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thehefnerOh, one more thing, for the Bat-nerds out there, especially my fellow Harvey fans.
In his essay, "How Jason Todd Went Wrong a Second Time", the blogger MightyGodKing starts by talking about how Jason is so obviously a sucky suck-ass character, but that having him brought back to life didn't have to end up sucking like it did. Quoth MGK:
There’s a good reason for it: “what if Jason Todd came back” was a really good idea. Forcing Batman to relive his greatest failure - and the implicit criticisms of his method that are inherent in Jason Todd’s presence - is goddamned great story fodder, because under normal circumstances Batman is a very difficult character to believably threaten or damage. He’s Batman: he’s the best at everything always. That’s why he’s Batman, but this makes it hard to create an antagonist who can really get to him. The Joker and Two-Face and all the rest can be external threats to Batman, but they really can’t get inside his head and make him doubt himself. Jason Todd, however, could do that.
At which point I stopped reading the essay entirely. I still haven't read the rest.
I plan to later, once I've rested up a bit and have time to kill, but for the time being, that was all I could stand to read before the wheels in my head started turning. I immediately went to the comments, curious to see if anyone else had touched upon what I could only barely begin to formulate, the kind of response that could take me a good hour to properly compose.
Of the 45 responses, only one discussed the topic in question. But the commenter, "BSD," did so in a manner that put to shame anything I could have come up with on my own, at least in my current state:
Two-Face is the Best Batman Villain because he DOES get inside of Batman’s head. He’s precisely what Alfred is scared of, what Bruce in his heart of heart really worries about, and simply by existing challenges the entire Bruce/Batman project (this is part of why Hush is stupid and boring: he’s completely redundant.) In fact, his purely internal challenge to Batman is twofold: First, he is the synthesis of the Batman/Joker thesis/antithesis, and second, he is a dangerous what-might-have-been for Bruce.
Joker is so important to Batman because he is his perfect inversion. No real identity, no real origin, he is devoted to and emblematic of an unjust, meaningless world, directly opposed to the core Batman idea that the world can be “cleaned up”. Two-face, then, as the synthesis of the opposites, is even more of a challenge, arguably a better Batman than Batman in that he accepts that the world is fundamentally random and chaotic, that events occur without meaning, but that once chaos has had its say, in the best Two-Face stories, he works with that, either building the best world he can from the world that exists, or destroying it as best he can (my favorite Two-Face story remains the one in which he’s cured, is back to being Harvey full time, but then claws off half of his own face).
He’s also a challenge to Batman in that he evokes a hypothetical “Alleyman” or “Two-Gun”, a vigilante who just hangs around alleys and shoots people. If anything, Two-Face’s origin would be more, not less, likely to produce a hero rather than a madman.
And every time they fight, Bruce has to ask himself about that.
Wow. I honestly don't think I could have said it better myself. I wanna find this person and buy him/her a beer.
How disappointingly typical that not a single person other than myself have even responded to his comment, or even MGK's throwaway dismissal about Harvey in the first place (not to mention the Joker, that one's not really true either; of ALL the Bat-villains to name-drop for characters who don't fuck around with Batman's head and heart, those two might just be the worst examples to make!) but it's so amazing to read someone else actually getting what I've spent the last three years and eight drafts trying to explore.
Now, more than ever, I want to get back to work on Draft Nine, start those massive overhauls of the second half. But no, I need to give the original HEFNER MONOLOGUES a script overhaul in of itself, plus get to work on two brand-new separate projects for my 2010 Fringe tour. I doubt I'll really be able to give the Harvey book the attention it needs until late Fall. Serious sadness, people.
But until then, here's hoping more people take BSD's astute observations to heart, as far too many writers have completely missed the point*. Because that, folks, that is why Harvey Dent is so vital to the Batman mythos to this very day, and why he's one of the most compelling and vibrant characters out there now. In my own humble opinion, naturally.
What think you, BatFans?
*Including great writers like Chuck Dixon. He wrote one of the all-time greatest Joker stories in BATMAN: DEVIL'S ADVOCATE, but his take on Harvey is one of the most glaring examples of Two-Face-Fail out there, particularly as shown in BATMAN: PRODIGAL and ROBIN: YEAR ONE.
Dixon's sneeringly evil Harvey will happily screw with the coin's outcome and essentially cheat to make the odds work in his favor, which right there just turns him into a one-note madman with a gimmick who also beat the shit out of a child with a baseball bat. Not that the Robin beating isn't great in its way, but damn, what I'd give to see (or write) a proper retake on that whole sequence.
In his essay, "How Jason Todd Went Wrong a Second Time", the blogger MightyGodKing starts by talking about how Jason is so obviously a sucky suck-ass character, but that having him brought back to life didn't have to end up sucking like it did. Quoth MGK:
There’s a good reason for it: “what if Jason Todd came back” was a really good idea. Forcing Batman to relive his greatest failure - and the implicit criticisms of his method that are inherent in Jason Todd’s presence - is goddamned great story fodder, because under normal circumstances Batman is a very difficult character to believably threaten or damage. He’s Batman: he’s the best at everything always. That’s why he’s Batman, but this makes it hard to create an antagonist who can really get to him. The Joker and Two-Face and all the rest can be external threats to Batman, but they really can’t get inside his head and make him doubt himself. Jason Todd, however, could do that.
At which point I stopped reading the essay entirely. I still haven't read the rest.
I plan to later, once I've rested up a bit and have time to kill, but for the time being, that was all I could stand to read before the wheels in my head started turning. I immediately went to the comments, curious to see if anyone else had touched upon what I could only barely begin to formulate, the kind of response that could take me a good hour to properly compose.
Of the 45 responses, only one discussed the topic in question. But the commenter, "BSD," did so in a manner that put to shame anything I could have come up with on my own, at least in my current state:
Two-Face is the Best Batman Villain because he DOES get inside of Batman’s head. He’s precisely what Alfred is scared of, what Bruce in his heart of heart really worries about, and simply by existing challenges the entire Bruce/Batman project (this is part of why Hush is stupid and boring: he’s completely redundant.) In fact, his purely internal challenge to Batman is twofold: First, he is the synthesis of the Batman/Joker thesis/antithesis, and second, he is a dangerous what-might-have-been for Bruce.
Joker is so important to Batman because he is his perfect inversion. No real identity, no real origin, he is devoted to and emblematic of an unjust, meaningless world, directly opposed to the core Batman idea that the world can be “cleaned up”. Two-face, then, as the synthesis of the opposites, is even more of a challenge, arguably a better Batman than Batman in that he accepts that the world is fundamentally random and chaotic, that events occur without meaning, but that once chaos has had its say, in the best Two-Face stories, he works with that, either building the best world he can from the world that exists, or destroying it as best he can (my favorite Two-Face story remains the one in which he’s cured, is back to being Harvey full time, but then claws off half of his own face).
He’s also a challenge to Batman in that he evokes a hypothetical “Alleyman” or “Two-Gun”, a vigilante who just hangs around alleys and shoots people. If anything, Two-Face’s origin would be more, not less, likely to produce a hero rather than a madman.
And every time they fight, Bruce has to ask himself about that.
Wow. I honestly don't think I could have said it better myself. I wanna find this person and buy him/her a beer.
How disappointingly typical that not a single person other than myself have even responded to his comment, or even MGK's throwaway dismissal about Harvey in the first place (not to mention the Joker, that one's not really true either; of ALL the Bat-villains to name-drop for characters who don't fuck around with Batman's head and heart, those two might just be the worst examples to make!) but it's so amazing to read someone else actually getting what I've spent the last three years and eight drafts trying to explore.
Now, more than ever, I want to get back to work on Draft Nine, start those massive overhauls of the second half. But no, I need to give the original HEFNER MONOLOGUES a script overhaul in of itself, plus get to work on two brand-new separate projects for my 2010 Fringe tour. I doubt I'll really be able to give the Harvey book the attention it needs until late Fall. Serious sadness, people.
But until then, here's hoping more people take BSD's astute observations to heart, as far too many writers have completely missed the point*. Because that, folks, that is why Harvey Dent is so vital to the Batman mythos to this very day, and why he's one of the most compelling and vibrant characters out there now. In my own humble opinion, naturally.
What think you, BatFans?
*Including great writers like Chuck Dixon. He wrote one of the all-time greatest Joker stories in BATMAN: DEVIL'S ADVOCATE, but his take on Harvey is one of the most glaring examples of Two-Face-Fail out there, particularly as shown in BATMAN: PRODIGAL and ROBIN: YEAR ONE.
Dixon's sneeringly evil Harvey will happily screw with the coin's outcome and essentially cheat to make the odds work in his favor, which right there just turns him into a one-note madman with a gimmick who also beat the shit out of a child with a baseball bat. Not that the Robin beating isn't great in its way, but damn, what I'd give to see (or write) a proper retake on that whole sequence.
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Date: 2009-07-30 12:51 pm (UTC)But Earth-2 Robin's outfit is WAY worse than Red Robin's.