We Believe in Harvey Dent

And some say that it loops forever
This road that I lose you on every time
And some say that it loops forever, this road
(road road road road road road road road)

--Poe, "This Road (The Mirror is a Trap)," from the Alan Wake 2 soundtrack

Cycles of violence. Cycles of trauma. It's always about the status quo, and the constant return to the same familiar pain.  Every development feeds into every regression. Equal and opposite reaction. Ka is a wheel whose only purpose is to turn, same as it ever was, the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end is never the end, and so it goes. 

In real life, cycles can be broken. People can say "enough, no more." But in fiction, they can't. If (speaking of characters paralyzed by chronic indecision) Hamlet had chosen to do anything else, then his story wouldn't be Hamlet. The tropes are hungry. 

But the superhero comics of Marvel and especially DC are their own beasts, wholly unique in their nature and problems. They're telling stories with characters who are decades old, some nearing a century, and these characters need to maintain a stable level of recognizably. They're not allowed to change.

I've been reading comics from the Big Two for over three decades, and I've known countless other fans of all ages. Many of them stop reading comics, leaving them for creator-owned/indie work or abandoning the medium entirely, and it's not exactly because these readers "grew up" or "grew out of it." Over and over again, the reasons I've heard amount to the same conclusion.

They realized that nothing mattered. Everything reverts back to the status quo. No development, not even death, ever sticks. All growth is undone, ruined, or outright ignored. All that effort, all those plans, for nothing.

"I have a plan," Harvey assures Lake, and we all know it's doomed. We all know we've signed up for a noir tragedy, and we've already seen how Harvey's wasted his once chance at a meaningful change. But even if he'd chosen differently, even if this weren't a tragedy, it wouldn't matter. Not for long, if at all.

Two-Face is the intellectual property of DC Comics, part of the greater WB media empire. He's not allowed to grow old, to die (permanently), and he's never allowed to be anything other than a villain. That's his role. That's his "fate," by corporate decree. He's condemned by his status in pop culture, to be nothing more than an iconic, antagonistic adjunct to Batman. 

Thread #12: What About Bat?

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?