Batman and Robin # 27

[superfangirl1]

Comments

[freezer]

So Nu52 Gotham is a fucked-up enough place where a known, active defense attorney can be elected DA?

And REALLY, DC? Did Harvey Dent need to be re-imagined as a conflicted mob lawyer? Wasn't the point of Two-Face that he was a hero gone bad?

Whatever, DC.

[nyadnar17]

A lot of morons seem to think the "good" part of harvey is what keeps him from being a top tier villain.

[sadoeuphemist]

How is this not heroic? He is a mob family lawyer who turns against the mob and helps put them away. That's plenty heroic.

It's pretty ridiculous because in the last post about this, there were a whole bunch of people who thought it was 'evil' of Harvey to use his legal tricks to put the McKillens in jail. Whatever. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

[freezer]

How is this not heroic? He is a mob family lawyer who turns against the mob and helps put them away. That's plenty heroic.

I will concede that point.

Which still leaves the idea that a mob lawyer could be elected DA just like that.

[icon_uk]

Isn't Gotham City meant to be corrupt? A rigged DA election is hardly that big a surprise is it?

[mrstatham]

He's also being backed by Bruce and other prominent Gothamites, from the look of things, who could probably put enough money behind Harvey's campaign to deflect anything the mob could do.. And Batman would be able to stop anything illegal the mob try.

[sadoeuphemist]

Man, this ex-mob lawyer DA is sitting in the same room discussing strategy with the police commissioner and a man dressed up in a bat suit. Gotham's so bad that people tend to overlook little foibles like that.

[freezer]

Yet another point I must concede.

[ilmari]

As others have said, it really depends on the town.

Oscar Goodman spent most of his career as a lawyer defending (and often acting as the mouthpiece for) some of the most infamous gangsters in Las Vegas, but that certainly didn't hinder him much from being elected mayor (twice, getting 86% of the vote the second time around).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Goodman

[icon_uk]

But, and this is a genuine question, not a snark, why is he putting them away? The motivation is important to whether something is actually heroic or not.

[sadoeuphemist]

Because they're killers and he thinks they deserve to be in prison? I don't know what you think his motivation is.

[icon_uk]

It's, at best, ambiguous I'd say. It could be that, or based on the implications of last issue, they're people who can interfere with his personal aspirations (as suggested last issue when he was talking to the women after their arrest) since they are aware that he is not exactly a straight shooter and are better out of his way. That's not heroic, that self serving corruption.

[sadoeuphemist]

How on earth do you reconcile that with the scans here, where he was picked by Wayne to be the DA precisely because of his sordid past defending criminals and manipulating technicalities? He has nothing to hide. And the McKillens are still pursuing their case against him from behind bars, so how will putting them in jail suppress anything?

I think this narrative you've created is entirely fabricated. The McKillens can't interfere with his ambitions aside from like, trying to have him killed, and he's perfectly well within his rights to want them to be locked up for that.

[icon_uk]

As we saw from the events of last issue (which come after this sequence chronologically), we know that, yes the sisters quite possibly can.

They are convinced (and as discussed last month, it seems more than possible that they are correct, though I recall you not agreeing with that reading of it) that the only reason they were able to be arrested was because Dent violated attorney/client privilege and they are seeking to prove that themselves.

Breaking privilege is not just a manipulation of a technicality, so if that were to be proved conclusively, if wouldn't matter who supported him, he would not be able to hold the position of DA, because his high profile success in putting them behind bars would likely be thrown out.

[sadoeuphemist]

So you think he violated attorney client privilege to put them in jail, in order to suppress that fact that he violated attorney client privilege to put them in jail?? C'mon, think this through.

We see in these scans why he turned against them, why he wants them put away - because he objects to them killing people, which is a pretty good reason. I'm not sure how you came up with all this stuff about him being self-serving or his personal aspirations. Putting the McKillens in jail through unlawful means doesn't suppress anything, it just opens him up to attack. If he wanted to get ahead in life, he would have just kept working with them.

[mrstatham]

Except we can see here that the McKillens are seemingly willing to do things that Harvey would find difficult to cover them for... Like trying to murder the Police Commissioner. Given they're the villains telling us that Harvey abused attorney/client privilege, it could easily be a case of them being unreliable narrators when they actually tried to pull something equally stupid and he's no longer around to cover for them.

[sadoeuphemist]

To be honest, I am willing to give the McKillens the benefit of the doubt about that. It's just that icon_uk's interpretation of Harvey's logic is completely circular. It's like saying, "I killed this guy to make sure that he couldn't tell anyone that I killed him."

Even if Harvey did break the law to put them in jail, his motivation seems obvious - because they could not be punished by the law otherwise thanks to his previous efforts.

[ensiform]

Oh the endless rebootings and rebrandings of Harvey Dent. So, so boring. Zzzzzz.

[starwolf_oakley]

Harvey Dent's origins are redone almost as much as the Joker. They keep changing how "bad" he was before his accident.

Even Christopher Nolan had Harvey angrier over Rachel's death than he was over getting half his head char-broiled.

[walkingthroughforest]

...I don't think that's the most unreasonable thing to bring to the character.

Lose half your face or the love of your life. I can tell you which seems more important to me.

[bradygirl_12]

Badass Jim? I approve. :)

[benuben]

Meh. This strikes me as trying too hard. Jim is a badass normal not an John Woo character.

[benuben]

Ah, so Harvey wasn't an asshole who broke one his proffesion's most sacred rules for his own benefit, it's just that Gordon and Batman manipulated him into breaking attorney/client privilege, and risk disbarment and violent retribution. Not sure what's better.

[espanolbot]

To be fair, he might be breaking one of his most important codes, but he's doing so to put away two people willing to gun down families in the street to "send a message". I think the rights of the people not wanting to murdered by homocidal gangsters should take some priority, really.

Plus, it's not like he's going all Frank Castle on them, he's getting them imprisoned for things that they actually did, even if he wasn't meant to tell anyone about them.

[benuben]

I'm not going against Harvey here, my problems are with Gordon and Batman using him like this. The first part of my comment was about the previous issue where it was intentionally implied Harvey did it just for his own benefit.