Review: "Batman: Jekyll & Hyde" (2/2)
Part 1
And now, the conclusion of (my review of) Paul Jenkins' Batman: Jekyll & Hyde. At this point, artist Jae Lee left the mini-series for unexplained reasons, and artistic duties were taken up by B:J&H cover artist (and artist of Steps, that story from Legends of the Dark Knight) Sean Phillips.
For many, the loss of Lee is terrible, since he was undoubtedly one of the main draws to the story. Bear in mind, Lee was a rockstar artist around this time thanks to his work on such titles as Grant Morrison's Fantastic Four and his previous collaboration with Jenkins on Marvel's Inhumans mini in 2000. Seriously, as someone who grew up reading Wizard magazine in the 90's, I cannot stress how highly Inhumans was touted as THE shit, and how Lee (less so Jenkins, because the prevailing mentality was "who cares about writers?") was hailed as a superstar. As such, to lose Lee halfway though is to lose pretty much the main driving force behind this series' appeal to most comics readers at the time.
Personally, though, I think that Sean Phillips (who is now far more known for his collaborations with Ed Brubaker in absolutely goddamn brilliant stories like Sleeper and Criminal, not to mention the infamous Marvel Zombies) is a far more expressive and dynamic artist, and I prefer the way he draws Harvey anyway, so I approve. Besides, in a sense, this brings Jenkins' story full circle, considering that this all started with Jenkins and Phillips in Steps. Just be prepared for a jarring bit of artistic whiplash. Then again, considering the big revelations that Jenkins has in mind, perhaps artistic backlash is the least of your worries.
So as we saw in the first part, Batman seemingly died from the effects of Dr. Rousse's Jekyll/Hyde serum, and Harvey quickly mourned the loss of his frenemy. Quickly after that, Two-Face contemptuously orders his men to dump Batman's body in the sewers, while forbidding them to peek behind Batman's mask. For all of the story's attempts to show Harvey being sympathetic or respectful towards Batman, that's the only one that rings true for me, since Harvey seems to have no ulterior motive. Of course, Batman's not dead, and he proceeds to battle the henchmen with hilariously horrifying results:
Hey kids, comi--oh GOD. Who the hell wrote this, Mark Millar?
Yeah. Yeah, that definitely did just happen. I guess if you're already going to throw in zombies, cannibalism, and mass murder, a bit of Sin City style testicle-destruction ain't gonna hurt matters. Congrats: this story has officially passed into "Batman Comic I Do Not Want To Read" territory.
Batman escapes and makes his way towards Wayne Manor, but he's still reeling. Not just from the drugs, but also from the sense of violation from what's been done to (and taken from) him:
Even though Bruce manages to overcome the effects of the serum (thus making him the ONLY character in this story to do so), he later breaks down sobbing in front of Commissioner Gordon, saying, "You know the thing about cigarettes... why they're more addictive then even heroin? Because nicotine unlocks a door in your brain that can never be closed. Once it's in your system, the cravings stay there for the rest of your life. That's what he's done, Jim-- he's shown me a pathway to somewhere that I secretly want to go... somewhere dark... and for the rest of my life, I'll have to pretend that I don't want to go back. And that won't ever be true."
So with this story, Two-Face has irrevocably altered Batman's brain chemistry to the point that Bruce is now essentially a recovering addict, which of course he'll be for the rest of his life. Yeah, that's just one of B:J&H's continuity-changing plot points that'll be ignored by every subsequent writer, but it's far from the only one. At the very least, it should give you some idea of just what the serum does, and how it changes people. Keep that in mind. For now, let's check in with Harvey and another flashback, at which point many of you are probably already figuring out what's going on:
"Priss?" What child says "priss"?
The flashback abruptly ends here, but can anyone see where this is going? If you're thinking, "Maybe, but nahhh, that'd be too stupid," you might not be wrong. Meanwhile, back in the Batcave, Bruce throws himself into detective work, following every lead and piecing together every clue until he's sure that he's got Two-Face exactly where he wants him.
And then, out of goddamn nowhere, this happens:
Yeah, no amount of context is going to help that first panel. I mean, it's cool that Harvey is one step ahead of Batman, proving that he's still an incredibly smart and capable master criminals who... who... no, I'm sorry, too distracted by the lipstick. I know that Harvey's planning on disguising his scars, but he's going to have to do a lot better than makeup and lipstick. Heck, Jack Napier pulled off a more inconspicuous makeup job, for god's sake.
PSST: THE VANILLA AND CHOCOLATE ARE METAPHORS. JUST IN CASE YOU COULDN'T TELL.
Also, based on what we see in the next panel, this story is apparently supposed to take place Pre-Crisis, since Post-Crisis Batman never appeared in full costume to try thwarting Moroni's attack in the courtroom. Well, actually, that's not quite true. That happened only once in Post-Crisis: in the Secret Origins Special story with Harvey's parents and the boating accident from earlier! Once again, Jenkins is either drawing from that story, or else he's pretty much ignoring all Two-Face storytelling development to make way for his new ideas. Ha ha, silly me, trying to figure out where this all fits in continuity!
If only the bowler derby weren't so comically tiny, I'd have a new favorite LJ icon in that image. By the way, the notable development of Harvey's two voices speaking together simultaneously? Yeah, that doesn't happen again. What does it mean? What does it signify? Hell if I know! Now let's never speak of it again! Whee!
So dressed in his ridiculous disguise, Harvey and his men proceed to take a cue from the Joker in The Dark Knight Returns by handing out free ice cream at a carnival, which ends up poisoning dozens of people. After ingesting serum-laced ice cream, normal citizens go berserk and start rioting. A woman even pushes her baby carriage into oncoming traffic, thus edging this scene into something out of Garth Ennis' Crossed. Which, again, is not the sort of thing I want in my Batman, thank you very much.
The idea, I suppose, is that the serum has unleashed everybody's "Hyde" side, but that just raises further questions. If the serum "liberates" people's "desires," as Harvey described what Hyde was to Jekyll, then is EVERYONE a rabid, murderous, violent maniac at heart? Is that the implication here? Because that's sure what I'm getting!
BOOT TO THE HEAD!
So wait, I'm confused. Harvey's plan was to expose tons of people to the serum, turning them into maniacs and thereby making absolutely certain that it works, so that he can drink it himself, thereby destroying his "good" side and letting him become a whole, "evil" being? I thought that this whole thing was kicked off in the first place because Harvey was losing the battle in his mind anyway! Remember that first scene back in Arkham? Remember when he said "Yes, I'm losing"? Because that happened. He was already losing to Two-Face.
What's more, as we learn elsewhere in the story, Harvey WANTED to finally lose. He no longer wanted to be party to murder and mayhem, to be in constant conflict with himself. So if he was already losing, and if he really wanted to be destroyed and subsumed, then couldn't he have just, I dunno, done nothing?! It sure sounds like doing nothing would have done the trick! So why poison an entire population to test a formula that will accomplish what was already happening?! WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR DAMN MOTIVATION, HARVEY?!
Y'know, I think I like the scarring being mostly-flesh colored with bruise-like green discoloration.
The transition for dialogue here is utterly nonsensical as it awkwardly forces Two-Face and Batman into the big climactic twist:
...
Sweet mother of Gandhi, that is stupid.
Welp, there you go. There's your big twist, your world-shaking revelation that changes everything you thought you knew about Two-Face. Now you know the truth. Now evil has a name. And that name... is Murray.
*TWOFACEPALM*
So anyway, Harvey Murray Two-Face slips away and races into a construction site for higher ground and hostages (gee, where have we seen THAT setting in a Two-Face story before?), where he kills a random construction worker just to show how eeeeeeeeeevil he is. Then, in the ensuring scuffle with Batman, Two-Face loses his footing and proceeds to fall from an even greater height than the one that killed him in The Dark Knight:
So wait, are we to take it that Harvey was--in this moment--actually won over by Murray's random pyromania?
While Murray is locked inside the burning room, li'l Harvey discovers that the faucet won't work. Murray calls Harvey a moron and tells him to get the extra key from their parents' room. Harvey just stares at the door.
Harvey survives the fall, thereby either proving that he could (should!) have survived the fall in The Dark Knight, or at B:J&H is utterly ridiculous beyond anything even vaguely resembling reality. Much as I want to believe the former, I fear that the latter case is true.
So yes, now we have learned Harvey's deepest, darkest secret, one which is clearly far, FAR more powerfully tragic than the idea that he was systematically abused physically and psychologically! Oh wait, no, this is hackneyed and stupid. The EotB origin plays directly into Harvey's future roles as lawyer, crime-fighter, and master criminal, incorporating themes of fairness, deception, justice, and injustice and wrapping them all up in a tragic and realistic depiction of child abuse. The version here loses ALL that in favor of... what, making Two-Face a one-man statement on guilt and sibling rivalry? That'd be all well and good if it at ALL fit with Harvey Dent as we know him. Heck, even Denny O'Neil's wrong-headed attempt to tie fanatical religious upbringing into Harvey's origin still made it a point to have it explain why Harvey wanted to become a district attorney in the first place!
It doesn't help that we don't even see why Harvey didn't save Murray. Was he paralyzed with fear, or was it a calculated decision to let the "bad" brother die? Is the lack of answers meant to pass for clever ambiguity, or is it just bad writing? Is it real, or is it Memorex?
Holy crap! Yeah, those are seriously whole chunks of Harvey's face missing! Geez, vanquishing your own Tyler Durden, you're doing it wrong! If--god forbid--one were to take this as canon, could this be the possible explanation of how Harvey ended up getting worked upon (and accidentally rehabilitated) by Dr. Tommy "Hush" Elliot? Ugh, no matter which canon you choose, it's lose-lose all the way. And that's not even counting the fact that Harvey now has brain damage!
Except, y'know, you're not a doctor, Jimbo, so your uninformed opinion doesn't mean diddly-poop.
Also, I'm really, really not cool with how the nature of Harvey's abuse has been changed. At first glance, it seems as though this doesn't really change anything, and that Murray's death fits in with the abuse we've seen in Eye of the Beholder and Two-Face: Crime and Punishment. The only apparent difference with B:J&H is that now the narrative is giving Harvey's father an "excuse" to abuse his son, because he blamed Harvey for Murray's death, and the subsequent suicide of Harvey's mother.
Along with the memories that we see of Harvey's father, this implies that Christopher Dent wasn't abusive before Murray's death. While it's absolutely possible that he was always abusive (abusive parents don't exactly wear signs advertising themselves, unfortunately), we're given absolutely no reason to believe otherwise. In fact, Jim's exposition dump explicitly states that the Dents were "a happy family by all accounts." The implication I'm getting from this is incredibly troubling: that it's now Harvey's own fault that he was abused, because he ruined his whole family. This is especially true if he intentionally let Murray die, which the story doesn't resolve. Considering how commonplace victim-blaming is in our culture, I loathe this new motivation for Christopher Dent which now makes it far too easy for the abuser's actions to be understandable or even sympathetic. That's horrifying to me.
But whether or not the reader now blames Harvey, this new origin gives Harvey ample reason to blame himself, which arguably works for a Two-Face origin. After all, whether it was intentional or not to let Murray die, Harvey's actions/inactions got his own brother killed and drove his own mother to kill herself. Y'know, because the idea that women are so fragile that they break psychologically isn't a tired cliche at all, and it certainly isn't something we're still seeing to this very day, heavens no. Point is, this all has the effect of creating self-loathing and internal conflict in Harvey because he blames himself. On the surface, it all seems pretty straightforward.
Here's the thing, though: abused children often blame themselves for their own abuse anyway, just because that's how they're conditioned by the parents. "I wouldn't get abused if I weren't bad, or if I hadn't done ______, etc." This was used to great and realistic effect in both Eye of the Beholder and Two-Face: Crime and Punishment, as was the effect it had on Harvey's psyche. Those stories turned Two-Face into a powerful living metaphor for abuse, especially (ironically) the Jekyll/Hyde effect of alcoholism, and the psychological effects it has on the child.
Both versions give plenty of reason why Harvey would have internal conflict and self-loathing from the years of abuse, especially given how alcohol warped the abuser and created discordance with Harvey's perception of his father.
But in Batman: Jekyll & Hyde, all that is lost in favor of something which amounts to little more than overwrought melodrama. As the child of an abusive alcoholic, Harvey didn't NEED any more things to feel guilty about, but Jenkins decided to throw in a double-whammy of Murray and Mom's deaths to make sure that Harvey really, really, really, REALLY hated himself. This is such overkill, and it's at the expense of one of the very few takes on abuse in superhero fiction that actually WORKS.
So does this new origin add ANYTHING to Two-Face as a character? Possibly. Instead of making him a metaphor for abuse, here he's a metaphor for guilt, self-loathing, and sibling rivalry. I suppose that's a bit more understandable to the average person, who can more easily grasp those ideas rather than the psychological effects of systematic abuse. Too bad that this Two-Face doesn't even work as a take on Two-Face. Instead of being two sides of the same coin personality, Harvey and Murray are two distinct personas with little in common. Essentially, Jenkins writes Harvey as the Ventriloquist and Scarface rather than as Harvey Dent and Two-Face. In doing so, Jenkins sabotages the entire "consider that Hyde was just Jekyll's desire, liberated" angle, because that's not what Murray is to Harvey at all! This story can't even keep itself consistent INTERNALLY, much less with the character of Two-Face as a whole!
On top of all that (oh no, we're not done yet!), Harvey's actions in this story have left a legacy of evil and madness which amount to the worst thing he's ever done.
Hurr hurr, "fifty-fifty," because he's TWO-Face, you see! YOU'RE STILL NOT A DOCTOR, JIMBO, STOP ACTING LIKE ONE.
While Bruce still has Alfred to help pull him out of the Hyde-like darkness, it's worth reiterating my belief that this is the most evil thing that Two-Face has ever done in any story, ever. And I hate it. It's one thing to beat, torture, or kill somebody, and god knows that Two-Face has hurt many innocents. But here, Harvey (not just Two-Face, but HARVEY) has ruined the lives of hundreds of people, driving them irrevocably insane and turning them into violent, sadistic killers.
Tangent: Actually, it's kind of exactly like the ending of Scott Snyder's much-ballyhooed epic Batman: The Black Mirror, except it actually makes WAY MORE SENSE than James Gordon Jr.'s plan of ((((((SPOILERS)))))"I'm going to spike the water supply with an inverted version of my anti-psychotic meds so that the children of Gotham will grow up to become insane monsters like me, even though this is the same drug that stops working when I stop taking it and the kids are only going to ingest it the one time and thus, if you really think about it, it should have absolutely no long-lasting effects whatsoever, BUT STILL EVIL EVIL EVIL PLAN MWA HA HA!" /Tangent (((((END SPOILERS)))))
Most of all, I just hate the "Murray" origin. There are not enough words for how much I hate the "Murray" origin. Worst part is, I used to not mind it as much because no one ever referenced this story in any way, thus pretty well making it non-canonical. But last winter saw the release of The Batman Files by Matthew Manning, a massive coffee table Batman book with a $100 price tag that's been getting a lot of press since its release last week. Much of it can currently be read at Google Books, including Harvey's profile. It's a combination of intriguing original material and canon story details from Eye of the Beholder, The Long Halloween, and, sadly, Batman: Jekyll & Hyde. It starts off great, and then the fail quickly takes over once the Murray events kick in.
Yeah, as you can see, the actual nature of the abuse, the effect it had on Harvey as an abused child, and how the coin was involved, ALL OF THAT is gone. All that matters is that Harvey let Murray die. That's the core of Two-Face, and the abuse just made it stick. Gone entirely is one of the best representations of child abuse in fiction in favor of cheap angst and melodrama. I cannot stress how much I hate this. Will any of it carry over into the DCnU, or into Two-Face in any other media? Time will tell, but I sure as hell hope to never see the damn name "Murray Dent" uttered in any publication ever again.
Unless, of course, this whole story was just the result of Hugo Strange screwing with Harvey's head and implanting false memories, orchestrating the entire events of this story in order to fuck with Bruce. In which case, this story is now awesome, and it sucks more than ever to be Harvey Dent.
If you want to own Batman: Jekyll & Hyde, the collection is pretty commonly available, and can be purchased online at places like Amazon.com. There's a lot more which I couldn't include, including more Two-Face hijinks and an entire subplot of Batman recovering from the effects of the serum.
And now, the conclusion of (my review of) Paul Jenkins' Batman: Jekyll & Hyde. At this point, artist Jae Lee left the mini-series for unexplained reasons, and artistic duties were taken up by B:J&H cover artist (and artist of Steps, that story from Legends of the Dark Knight) Sean Phillips.
For many, the loss of Lee is terrible, since he was undoubtedly one of the main draws to the story. Bear in mind, Lee was a rockstar artist around this time thanks to his work on such titles as Grant Morrison's Fantastic Four and his previous collaboration with Jenkins on Marvel's Inhumans mini in 2000. Seriously, as someone who grew up reading Wizard magazine in the 90's, I cannot stress how highly Inhumans was touted as THE shit, and how Lee (less so Jenkins, because the prevailing mentality was "who cares about writers?") was hailed as a superstar. As such, to lose Lee halfway though is to lose pretty much the main driving force behind this series' appeal to most comics readers at the time.
Personally, though, I think that Sean Phillips (who is now far more known for his collaborations with Ed Brubaker in absolutely goddamn brilliant stories like Sleeper and Criminal, not to mention the infamous Marvel Zombies) is a far more expressive and dynamic artist, and I prefer the way he draws Harvey anyway, so I approve. Besides, in a sense, this brings Jenkins' story full circle, considering that this all started with Jenkins and Phillips in Steps. Just be prepared for a jarring bit of artistic whiplash. Then again, considering the big revelations that Jenkins has in mind, perhaps artistic backlash is the least of your worries.
So as we saw in the first part, Batman seemingly died from the effects of Dr. Rousse's Jekyll/Hyde serum, and Harvey quickly mourned the loss of his frenemy. Quickly after that, Two-Face contemptuously orders his men to dump Batman's body in the sewers, while forbidding them to peek behind Batman's mask. For all of the story's attempts to show Harvey being sympathetic or respectful towards Batman, that's the only one that rings true for me, since Harvey seems to have no ulterior motive. Of course, Batman's not dead, and he proceeds to battle the henchmen with hilariously horrifying results:
Hey kids, comi--oh GOD. Who the hell wrote this, Mark Millar?
Yeah. Yeah, that definitely did just happen. I guess if you're already going to throw in zombies, cannibalism, and mass murder, a bit of Sin City style testicle-destruction ain't gonna hurt matters. Congrats: this story has officially passed into "Batman Comic I Do Not Want To Read" territory.
Batman escapes and makes his way towards Wayne Manor, but he's still reeling. Not just from the drugs, but also from the sense of violation from what's been done to (and taken from) him:
Even though Bruce manages to overcome the effects of the serum (thus making him the ONLY character in this story to do so), he later breaks down sobbing in front of Commissioner Gordon, saying, "You know the thing about cigarettes... why they're more addictive then even heroin? Because nicotine unlocks a door in your brain that can never be closed. Once it's in your system, the cravings stay there for the rest of your life. That's what he's done, Jim-- he's shown me a pathway to somewhere that I secretly want to go... somewhere dark... and for the rest of my life, I'll have to pretend that I don't want to go back. And that won't ever be true."
So with this story, Two-Face has irrevocably altered Batman's brain chemistry to the point that Bruce is now essentially a recovering addict, which of course he'll be for the rest of his life. Yeah, that's just one of B:J&H's continuity-changing plot points that'll be ignored by every subsequent writer, but it's far from the only one. At the very least, it should give you some idea of just what the serum does, and how it changes people. Keep that in mind. For now, let's check in with Harvey and another flashback, at which point many of you are probably already figuring out what's going on:
"Priss?" What child says "priss"?
The flashback abruptly ends here, but can anyone see where this is going? If you're thinking, "Maybe, but nahhh, that'd be too stupid," you might not be wrong. Meanwhile, back in the Batcave, Bruce throws himself into detective work, following every lead and piecing together every clue until he's sure that he's got Two-Face exactly where he wants him.
And then, out of goddamn nowhere, this happens:
Yeah, no amount of context is going to help that first panel. I mean, it's cool that Harvey is one step ahead of Batman, proving that he's still an incredibly smart and capable master criminals who... who... no, I'm sorry, too distracted by the lipstick. I know that Harvey's planning on disguising his scars, but he's going to have to do a lot better than makeup and lipstick. Heck, Jack Napier pulled off a more inconspicuous makeup job, for god's sake.
PSST: THE VANILLA AND CHOCOLATE ARE METAPHORS. JUST IN CASE YOU COULDN'T TELL.
Also, based on what we see in the next panel, this story is apparently supposed to take place Pre-Crisis, since Post-Crisis Batman never appeared in full costume to try thwarting Moroni's attack in the courtroom. Well, actually, that's not quite true. That happened only once in Post-Crisis: in the Secret Origins Special story with Harvey's parents and the boating accident from earlier! Once again, Jenkins is either drawing from that story, or else he's pretty much ignoring all Two-Face storytelling development to make way for his new ideas. Ha ha, silly me, trying to figure out where this all fits in continuity!
If only the bowler derby weren't so comically tiny, I'd have a new favorite LJ icon in that image. By the way, the notable development of Harvey's two voices speaking together simultaneously? Yeah, that doesn't happen again. What does it mean? What does it signify? Hell if I know! Now let's never speak of it again! Whee!
So dressed in his ridiculous disguise, Harvey and his men proceed to take a cue from the Joker in The Dark Knight Returns by handing out free ice cream at a carnival, which ends up poisoning dozens of people. After ingesting serum-laced ice cream, normal citizens go berserk and start rioting. A woman even pushes her baby carriage into oncoming traffic, thus edging this scene into something out of Garth Ennis' Crossed. Which, again, is not the sort of thing I want in my Batman, thank you very much.
The idea, I suppose, is that the serum has unleashed everybody's "Hyde" side, but that just raises further questions. If the serum "liberates" people's "desires," as Harvey described what Hyde was to Jekyll, then is EVERYONE a rabid, murderous, violent maniac at heart? Is that the implication here? Because that's sure what I'm getting!
BOOT TO THE HEAD!
So wait, I'm confused. Harvey's plan was to expose tons of people to the serum, turning them into maniacs and thereby making absolutely certain that it works, so that he can drink it himself, thereby destroying his "good" side and letting him become a whole, "evil" being? I thought that this whole thing was kicked off in the first place because Harvey was losing the battle in his mind anyway! Remember that first scene back in Arkham? Remember when he said "Yes, I'm losing"? Because that happened. He was already losing to Two-Face.
What's more, as we learn elsewhere in the story, Harvey WANTED to finally lose. He no longer wanted to be party to murder and mayhem, to be in constant conflict with himself. So if he was already losing, and if he really wanted to be destroyed and subsumed, then couldn't he have just, I dunno, done nothing?! It sure sounds like doing nothing would have done the trick! So why poison an entire population to test a formula that will accomplish what was already happening?! WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR DAMN MOTIVATION, HARVEY?!
Y'know, I think I like the scarring being mostly-flesh colored with bruise-like green discoloration.
The transition for dialogue here is utterly nonsensical as it awkwardly forces Two-Face and Batman into the big climactic twist:
...
Sweet mother of Gandhi, that is stupid.
Welp, there you go. There's your big twist, your world-shaking revelation that changes everything you thought you knew about Two-Face. Now you know the truth. Now evil has a name. And that name... is Murray.
*TWOFACEPALM*
So anyway, Harvey Murray Two-Face slips away and races into a construction site for higher ground and hostages (gee, where have we seen THAT setting in a Two-Face story before?), where he kills a random construction worker just to show how eeeeeeeeeevil he is. Then, in the ensuring scuffle with Batman, Two-Face loses his footing and proceeds to fall from an even greater height than the one that killed him in The Dark Knight:
So wait, are we to take it that Harvey was--in this moment--actually won over by Murray's random pyromania?
While Murray is locked inside the burning room, li'l Harvey discovers that the faucet won't work. Murray calls Harvey a moron and tells him to get the extra key from their parents' room. Harvey just stares at the door.
Harvey survives the fall, thereby either proving that he could (should!) have survived the fall in The Dark Knight, or at B:J&H is utterly ridiculous beyond anything even vaguely resembling reality. Much as I want to believe the former, I fear that the latter case is true.
So yes, now we have learned Harvey's deepest, darkest secret, one which is clearly far, FAR more powerfully tragic than the idea that he was systematically abused physically and psychologically! Oh wait, no, this is hackneyed and stupid. The EotB origin plays directly into Harvey's future roles as lawyer, crime-fighter, and master criminal, incorporating themes of fairness, deception, justice, and injustice and wrapping them all up in a tragic and realistic depiction of child abuse. The version here loses ALL that in favor of... what, making Two-Face a one-man statement on guilt and sibling rivalry? That'd be all well and good if it at ALL fit with Harvey Dent as we know him. Heck, even Denny O'Neil's wrong-headed attempt to tie fanatical religious upbringing into Harvey's origin still made it a point to have it explain why Harvey wanted to become a district attorney in the first place!
It doesn't help that we don't even see why Harvey didn't save Murray. Was he paralyzed with fear, or was it a calculated decision to let the "bad" brother die? Is the lack of answers meant to pass for clever ambiguity, or is it just bad writing? Is it real, or is it Memorex?
Holy crap! Yeah, those are seriously whole chunks of Harvey's face missing! Geez, vanquishing your own Tyler Durden, you're doing it wrong! If--god forbid--one were to take this as canon, could this be the possible explanation of how Harvey ended up getting worked upon (and accidentally rehabilitated) by Dr. Tommy "Hush" Elliot? Ugh, no matter which canon you choose, it's lose-lose all the way. And that's not even counting the fact that Harvey now has brain damage!
Except, y'know, you're not a doctor, Jimbo, so your uninformed opinion doesn't mean diddly-poop.
Also, I'm really, really not cool with how the nature of Harvey's abuse has been changed. At first glance, it seems as though this doesn't really change anything, and that Murray's death fits in with the abuse we've seen in Eye of the Beholder and Two-Face: Crime and Punishment. The only apparent difference with B:J&H is that now the narrative is giving Harvey's father an "excuse" to abuse his son, because he blamed Harvey for Murray's death, and the subsequent suicide of Harvey's mother.
Along with the memories that we see of Harvey's father, this implies that Christopher Dent wasn't abusive before Murray's death. While it's absolutely possible that he was always abusive (abusive parents don't exactly wear signs advertising themselves, unfortunately), we're given absolutely no reason to believe otherwise. In fact, Jim's exposition dump explicitly states that the Dents were "a happy family by all accounts." The implication I'm getting from this is incredibly troubling: that it's now Harvey's own fault that he was abused, because he ruined his whole family. This is especially true if he intentionally let Murray die, which the story doesn't resolve. Considering how commonplace victim-blaming is in our culture, I loathe this new motivation for Christopher Dent which now makes it far too easy for the abuser's actions to be understandable or even sympathetic. That's horrifying to me.
But whether or not the reader now blames Harvey, this new origin gives Harvey ample reason to blame himself, which arguably works for a Two-Face origin. After all, whether it was intentional or not to let Murray die, Harvey's actions/inactions got his own brother killed and drove his own mother to kill herself. Y'know, because the idea that women are so fragile that they break psychologically isn't a tired cliche at all, and it certainly isn't something we're still seeing to this very day, heavens no. Point is, this all has the effect of creating self-loathing and internal conflict in Harvey because he blames himself. On the surface, it all seems pretty straightforward.
Here's the thing, though: abused children often blame themselves for their own abuse anyway, just because that's how they're conditioned by the parents. "I wouldn't get abused if I weren't bad, or if I hadn't done ______, etc." This was used to great and realistic effect in both Eye of the Beholder and Two-Face: Crime and Punishment, as was the effect it had on Harvey's psyche. Those stories turned Two-Face into a powerful living metaphor for abuse, especially (ironically) the Jekyll/Hyde effect of alcoholism, and the psychological effects it has on the child.
Both versions give plenty of reason why Harvey would have internal conflict and self-loathing from the years of abuse, especially given how alcohol warped the abuser and created discordance with Harvey's perception of his father.
But in Batman: Jekyll & Hyde, all that is lost in favor of something which amounts to little more than overwrought melodrama. As the child of an abusive alcoholic, Harvey didn't NEED any more things to feel guilty about, but Jenkins decided to throw in a double-whammy of Murray and Mom's deaths to make sure that Harvey really, really, really, REALLY hated himself. This is such overkill, and it's at the expense of one of the very few takes on abuse in superhero fiction that actually WORKS.
So does this new origin add ANYTHING to Two-Face as a character? Possibly. Instead of making him a metaphor for abuse, here he's a metaphor for guilt, self-loathing, and sibling rivalry. I suppose that's a bit more understandable to the average person, who can more easily grasp those ideas rather than the psychological effects of systematic abuse. Too bad that this Two-Face doesn't even work as a take on Two-Face. Instead of being two sides of the same coin personality, Harvey and Murray are two distinct personas with little in common. Essentially, Jenkins writes Harvey as the Ventriloquist and Scarface rather than as Harvey Dent and Two-Face. In doing so, Jenkins sabotages the entire "consider that Hyde was just Jekyll's desire, liberated" angle, because that's not what Murray is to Harvey at all! This story can't even keep itself consistent INTERNALLY, much less with the character of Two-Face as a whole!
On top of all that (oh no, we're not done yet!), Harvey's actions in this story have left a legacy of evil and madness which amount to the worst thing he's ever done.
Hurr hurr, "fifty-fifty," because he's TWO-Face, you see! YOU'RE STILL NOT A DOCTOR, JIMBO, STOP ACTING LIKE ONE.
While Bruce still has Alfred to help pull him out of the Hyde-like darkness, it's worth reiterating my belief that this is the most evil thing that Two-Face has ever done in any story, ever. And I hate it. It's one thing to beat, torture, or kill somebody, and god knows that Two-Face has hurt many innocents. But here, Harvey (not just Two-Face, but HARVEY) has ruined the lives of hundreds of people, driving them irrevocably insane and turning them into violent, sadistic killers.
Tangent: Actually, it's kind of exactly like the ending of Scott Snyder's much-ballyhooed epic Batman: The Black Mirror, except it actually makes WAY MORE SENSE than James Gordon Jr.'s plan of ((((((SPOILERS)))))"I'm going to spike the water supply with an inverted version of my anti-psychotic meds so that the children of Gotham will grow up to become insane monsters like me, even though this is the same drug that stops working when I stop taking it and the kids are only going to ingest it the one time and thus, if you really think about it, it should have absolutely no long-lasting effects whatsoever, BUT STILL EVIL EVIL EVIL PLAN MWA HA HA!" /Tangent (((((END SPOILERS)))))
Most of all, I just hate the "Murray" origin. There are not enough words for how much I hate the "Murray" origin. Worst part is, I used to not mind it as much because no one ever referenced this story in any way, thus pretty well making it non-canonical. But last winter saw the release of The Batman Files by Matthew Manning, a massive coffee table Batman book with a $100 price tag that's been getting a lot of press since its release last week. Much of it can currently be read at Google Books, including Harvey's profile. It's a combination of intriguing original material and canon story details from Eye of the Beholder, The Long Halloween, and, sadly, Batman: Jekyll & Hyde. It starts off great, and then the fail quickly takes over once the Murray events kick in.
Yeah, as you can see, the actual nature of the abuse, the effect it had on Harvey as an abused child, and how the coin was involved, ALL OF THAT is gone. All that matters is that Harvey let Murray die. That's the core of Two-Face, and the abuse just made it stick. Gone entirely is one of the best representations of child abuse in fiction in favor of cheap angst and melodrama. I cannot stress how much I hate this. Will any of it carry over into the DCnU, or into Two-Face in any other media? Time will tell, but I sure as hell hope to never see the damn name "Murray Dent" uttered in any publication ever again.
Unless, of course, this whole story was just the result of Hugo Strange screwing with Harvey's head and implanting false memories, orchestrating the entire events of this story in order to fuck with Bruce. In which case, this story is now awesome, and it sucks more than ever to be Harvey Dent.
If you want to own Batman: Jekyll & Hyde, the collection is pretty commonly available, and can be purchased online at places like Amazon.com. There's a lot more which I couldn't include, including more Two-Face hijinks and an entire subplot of Batman recovering from the effects of the serum.