking to cover all the different paths, but we're through with all that. From here on out, all roads have converged into a single, final stretch that runs straight ahead. Just try not to think about the unfinished bridge over that cliff in the distance. 

This has been a series about secrets and lies, about false faces we wear to fool others and even ourselves. Harvey Dent thought he could wear the mask of the man he was in order to become the man he was, or at least thinks he was. It mostly worked: the White Church still thinks he's the same Two-Face of old, entrusting him with rooting out the Shadow Hand. The only one who saw through Harvey's facade was Lake Cantwell, a self-admitted "Two-Face fangirl" who presented herself as a scrappy, ambitious petty crook. But even she only had an abstract idea of Two-Face, and has slowly been reckoning with the reality.

Harvey Dent, a man who once championed truth and justice, has managed to fool everyone. Himself, most of all. He thought he could play the role of Two-Face, to pretend to be everything he hates about himself. He truly believed he could somehow lie, kill, and double-deal his way back into his old life. Back to being "Good." He really thought he'd managed to overcome his severe mental disorders and trauma through sheer force of will, and that he'd kept the Bad Harvey securely locked up within the Mind Prison. 

Now he knows the truth. He is the Shadow Hand. Scarvey is able to escape the prison for limited periods, taking control of their body, and has been running the Shadow Hand in order to sabotage Harvey's work within/against the White Church. An equal and opposite reaction to everything Harvey's done so far. But just like Harvey, Scarvey doesn't want balance. He wants it all. He wants justice. And now, as a horrified Harvey Dent melts down inside his own psyche, he's forced to confront his demons. All of them. 

After the dichotomies this series has thrown at us so far, like the White Church/Shadow Hand and Lake/Die, it's only natural that we now start to examine the opposing force of Harvey Dent himself. 

Let’s shift away from the “real world” that Harvey inhabits and take a brief tour of this cozy little corner of his psyche. It’s here that Scarvey will finally get to speak for himself, to tell his side of things, but the setting itself gives us some hints about what really goes on in Harvey’s head.

Sadly, no, it’s neither like a famous Pixar movie nor an obscure Fox sitcom with the same premise starring two Simpsons actors. Within this bifurcated brain of Harvey Dent’s, there’s only room for TWO personality aspects. Or… could there be others?

Thread #6: The MIND Prison! (Mentok the Mind-Taker: "OooooWEEEEoooo!")

(Previous/Master Post)

After all this preamble about the White Church and the Shadow Hand, about the mysteries of Lake Cantwell and her evil (possibly twin?) counterpart, we FINALLY get to talk about Harvey himself, and the choices that Christian Ward made for Two-Face’s first-ever solo series! Hooray huzzah yippie and so on!

… I’ll be real with you here, folks: this is intimidating as hell. For me personally, I mean, trying to tackle all this.

Christian Ward doesn’t write Harvey Dent the way I would, nor does he deliver fanservice to people like me specifically. That’s a good thing. At a certain point, I can’t be objective about Two-Face. I’m too close to him. It’s too important for me that others see value in him as more than just a villain, a mobster, a gimmick, and/or just anthropomorphized symbolism. For me, there was a lot riding on this series’ existence beyond just “will it be good?”

Ward takes the gutsy route of making Harvey–the “Good Harvey” part of Two-Face–a flawed character. Not in a “oh it turns out HE’S no angel either” kind of way, like Scott Snyder and others have tried doing by way of cheap, edgy subversion. Both-sides-ism is a plague in our world, both in politics and art, something that pretends to convey moral complexity in a simplistic way that makes audiences feel superior. If they’re BOTH bad, then you don’t have to THINK or CARE about either of them.

On the other hand, you have writers who make Harvey a cipher, a bland everyman with no real personality nor agency of his own. Just like the common misconception of Henry Jekyll, Harvey's often written as the Good/"Normal" (read: blandly white/straight) Man who is tormented by The Devil, a walking trope upon whom readers can project themselves and their own inner demons. Not only is this boring, but it makes him so ill-defined as a character that it often leads to the “actually, both sides” takes.

Ward makes Harvey a three-dimensional human being, just as he does with Scarvey. His Harvey is not a White Knight, but a flawed human being. Vitally, these aren’t flaws that anyone can just dismiss as proof that he deserves what happens to him. Combined with his other self, Harvey (under Ward) is a complicated man with decades of unprocessed personal issues. And he’s made his problems a problem for everyone else, many times over.

Now, in Ward’s story, Harvey Dent is trying to make up for his past. Except that’s not accurate. His past is everything to him, but atonement is not on his agenda. That would require a willingness to reckon with himself, to face himself, that Ward’s Harvey entirely lacks. And that’s key to the complex tragedy that Ward has envisioned for Two-Face.

Thread#5: The Greek Tragedy of Harvey Dent

Midway into writing my review of Two-Face: Trial Separation, I realized that there was no way I could properly discuss Harvey Dent's first-ever solo series without discussing Gotham Nocturne: Ram V's epic storyline which had just wrapped up a few months earlier. It was a controversial arc, and one of the few Batman storylines I've actively loved in recent memory, and not just because of what it did with Two-Face. 

But that said, oh my LORD what it did with Two-Face. Nocturne was one of the biggest, most important, most innovative Two-Face stories ever created, but few took note because it was buried inside a huge storyline that many found incomprehensible. And I don’t think we can really discuss Ward’s Two-Face until we look at the monumental events that Harvey endured over the preceding two years.

Tangent: No Wait Seriously We Gotta Revisit “Gotham Nocturne” from Detective Comics #1062-1089 (2022-2024), Trust Me Guys

Welcome back to our extensive postmortem of the first-ever Two-Face solo series, which was cancelled far too soon. In the first part, we looked at the supervillain courtroom known as the White Church, and the Shadow Hand which seeks the destruction of both the court and its prosecutor, Two-Face. There's more to Harvey himself than meets the eye, but before we can get to that, it's time to meet two all-new characters, original to this series and each with the potential to change everything forever for Harvey Dent. 

Thread #3: What’s the Deal with Lake Cantwell?

(Note: Hey everybody, been awhile! I've been working on this monster of a review for almost a year, and it's still not finished at the time I write this. But I wanted to at least start posting it here, one installment at a time, adding links and whatnot as I go. Hopefully the end result will be enjoyably readable, and not look like the blog entries of a crazy person. So treat this as a WIP for now, and thanks for reading!)

In December 2024, eighty-two years since his debut, Two-Face was honored with his first-ever solo series. The result was one of the most ambitious DC projects of the year, an overwhelming mishmash of ideas and plotlines all rooted into a psychological thriller about a man at war with himself.

Six months later, it was over.

It’s been called a cancellation, although this isn’t exactly accurate. It was only guaranteed for six issues, with an option to be extended to a 12-issue maxiseries (like Tom King’s Penguin) or even an ongoing (like G. Willow Wilson’s Poison Ivy), but only if it sold well enough. Obviously, it didn’t.

Which, frankly, is fucking bizarre to me. Look, we all know Harvey isn’t exactly popular, given how often he’s left off merch and stuff. But still, it’s a BATMAN comic, f’r god’s sake! Bat-books are such reliable commodities that DC keeps cranking them out at the expense of every other IP they have! As Evan Dorkin noted in his typically acerbic fashion, comic nerds gotta have their Batman! Was the “T” section of the New Comic shelves too far away from the eyesight of customers looking in the “B”s? Because from what I’m seeing online, a whole lotta people didn’t know there even WAS a Two-Face series until it was over!

One has to wonder if it’d have sold better if Batman had been right there in the title. Batman Presents: Two-Face! Or, Batman’s Pal, Harvey Dent! Or maybe even, Batman Universe: Two-Face’s Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Life! Then again, given the economic state of things (waves vaguely at the horrors), maybe it was just the wrong time. Not even the incredible covers by Baldemar Rivas can move a book if readers are too broke to buy ‘em.

All this wouldn’t be so bad if Two-Face (2024) had just been like so many other Harvey stories: a bland, forgettable nothingburger with a side of edgy fries and a gritty milkshake made with USDA grade-A murder. But there’s just one tiny little problem: it was actually really, really good.

In fact, it might have been TOO good (and yes, I’m actively resisting the devil on my shoulder that wanted me to spell that T-W-O). This series was overstuffed with ideas, themes, and several concurrent storylines, each of which was rich enough to sustain the comic equivalent of “six seasons and a movie.” Instead, writer Christian Ward (Batman: City of Madness, Event Horizon: Dark Descent) was forced to end his story at the midpoint.

Ward has said he wrote issue #6 to serve as a finale, if necessary. One could argue that the ending works, as a natural conclusion for Harvey Dent and his Sisyphusian quest for redemption. To me, it’s a maddening cliffhanger with several unresolved subplots and unanswered questions. I haven’t felt this upset at a series finale since the first time I binged Twin Peaks, and for a lot of the same reasons! I can’t explain further without spoiling both stories, but IYKYK.

While I eventually came around on the TP finale, finding it a work of genius, I don’t see the same happening for Two-Face (2024). Hefner needs closure! But hey, Hefner did get closure for TP when the show was revived for 2017’s The Return, so maybe all hope is not lost for Two-Face 2024! After all, Si Spurrier’s brilliant run on John Constantine: Hellblazer was cancelled, then revived thanks to sales, positive buzz, and/or whatever mystical whims move the higher-ups at DC at any given moment.

The trade paperback of all six issues, titled Two-Face: Trial Separation, has just been released, so all hope for a continuation lies in those sales. But make no mistake: even if we DO get the other six issues, they won’t be enough to resolve everything that Ward had stuffed into Two-Face (2024).

He could have played it safe, treating it like a pilot episode with a simpler, standalone story with hints of a greater plotline should it get greenlit. Instead, Ward shot the works: cramming in as many ideas, twists, and developments as if each issue could be his last. Instead of doing one trick really well, he staged a one-man three-ring-circus, invoking memories of the frenzied climax of “Yankee Doodle Daffy.”

To be clear, I admire the hell outta Ward for this.He only had one shot, so he brought a double-barrelled shotgun: lacking in accuracy, but it has a wide and powerful spread. Like “Yankee Doodle Daffy,” it often reads like a frenetic audition: a series pitch with a dozen other pitches all crammed inside, like the love child of a Russian nesting doll and a clown car. Like trying to stuff a whole turducken into a teacup. All of which is to say that Two-Face (2024) is… well, it’s something of a mess, made all the messier by the fact that it’s clearly unfinished.

This makes the prospects of its trade paperback sales all the more concerning. Will readers of Two-Face: Trial Separation see it as an incomplete work of art, like Metal Gear Solid V or a great pilot for a series that never got picked up? Or will they just see the mess?

I don’t think we can examine Two-Face (2024) in a straightforward, linear fashion. Instead, we must carefully unravel each tangled thread of this narrative rat-king, breaking it down one plotline at a time. So for this very, very long review, we’ll be jumping around all over the place, treating each thread as its own unfinished story arc to see what worked, what didn’t, and where it might (or even should) have gone from here.

So grab a snack, and prepare to give yourself a few breaks, since this is the longest review I’ve ever written for such a short comic. You ready? Let’s break down the many plots of Two-Face (2024).

We’ll start with its basic premise, the first of several hooks Ward had in store from the very first issue.