Two-Face Tuesday: Dead Hal meets both Harveys in "Two," from THE SPECTRE #5

[thehefner]

Three weeks ago (with my "JLA teams up with Two-Face... wait what?!" post), lamashtar asked if I was going to post this particular issue, or if it was "too schmaltzy." To be honest, I wasn't sure (of either)!

Who here has read the Hal Jordan SPECTRE series (which ran 27 issues from 2001 to 2003)? I'm genuinely curious as to what anybody made of it. Personally, it was one of the more frustrating reading experiences I've ever had.

Issue #5--the topic of this week's post--is no exception, namely because it features the unlikely meeting of my two all-time favorite characters. And the results are... well... I'm still not really sure even now.










Here's the thing: Hal was my second favorite character of all time... not as Green Lantern originally, but rather as Parallax. Considering that Two-Face is my number one favorite, I loved the idea of a fallen hero striving for redemption and justice but always screwing it up by being so darn crazy. I wanted him to actually grow as a character, to be redeemed, even exonerated. Then they killed him off in a "heroic" manner to pay lip service to his fans, then get him out of the way so that Kyle could be a special little pumpkin.

So I was very excited by the prospect of Hal!Spectre. The character would finally get some development and redemption, and be a hero again! And it would be written by the great J.M. DeMatteis! Even better!

But the actual series was... well, I'm still not quite sure what it was. For one thing, Hal just doesn't work in this kind of context. But mainly... look, I'm an agnostic who loves the stories of religion but has no personal grasp on concepts like souls and karma beyond a layman's utilitarian knowledge. And reading THE SPECTRE, I felt bogged down in all the metaphysical wankery DeMatteis was packing into every issue. Just like with so much philosophy, I responded with a mixture of "so what?" and "SO BORED."

This was made especially frustrating when my two favorite characters actually met in the pages of THE SPECTRE #5. Surely, such an unlikely pairing-off was possible only in my fanboy imagination! At least, that was before Hal became the Spectre.


So, Hal has decided to eschew the previous Spectre's role as "Spirit of Vengeance" by becoming a "Spirit of Redemption," atoning for his own sins as the cosmic megalomaniac Parallax by helping other souls find their own grace.

In this issue, Spectre!Hal hears a prayer from Harvey Dent, who has defied his evil side long enough to issue a desperate, powerful prayer to God. The Spectre shows up, teleports Two-Face's henchmen off to the police department, and heals Harvey's face and--seemingly--his mind.





Hal goes off to continue angsting about his ill-defined new powers, when Abin Sur shows up. The ghost of Abin Sur, actually. You see, Abin's atoning for his own sins for giving Hal the Green Lantern ring in the first place, setting him on the path to becoming Parallax.

And yet, Abin says, "Despite all that's happened, all that's gone wrong, I still have faith in you. Won't you have some faith in me... in yourself...




(This characterization of Harvey and his relationships to his father and his dark side are consistent with DeMatteis' own TWO-FACE: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, and thus make this something of a sister story)






Once Hal puts his head back together, he tries let the power of the Logoz--don't ask--flow into Two-Face, to "remove the toxins that no longer serve a purpose in Harvey's..."

And then he's hit with a surge of knowledge. Hal says, "I... I seem to have made a... miscalculation."

He says this as Harvey heads to the one place he thinks will help him. He goes home. To Gilda.









Okay. So what do you make of this? Me, I just can't make heads or... I mean, I still don't know.

Like, the actual metaphysical stuff about karma meant absolutely nothing to me, but just flew right over my head. It all seemed so maddeningly vague: what old debts? We don't even know why poor Harvey has to suffer through this? What debts does he have to pay? How could he possibly have chosen this from a spiritual standpoint?

It was all so frustratingly unsatisfying. I suspect this could have been interesting if DeMatteis had paced it out over two or more parts, really explored what it meant for the sides to be separated like that.

If "good" Harvey (note the quotation marks) is still capable of violence, what would "big bad Harv" be capable of doing if he were unleashed? Really, it could be the Gotham version of Italo Calvino's THE CLOVEN VISCOUNT, wherein a man is split into his good and evil sides, both of whom are themselves capable of good and evil acts.

(forgive for the snobby literature reference; once I heard about the story in Mazzucchelli's brilliant graphic novel, ASTERIOS POLYP, I felt it was perfect for Harvey insight)

But no. Ultimately, this story feels too rushed, with only one insight to offer: "No, really: It Sucks to be Harvey Dent."




All that said, between this and their meeting in that JLA story, I'm in agreement with alias_grace when she expressed a wish for a proper Hal/Harvey teamup. Because, she said, "Hal is so very pragmatic, and has no patience for the crazy, and Harvey would take a deep and abiding delight in fucking with his head."

Seriously, I would pay good money to see J. Michael Straczynski write this as an issue of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, considering how he wrote Two-Face in the TEEN TITANS story and Hal in the most recent issue of TB&TB (with Dr. Fate).

Is anyone else reading TB&TB? I've really been liking it, and the GL/Dr. Fate issue was simply wonderful. I'm kind of surprised that no one seems to be talking about it.

Comments

[3goodtimes]

If we're talking metaphysics and religion, it's possible the 'old debts' were racked up in past lives and Harvey's current incarnation is meant to suffer through this to repay them. Spiritually, the person he is at his depth, the soul (for lack of a better word) that has lived through all those lives pushes Harvey to make decisions along those lines. Doesn't make all that much sense to me considering the fact that Two Face is just creating more debt by killing people but whatever. Maybe it's a 'reborn in ash' deal. He has to go to the depths to rise up again.

While I like the concept of this comic, the execution could use some serious work. It's convoluted and merely skims the surface of morality in a superficial way. It's confusing.

The art is damn pretty to look at though. And it is fun to see these two interact.

[3goodtimes]

Ah and I read the last issue of the Brave and the Bold. Wasn't too impressed, though I enjoyed the flashbacks. I'll have to check out the issue you're referencing.

[thehefner]

It would have been much more interesting and powerful to see how those old debts were racked up in the first place, and what that means for what Harvey's doing (or not doing) now.

and re: your comment on THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, all I can say is that I was just really moved by the conversation between the two characters. Straczynski is capable of really engaging dialogue and moving character moments when he gives a damn, like with BABYLON 5 and SILVER SURFER: ELEGY. Have you read the latter? This issue reminded me a bit of that.

Plus, that was the first time in a long while that I've found Hal Jordan written interestingly. I adore Hal, but the Johns and Robinson takes alike bug me for a number of reasons. I believe that Hal Jordan should be the Captain Kirk of the DCU, and would seriously love to see JMS tackle a full-on GL CORPS story. If he'd even finish it, that is.

Also, this issue was the first time I ever really cared about Dr. Fate. I've always wanted to, since his costume is awesome and all, but he never clicked for me. Then again, maybe I have a hard time wrapping my brain and heart around metaphysical/magical stories in general.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Yeah, this is kind of garbled, all right. All I'm really getting from it is 'man is not meant to live without either his good or his evil side, as they are both part of the same whole, and one is incomplete without the other', which is straightforward Jekyll-and-Hyde stuff. The rest is just pseudo-religious gobbledygook - I'm a firm believer that every religion gets SOMETHING right, and if you mixed them all together, you'd get something like the truth, but even so, layering the notion of karma over the Old Testament version of Christianity that the Spectre represents just makes the whole thing sound incredibly awkward. They represent two completely different sides of philosophy - mixing them together is like mixing doughnuts with chicken noodle soup. It might possibly taste OK, but your stomach and taste buds are never going to be convinced that these are two tastes that belong together.

[thehefner]

All I'm really getting from it is 'man is not meant to live without either his good or his evil side, as they are both part of the same whole, and one is incomplete without the other', which is straightforward Jekyll-and-Hyde stuff.

What's funny is that those themes are better explored in a later issue of this SPECTRE run, the only issue which I'd consider truly great. I'm sad to say to that this is probably due to the fact that it was written by John Ostrander, not DeMatteis. It's the one where the Spectre goes to Apokolips. Great little story.

See, yeah, I feel like DeMatteis was using this book as his own theological treatise, due to the series sometimes more devoted to long expositional monologues and discussion rather than actual stories.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Well, yeah, and those sorts of things can be fascinating if handled correctly - look at Alan Moore and 'Promethea' - it's just that in this case, the writer needed to think things through a bit more before starting out.

[tyriangalley]

I am seriously confused. This is possibly because it's around two in the morning and Joss Whedon totally fucked with my brain earlier. But. Confused.

(And I -- random ghost!Hal eating Twoface! OH, COMICS. Never change.)

[thehefner]

Yeah, and I'm not sure if posting the whole issue would have helped.

[zordboy]

"Is anyone else reading TB&TB? I've really been liking it, and the GL/Dr. Fate issue was simply wonderful. I'm kind of surprised that no one seems to be talking about it."

I buy the issues once they're TPBed, and I've really enjoyed reading those.

[thehefner]

I was planning on doing that myself, but the GL/Fate issue really tempted me to get it right there, so I could post a couple pages here in the hope of garnering it attention.

[box_in_the_box]

I enjoy a lot of DeMatteis' writing, but given his IRL devotion to Meher Baba, it's best if he's kept the hell away from stuff like this in his stories.

"How could he possibly have chosen this from a spiritual standpoint?"

Ask Werner Erhard or L. Ron Hubbard. The YOU CHOSE THIS FATE EVEN IF YOU DIDN'T REALIZE IT trope is strong in both est and Scientology. Erhard, in particular, was seriously bullshit about it; at one of his est seminars, he bragged that he managed to convince a Holocaust survivor that it was her fault that she wound up in the camps (Erhard is, in spite of his name, Jewish himself, for an added WTF).

[thehefner]

Whenever he writes stuff like this, I'm reminded of that back-up story in JLI drawn by Kyle Baker, where Guy Gardner meets Giffen, DeMatteis, and Helfer. In the story, Giffen is plotting some big sci-fi superhero story, with alien worlds and different dimensions, and DeMatteis keeps saying, "And that represents Hell... and that represents purgatory..." until Giffen explodes with exasperation.

I'm assuming the "YOU CHOSE THIS FATE EVEN IF YOU DIDN'T REALIZE IT" trope actually is all something to do with the real philosophy of karma, wherein I'm hoping it actually makes more sense and doesn't feel like, well, a more personal version of Original Sin. The way it's used in Scientology doesn't help either. Man, that story's my first true WTF of the day.

[theanswer]

I miss that look for Two-Face.

[thehefner]

The suit, or the scarring?

As for the suit, it's my favorite take on the black-white split suit, which is itself my second favorite Two-Face costume. My #1 will be in next week's post.

[theanswer]

I meant the whole BTAS look in general.

[yaseen101]

Random thoughts and a question:

- I'm still laughing at Hal's exploding head.

- The problem with the Spector is that he is far too powerful to live in a shared universe and his so-called 'omnipotence' usually amounts to energy blasts and whatnot. I think DC should either power him down somewhat or maybe somehow repress his powers so he can access some of his greater powers in certain times.

-It might be because I'm a (disillusioned) religious man myself but I prefer 'Spirit of Redemption' rather than 'Spirit of Vengeance'.


Question: I believe there was a discussion in the previous Two Face Tuesdays about Two Face being either a coping mechanism by Harvey to deal with his own controlling nature or Two Face being part of his multiple personality. Which one do you think is the best one?

[thehefner]

This series, to its credit, really did largely remove Hal!Spectre from the problems of the DCU, having his conflicts arise from the souls of troubled people and the cosmic villains who'd go after them.

I firmly feel that a "Spirit of Redemption" series has wonderful potential to be something utterly moving and awe-inspiring. I can only imagine what a cosmically poetic sci-fi writer like Straczynski could have pulled off with it, considering stuff like SILVER SURFER: ELEGY. Alas, with DeMatteis--a usually brilliant writer, particularly for his incomparable dialogue--slipped into touchy-feeling sap more often than not.

I believe there was a discussion in the previous Two Face Tuesdays about Two Face being either a coping mechanism by Harvey to deal with his own controlling nature or Two Face being part of his multiple personality. Which one do you think is the best one?

Good question! I'd say neither, honestly.

For one thing, I don't so much as see him as being controlling as much as someone who was manipulated from the start into knowing on some gut level that he never had any control, a knowledge he denied and suppressed all his life until it came out in the open (i.e. the abusive coin-flipping game his father played).

That was the start of the internal rift inside Harvey, and if he already had some kind of mental illness already, that just would have exacerbated the rift.

As it is, I'm not sure I can exactly see Harvey as a multiple personality, because multiple personality cases aren't aware of the other personalities. Ventriloquist is more multiple personality than Harvey. Harv's more schizophrenic than anything else, but even that isn't quite right. He's got a unique mental illness, I'd argue, not to mention a particularly literary one.

My theory for Harvey's state stems from Alan Moore's take on the Jekyll/Hyde relationship in LoEG vol.2. "Without me, you see, Jekyll has no drives. And without him, I have no restraints." With that in mind, I rather like to think that Harvey is not split into "good" and "evil" (because how does one quantify those?) but more like id and superego. Drives and restraints.

They're both extremes of the same person, since they are both Harvey, not separate personalities. Two sides of the same coin, existing simultaneously. Which is why the coin is so important. He needs that to mediate his two extremes, because he no longer has a middle ground inside himself.

[kingrockwell]

"logos" is Greek for "word", I believe. It's connected to Christ, through "the word became flesh", though a concept that's possibly older than that in metaphysics. Logoz specifically, from what I can ascertain, was some aspect of the Spectre entity DeMatteis explored in the previous issues?

It's probably impossible to completely divorce the Spectre from its metaphysical aspects, but certainly not always necessary to take them too far. I've always been curious about this series, though, wasn't it the same one that had Phantom Stranger playing Candyland with Hal's niece?

I really liked Hal as Parallax better, as well, though we certainly got some interesting stories out of its aftermath. You ever read Joe Kelly and Brent Anderson's Legacy? Parallax fascinated me as a kid, but that book made me really like Hal (until Rebirth came along and made me not care about him, at least).

[thehefner]

Yeah, after the first major storyline, Hal was granted the power of the Logoz, but as of this issue, he had absolutely no idea what it was or what it did. I actually forget, honestly. It's been so long since I've read the series.

Yeah, as I recall, she does indeed play Candyland with the Phantom Stranger! That thought should fill me with such delight, and yet somehow, in the actual series it just came off as too sickly cutesy.

I actually find it funny that you dislike REBIRTH yet cite LEGACY as why you like Parallax, because the Parallax of the latter is much more consistent with Johns' retcon characterization than the Parallax of Marz/FINAL NIGHT. Y'know, the grinning, psychotic madman, rather than the earnest, stoic, deluded antivillain.

As I said above, I got into Parallax in a big way when I was a teenager. I was far more interested in Parallax than GL (Hal or Kyle alike). Glad as I am to have Hal back and heroic, I wish they actually got there through character development rather than just a big undo of everything.

What really kills me--as a Hal Jordan fan and someone who has loved what Johns has done for the GL mythos--is that I really dislike Johns' mancrush take on Hal. I want to see Hal as the James T. Kirk of superheroes, y'know? Especially now that Johns has kinda made Sinestro his dark Spock.

[btravage.livejournal.com]

Too bad everything that happened in this series, even the less metaphysical developments concerning Hal's family, is destined to be ignored.

[thehefner]

In fairness, have you read the series? If so, can you honestly tell me any of that's a great loss?

[alias_grace]

Pretty! The story did nothing much for me, but the art is rather lovely.

I like the idea of Big Bad Harv being capable of good acts (unintentional good acts, just as Harveys' bad acts were unintentional.)

I think a way to make this story a touch more compelling would have been to involve Eclipso, the previous incarnation of Gods' Wrath. Then you've introduced the concept of duality and "chaos vs. reason" on a higher plane. From there you could spin something interesting.

[thehefner]

Yeah, I love the art here! Not to everyone's taste, though, as I've discovered.

Excellent point! I've actually wondered if there was any way to tie together Harvey with Eclipso, the classic "hero and villain in one man!" character. Now if I can just figure out any way to do something with Harvey and Jonah Hex, I'll be golden!

Reserving the right to not get into this further...

[lamashtar]

I went from being introduced to Hal/Parallax in GL/Silver Surfer to being introduced to his afterlife in Supergirl: Many Happy Returns (sadly, unpostable due to Voldemort). It was always clear to me that Spectre Hal was a god/really powerful angel figure. When I tracked down all the Spectre issues it's pretty obvious that Corrigan Spectre was Old Testament/simple childish belief system evolving, while the Hal version was graduated to more esoteric metaphysics. Not being burdened with preconceptions, I was able to enjoy the Spectre Hal series as the story of a man learning to become God.

But it did have a tendency to devolve into triteness and gobbledegook. Judging from the way Johns claimed it was very difficult NOT for Rebirth to be all about the Spectre, I'm guessing a Johns-written Spectre would've been just as good as his current run of GL.

Regarding karma..There is (allegedly) a portion of ourselves that is eternal. Call it a fraction of god's soul, or a soul made from his breath, whatever. It was once one with the universe. Religion has told us that there is no beginning and no end. Science tells us that quantum reality is acausal, meaning the future can affect the past, and also that time is relative to local physics and an illusion and might just go backwards when the universe collapses. From this we can guess that our original eternal vantage point might have afforded us better information than we get in our current linear human brains. Whether it was because of deterministic clockwork or genetic programming (as revealed by twin research) or because of quantum future jiggling, some of our lives were pre-selected.

It's hard to talk about metaphysics without stepping on toes, but regarding the choosing of one's life, it is a misconception that God is good. God is everything, both good and evil. One does not need to be 'good' to become closer to God and evil has a purpose. One embraces one's role in life, whether it is to be a bloodthirsty charioteer for Krishna, or to be the Villain. Bearing in mind, of course, that life and death and suffering are immaterial from a spiritual standpoint.

There are a number of things we do not perceive. We don't realize the car that hits us and cripples us is just made of energy, we don't feel the dizzying speeds at which the planet and universe are twirling, we don't realize that, quantumly, we are destroyed and recreated every second. We do not acknowledge that our own consciousness is part of that creation, but rumors to that effect persist in science. Spectre Hal says 'past debts'. Who knows? Two-Face is merely the local facet of a cosmic consciousness that spans eternity. Was he the victim of random chaos, the toy of a hideous retarded Jehovah, or did he volunteer to be the bad guy, this existence around?

From these points of view, our lives seem like some sort of demented pantomime, pretending we don't realize whats going on and falling over dead when the rules lawyer of physics says so. But blaming people for their blindfolds is a bit like blaming a trauma victim because they won't cheer up. This is difficult stuff to think about and impossible to deal with from a dualistic good/evil mentality. And it's completely unhelpful IMO for purely human things and not very uplifting at all. Mechanical systems and parental god-figures are much easier and make better stories, generally.

Re: Reserving the right to not get into this further...

[thehefner]

Hey, my intro to Hal (and GL in general) was GL/SILVER SURFER too! That's funny. Also, I like your assessment of the two different Spectres.

Thank you for having the most thoughtful response here, among many other great and thoughtful responses (and far more than I ever expected to receive). I think you particularly nail everything in the last four sentences, everything I've been struggling to articulate when I read this story, and much of SPECTRE in general. So thanks again.