The Grace of Gilda, Pt. 2: Her First Post-Crisis Years

[about_faces]

Note: This is the second part of my retrospective of Gilda, a complete history of the oft-overlooked woman who loved and lost Harvey Dent. You can read Part 1 here, and subsequent installments will be released weekly.

Comments

[ext_5799348]

Given how much modern comics seem to love tragic romances, it is kind of surprising that they haven't focused on Harvey and Grace/Gilda a bit more. What makes it even more surprising is that it would be really easy to tie it into Two-Face's duality obsession, at least for a story of two. Give him a moll - let's call her 'Penny' - a nasty, treacherous gangland skank who's either an obvious gold digger ('Rob that jewelry store for me, Two-Face honey!'), or, perhaps more interestingly, actually does love him, but for the opposite reasons Gilda does - she loves Two-Face, the forceful, flamboyant mobster, as opposed to Harvey, the good, kind man of the law. It would almost be like an inverse Harley Quinn, with a normal one in Gilda - Harley loves Joker (theoretically, anyway) because she's convinced that there's a good man beneath the crazy; Penny would be in love with the crazy and not want the good man to come out. There's a 'Batman: Black and White' story - 'Two of a Kind' - which delves into roughly that territory, offering him a

[lego_joker]

I believe Harvey's been given a handful of henchgirls in that mold (Sugar and Spice from Forever probably being the most famous), though they usually don't appear in any story where Gilda does. Could we maayyybe count Janice Porter from Dark Victory as well?

But yeah, it's really weird no story apart from "Two of a Kind" (which IIRC Hefner once described as unimpeachable art over a noir cliché-storm) has used the good-girl-bad-girl dynamic, especially when I hear it's been a staple of every Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde retelling since the 1920s. Not that I trust most writers would be able to pull it off well, but it's odd so few have even tried.

[about_faces]

While I already expressed my dislike for Harvey being unfaithful in the comment below, I would love to see someone try making Sugar and Spice work in the comics.

[about_faces]

Between "Two of the Kind" and "Nightwing: The Great Leap," which gave him an obvious Rachel Dawes stand-in, I'm not keen on a Harvey being unfaithful to Gilda. Besides, we've already got that exact kind of anti-Harley character with Punchline for the Joker, and I'm not digging that in the least

[ext_5799348]

Yes, I know he loves Gilda/Grace, but it goes back and forth as to just how much Grace loves him - sometimes she's remained single and is waiting for him to finally be cured; sometimes she's reluctantly accepted that her Harvey is most likely gone forever, and has found happiness with someone else - and sometimes Two-Face is OK with all this, sometimes he's not. It's all very inconsistent, is what I'm saying, as would be expected from a guy who bases his decisions off a coin-flip - and it would not be completely out of character for one of those coin-flips to land bad-side up and lead to him getting a new girlfriend. He might regret it afterward, but I can see him doing it

[akselavshalom]

I feel like that henchperson in that Half-Way House comic could've been worked into something like that, even if that's a comic I remember for aesthetic only. Don Newton on art, and all.
'Course it is obscure as hell and she's not necessarily that much of a character to build on, what with the era it was written and her presence. I suppose it could easily be forgiven that she's not at the forefront of a writer's mind.

[about_faces]

It certainly is very inconsistent, which can be liberating but also frustrating. I definitely can't argue that it wouldn't be out of character, given the lack of character consistency. A writer would be justified in wanting to tell that story, but unless it was handled deftly, I don't think I'd want to read it. I mean, of course I still WOULD read it, but I think it'd leave me feeling as frustrated and complicated as "Gotham Central: Half a Life

[ext_5799348]

I guess I tend to fall first into the 'ooh, wouldn't it be interesting if' camp. Obviously, there are things I really don't want done to my favorite characters, but they are still characters, and one of the best things about characters (especially long-running ones) is the ability to experiment with them.

I've only read bits and pieces of Punchline, but the impression I get of her is that she's primarily a cynical opportunist who sees the Joker's craziness as a sort of career opportunity - something that the Joker knows and finds funny, so he goes along with it. She's more concerned with herself first, as is evidenced by the (I believe) current storyline where she's playing herself off as an innocent, seduced victim in order to gain public sympathy - and it's working. She can't really be described as an 'anti-Harley' - or at least, I wouldn't do so - because she really isn't any kind of a crazy clown; she just dresses like one

[akselavshalom]

The Nolan-movies are solely responsible for me getting into Batman in the first place, but god damn that transformation in TDK was goofy as hell, not helped in the least by it happening so abruptly and Joker's dumb-ass argument in midst of that otherwise great dialogue on his part. To a lawyer. A professional lawyer.
I'm still kind of torn by Two-Face per TDK. On one hand, you're right and the context and motive for what Two-Face is doing and why he's doing it is flimsy, at best. On the other, the two scenes in the movie that scared me the most was seeing Joker's video-tape threat and the building unease of watching Harvey flip for the lives of himself and those around him. That look on Aaron Eckhart's face when it became his turn and he continued to flip without a second's hesitation in tandem with the music just... (shudders)

[ext_5799348]

Oh, Eckhart is great as Two-Face - and, for that matter, he's great as Harvey. It's all very well acted and directed (the bat-voice notwithstanding); it's just the script I mainly have problems with.