Harvey Apollo, Two-Face--?

[jlroberson]

From the best(and judging from Ebay, the rarest) of all the Batman tabloid comics of the 70s, a...slightly different Two-Face. This is a series of Sunday newspaper strips from 1946, which received its first comics publication in this edition. I'm assuming this is...Jack Burnley?
Anyway. He's a handsome actor, see. It's ironic and stuff. Also, a request: anyone have some Dick Tracy Haf-And-Haf strips?

Comments

[thehefner]

Well, he had no powers left at that point. He'd have to make do with his Luthor intellect, and that'd make him a rather formidable foe.

And hell, Grant Morrison would probably pull something way wackier than an extra-dimensional Two-Face if he had the chance. It's one of the rare times I'm glad he's more interested in original characters rather than using actual Batman villains. He'd probably give Harvey the ability to talk to currency or something.

[psychopathicus_rex]

That'd be interesting, actually. It kind of reminds me of a character from 'The Last Unicorn' - good book, if you haven't read it - called Drin, who was so stingy and loved his money so much that his money loved him right back. At one point, he's trying to track the heroes down, and they're hiding from him with a few of his coins in their pockets, and he just stands there and yells out to his money 'who is your master?' 'Drin', hum the coins, 'Drin, Drin, Drinnnnn', and he just follows the noise straight to them.

[jlroberson]

>>Grant Morrison would probably pull something way wackier than an extra-dimensional Two-Face if he had the chance. It's one of the rare times I'm glad he's more interested in original characters rather than using actual Batman villains. He'd probably give Harvey the ability to talk to currency or something.

You've forgotten ARKHAM ASYLUM, I see. He did that. Only what he did was have Harvey's doctors try to rebuild his decision-making process by weaning him onto more complex things than coins. We see him when they've gotten him on tarot cards. Unfortunately, with so many choices, he can't do anything, including get up to go to the bathroom.

Personally, I always liked that take.

[psychopathicus_rex]

It gets pretty much to the heart of what Two-Face is as a character, yeah. Basically, he's a creature of simplicity - yes-no, on-off, black-white, good-bad. That's his whole belief system - it's why he's Two-Face in the first place. He can't handle complexity - it just confuses him.

[thehefner]

I didn't forget it, I'm just not counting it since I'm taking about Morrison's current run. If he pulled that Thin White Duke of Death thing with the Joker, I'd hate to see what he'd do to Harvey, playing up with some huge ideas about duality themes or talking currency rather than writing him as a character.

And yeah, I liked that take too, and I rather liked the notes he made about Harvey in the script (in the anniversary edition). Morrison's an ideas-first kind of writer most of the time, and many of the characters in Arkham suffered from it (Jervis, particularly, has never recovered), but it actually worked for Harvey.

[jlroberson]

I think I'm certainly the only one around here that did, but I happened to LIKE the Thin White Duke of Death phase. And most of RIP for that matter.

[thehefner]

You're not the only one, I assure you. But me, I just find a perma-grinning one-note ghoul out of a SILENT HILL game far more boring and less compelling than the charming, charismatic, manipulative sociopath who looks like all fun and games on the surface (even Heath was more this Joker than Morrison's).

What did you like about RIP?

[jlroberson]

I guess that for a while it really sustained a feeling of everything going to hell, and of finality. When Morrison goes there he usually creates an exciting story(Planet X held me in a similar way, as did the buildup in FINAL CRISIS), though at the end it often becomes unsatisfying.

[jlroberson]

And since you wrote that, he DID. In Batman 700, a future "Two-Face" has a dead fetus face growing out of his cheek, who's evil, and takes over when the main guy is asleep.

I thought that was kinda cool.

[thehefner]

Agreed! I rather liked that. If it actually was meant to be Harvey Dent himself, I'd have raised an eyebrow, but making a new character to explore those concepts in a different way, yeah, I really dug it.

I dislike Morrison's Batman, so it's weird to feel like I'm one of the very, very, very few people who actually liked BATMAN #700.