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Batman ’89 #3 introduces Two-Face to the vintage world of the Dark Knight, with Harvey Dent receiving his most tragic origin story yet.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Batman ’89 #3, on sale now from DC Comics.
Two-Face is among the more iconic members of Batman’s rogues gallery, with the character’s distinct appearance and memorable gimmick being adapted across multiple comic stories and mass media adaptations. While the core story of the origin is often the same, Batman ’89 finds a way to make their version of the character even more tragic.
The Harvey Dent of this reality embarks on the path to becoming Two-Face in Batman ’89 #3 (by Sam Hamm, Joe Quinones, Leonardo Ito, and Clayton Cowles) and is given a unique edge that makes this one of the most heart-breaking incarnations of the character to date.
The Harvey Dent of Batman ’89 has so far been portrayed in a largely positive light. He sees the dangers of Batman, and has ambitions to help Gotham in a different way. He genuinely wants to do good, but the world doesn’t work out like he was hoping. Batman ’89 #3 opens with an imagined scenario in which Dent saves Drake Winston from a fire and uses the ensuing good publicity to gain power across Gotham. However, this is revealed to be a hallucination caused by the sulfuric acid and smoke Dent inhaled in the attempt. His face is horrifically damaged in the fire, with Bruce and Drake barely saving Dent’s life before the entire building goes up in flames. As Dent recovers in the hospital, Bruce Wayne is hailed as a hero for his part in saving the district attorney.
Dent awakens not to Barbara Gordon or Bruce, but to himself — a vision of a Harvey Dent who saved Duke and had everything turn out better. He explains what is effectively multiverse theory — that every choice leads the universe to split and go down two different branches. This perfect Dent teases that across the course of Dent’s life, he’s encountered such events over and over — a “million tiny accidents” that ensured the perfect life for one Dent, and the scarred visage for the other. It’s here that Dent receives his perspective on the power of a coin flip, with the perfect Dent arguing that only something like this can truly give Dent power, with the ability to split the universe in two with his own hand.
The end of the issue implies that this is the motivating factor Dent will use to become the Two-Face of this reality, embracing chaos at the end of the issue as riots break out across the streets of Gotham. It’s easy to see this as a hallucination, shattering the mind of Dent and setting up his two-personas, but here the villainous nature stems from his own idealized incarnation. But it’s also possible, due to the very nature of the DC Universe, that this is a genuine moment of connection across the multiverse, a version of Dent who is driven mad enough to see the real way his reality as a DC character actually operates.
It’s an interesting way to portray the iconic Gotham villain, to say the least. There have been numerous takes on the character, ranging from the straight-forward criminal to the tragic white knight. The Batman ’89 Dent is already engaging, just for his uniquely tragic origin. This time the change doesn’t come about because of an attack by a criminal. This Harvey Dent instead genuinely had a heroic impulse, and his attempt to follow through with it may have permanently derailed his life and turned him into the kind of villain he’s talked about bringing to justice. It’s one of the more tragic ways to transform Dent into Two-Face, and does so with a meta-twist as well that’s a genuinely interesting way at looking at the villain’s gimmick from a more theoretical and heady perspective.
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