10 Things Every DC Comics Fan Forgets About Two-Face
Two-Face embodies both the gangster and super-villain sides of Batman's expansive rogues gallery.
Transcript
00:00Let's talk about Two-Face. Now, Two-Face was created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger,
00:05and appeared in Detective Comics number 66 in 1942. And there's a lot that we as fans of comics
00:11know about Two-Face. He is Harvey Dent. He's unable to make any major decisions without
00:16flipping a two-headed coin that is scarred on one side. The left side of his face is
00:21horribly scarred by acid, and that he's a very charismatic and excellent public speaker.
00:25Plus, he's pretty handy with a pair of dual pistols that he always carries.
00:28So these are the things that we know about Two-Face. But what about 10 things that we don't?
00:33Well, that's why I'm here today, as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com,
00:37and these are 10 things that every DC comic fan forgets about Two-Face.
00:42Number 10. Harvey wasn't the only Two-Face
00:45While Harvey Dent is the one true Two-Face, there have been a number of people who have
00:49portrayed the villain over the years. The first imposter was Two-Face's own Butler Wilkins,
00:55who used makeup to become Two-Face, and make it appear that the recently recovered Dent
00:59had relapsed and destroyed his own face once more. The second, and one of the most tragic,
01:04was actor Paul Sloan. Sloan was filming a documentary on Harvey Dent, and a jealous
01:08prop master had replaced fake acid with real acid, leading Sloan to believe that he was Two-Face,
01:13and then went on a crime spree. He's healed by Batman, and then re-disfigured by Two-Face himself
01:19in the hopes that he would continue to commit crimes to confuse Batman. George Blake is the
01:23third Two-Face imposter, and the second to use makeup. He used makeup on the opposite side of
01:28his face to Dent, so it was obvious to Batman that he was a fraud. And on the villain-run
01:32planet Earth-3, a heroic character named Three-Face has three distinct personalities
01:38and differentiates them with makeup, and she is also the mother of sometimes-Titan,
01:42Jeweller Dent.
01:43Number 9. The character is based on a horror classic
01:46It should come as no surprise that Batman co-creator Bob Kane drew inspiration from
01:50the story Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but it was from the 1931 film and not the original
01:561886 novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde from which the writer took his inspiration.
02:02In the film, Dr. Henry Jekyll believes that every man has the capacity for both good and
02:07evil inside them, and experiments with a mixture of drugs that unleashes his sadistic,
02:11amoral alter-ego, Edward Hyde. Hyde abuses and then eventually murders a music hall singer that
02:17Jekyll had saved from a fight, and assaults Jekyll's fiancée and murders her father.
02:22Hyde was eventually killed and transforms back into Jekyll.
02:25Kane also drew a great deal of inspiration from the pulp character The Black Bat. Not only is he
02:31a bat-themed character that fights crime, similar to what would become The Batman,
02:34but The Black Bat's alter-ego is Anthony Quinn, a district attorney who is blinded and disfigured
02:40after acid is thrown at him by a criminal.
02:42Number 8. He has a complicated relationship with a GCPD detective
02:47Two-Face found love in the most unlikely of places, but it was a love that was entirely
02:52one-sided. During the No Man's Land saga, where Gotham City was ravaged by a devastating earthquake
02:57and temporarily cut off from the rest of the nation by government mandate, Gotham City police
03:02detective Renee Montoya and Two-Face met. Renee appealed to the Harvey side of his persona and
03:07was very kind to him. At one point, Dent sent flowers to Renee and she came to visit him in
03:12Arkham Asylum, but Dent mistook this kindness for affection and began to fall in love with
03:18the detective. Montoya rejected Harvey and the unrequited love turned into an obsession.
03:23Two-Face framed the detective for murder, outed her as a lesbian, and orchestrated a prison break
03:28to make her a fugitive. Dent did all of this to leave Renee with nothing so that she would
03:33have to come running back to him, and unsurprisingly, it didn't happen.
03:37Even after all of the hell that Two-Face put her through, Renee still saved Harvey's life.
03:42Now the faceless hero of the question, Renee stops Two-Face from killing himself by convincing
03:47the Harvey Dent side of the persona that he still is a good man.
03:507. He Was Left Out Of The 1960s Batman Series
03:54Two-Face is one of the few top-tier villains of Batman's rogues gallery that wasn't featured
03:59in the iconic 1960s Batman television series. This was probably because Harvey Dent's face was deemed
04:04too frightening for the kid-friendly audience, but that doesn't mean that the character was
04:09completely forgotten. Prolific science fiction writer Harlan Ellison wrote a Two-Face story for
04:14the series in 1968, and then-young actor Clint Eastwood had been cast to play, but the series
04:20had been cancelled by that time. The Batman 66 The Lost Episode two-issue comic was produced
04:26based on Ellison's script and had a Two-Face that fits the aesthetic of the series.
04:30Lesser-known Batman villain False Face was a mask-wearing surrogate for Two-Face in the series
04:34and only appeared in two episodes, True or False Face, and Holy Rat Race.
04:39False Face was later revealed to be the also-omitted Clayface in the Batman 66 comic book.
04:44False Face has appeared five times in the Batman 66 comic book to date.
04:486. Batman's Giant Penny Originally Had Nothing To Do With Two-Face
04:53The giant penny in the Batcave is one of the three most iconic trophies that Batman owns,
04:57along with a giant Joker card and, of course, the mechanical Tyrannosaurus Rex. The penny weighs in
05:02at 216 pounds and resembles a copper penny with the year 1947 on it, obviously at gigantic size.
05:10The interesting thing is, though, is that the penny has been wrongly attributed to Two-Face
05:14when only a cartoon and recent comics have linked the coin to the character.
05:18The penny was originally attributed to a low-level villain named Joe Coin,
05:21the Penny Plunderer. During a robbery, he found the register filled only with pennies,
05:26and he saw this failure as a sign to base all of his crimes on the pursuit of the near-worthless
05:31tender. The giant penny and a valuable one-cent stamp were the valuables that Coin was after
05:36when he was easily bested by Batman. Later, Lucius Fox, the CFO of Wayne Enterprises,
05:41used the penny to thwart the Riddler when it was being used as a giant art installation.
05:45It was Batman The Animated Series episode,
05:47Almost Got Him, that saw Batman strapped to the penny and flipped into the air,
05:51about to be crushed. Single issues of various comics put Coin, Two-Face,
05:55and the penny together into one story.
05:58Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent Knew Each Other As Children
06:02The new 52 reboot made further connections to the lives of Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent,
06:06connecting their lives in places that had never been connected before. For years,
06:10Harvey's politician father would get drunk and beat him, and it would sometimes give Harvey
06:14the chance to get out of the beating by the flip of a coin toss. Harvey eventually had enough. He
06:19tied up his father and left him in their house for several days until the police discovered him.
06:23The younger Dent was captured and sent to Arkham Boys Rehabilitation Home, and there he met a
06:27young and rather serious Bruce Wayne, who was still traumatized by the recent murders of his
06:32father and mother, and the two became friends. The young boys entered into a pact. Bruce agreed
06:38to kill Dent's abusive father, and Harvey would agree to kill the Wayne's murderer,
06:42who was low-level thug Joe Chill. However, Harvey decided to give his father a second chance when
06:47the man expressed remorse and re-minted his coin to have two heads, as a gesture that he would
06:52never beat Harvey again. Bruce thought that this was naive, but left Dent to begin his life anew,
06:57as he set his own into motion.
06:594. Duality and the Number Two
07:02Although it was not originally part of the character, the concept of duality and variations
07:06on the Number Two soon became an important part of the gimmick behind Two-Face. While not as
07:11belaboured as heavily as bird crimes for the Penguin or Riddler's Riddles, it was not uncommon
07:16to see doubles somewhere in the vicinity of Two-Face. Because of his physical beauty and
07:20charismatic nature, Dent earned the nickname of Apollo, the Greek god of the sun, music,
07:25and many more things. After his transformation into Two-Face, Dent has identified more with the
07:30god Janus. Janus is the god of duality, beginnings, endings, transitions, time, and passages.
07:35The Number Two became a key element in Two-Face's life as well. He would hire identical twin
07:40henchmen, and commit crimes on a day with two in the date, or precisely at 2.22 in the day.
07:45Two-Face might commit crimes in buildings with two in the address, rob two of something,
07:49or two establishments at once, rob it twice, or some other variation on the theme. And remember
07:54that every aspect of these crimes was determined by a flip of his coin.
07:583. The Coin Has Its Own History
08:01As much as the near-perfectly divided face of the man himself, Two-Face's coin is an
08:05icon image that holds a revered, if somewhat morbid, place in comics history. Two-Face
08:10uses the coin to make most, if not all, of his major decisions. Many times, Two-Face's
08:14own elaborate plans have become undone thanks to the good side of the coin turning up.
08:19In early continuity, the coin was the good luck charm of a crime boss,
08:22Sal Moroni. After Moroni threw acid at Dent and created Two-Face, Dent scarred up one of the sides
08:28of the two-headed coin so that there was now a perfect or good side, and a marred or evil side,
08:33just as he saw himself. Later, the coin was said to be owned by his abusive father,
08:37and he would flip it to see if young Harvey could skip the beating for the night. The younger Dent
08:41rarely won. When Harvey's dad showed remorse, he showed him a two-sided coin with the same image
08:46on both sides, which was a coin that he took and scarred up when he became Two-Face.
08:512. Origin Changes
08:53So the origin of Two-Face has remained mostly unchanged throughout the various comic ages,
08:57but nothing remains the same forever. In the very beginning, Two-Face was named Harvey Kent.
09:02The last name was changed to Dent to avoid confusion with Superman's alter ego, Clark Kent.
09:07This version was later retconned to have been cured, and was now the friend of the retired
09:11Bruce Wayne on Earth-2. The most well-known origin of Two-Face saw crusading and attractive
09:16district attorney Harvey Dent hammering mob boss Sal Moroni on the witness stand before the mobster
09:21threw acid at Dent's face, with only Batman deflecting half of the shot so it only struck
09:25his left side. This drove Dent insane, and he took Moroni's lucky two-headed coin,
09:30scarring one side as his own, and used it to make his decisions between doing good or evil.
09:34In the New 52 continuity, Dent is the lawyer for the McKillen crime family.
09:38Twin sisters Sharon and Erin place a contract on Commissioner Gordon,
09:42and this prompts Bruce Wayne to fund Dent's run for district attorney.
09:45The sisters are prosecuted and sentenced to life in prison.
09:49Shannon kills herself, and Erin escapes as her corpse. Erin breaks into Dent's house,
09:53kills his wife, and then pours acid on his face, creating Two-Face.
09:581. Two-Face suffers from real-world mental disorders
10:02While the concepts behind Two-Face are placed firmly in the pages of comic books,
10:06many of the issues that torture the mind of Harvey Dent are all too real. Dent grew up with
10:11an alcoholic, abusive father who would flip a coin to give the boy a chance to skip a beating,
10:15which he rarely won, and this caused Dent to grow up with severe paranoia and a lot
10:19of unresolved anger issues. When Dent was scarred, he had a full psychotic breakdown
10:24and developed Dissociative Identity Disorder. This condition manifests when two or more distinctive
10:29personalities exist in one person. The disorder usually accompanies memory gaps between the times
10:34that the individual personalities are in control, and the foundation of the disorder in Dent can be
10:39traced back directly to his childhood abuse. Two-Face is Dent's alter ego, or second distinct
10:45personality, that seems to share at least partial, if not equal, space in Dent's psyche.
10:49The split is so complete that Dent and Two-Face have occasionally been seen having arguments with
10:54themselves, or himself. Only the coin seems to keep a balance between the brilliant and noble Dent
10:59and the evil and utterly deranged Two-Face.