The animated DCAU Two-Face movie that never was (at least, not in movie form)!

[about_faces]

Back when I was first planning out my series of Two-Face Stories That Never Were, one of the big rumors I wanted to explore was one that I could have *sworn* I'd read somewhere but couldn't back up: namely, that Paul Dini and company were planning on making an animated Batman movie featuring Two-Face, but that idea was scrapped in favor of Batman:

Comments

[about_faces]

Oh, and speaking of Loeb and Sale, I had truly hoped to have a review of The Long Halloween out by today. Nope, no dice. I wanted to just review the first issue and do the rest over the course of next year, but I'm still only on the tenth page! All the Godfather references alone are taking forever to write about and point out, arghhh! So I'll keep working on it, and maybe you'll see it next month. Or next Halloween. We'll see.

[lego_joker]

May I bring up the mass-review idea? Again? Please?

Seriously, though - this was a really nice find, and it does make me wonder such a film might have improved Two-Face's presence with fandom in general. Then again, even MotP seems to be regarded as something of a cult classic by most Bat-fans these days, so maybe not.

In any case, I hope you've had a safe and happy Halloween! I apologize for neglecting your LJ over the past month, as I'd come under the impression that you now blog almost exclusively on tumblr. Heh - that'll show me.

Oh, well. At least now I've discovered a new ship to sail. Mothy X Barcavolio all the way!

[about_faces]

Okay, remind me again, what were you proposing in regards to a mass-review thing? It's been a year, and I've forgotten.

Yeah, I stick mainly to Tumblr because my LJ entities require much more work, though, and effort than I'm able to spend. Seriously, I've been working on this TLH review for MONTHS, man, and I'm barely bast Johnny Viti's wedding in my review!

[lego_joker]

Beginning from Halloween and continuing for the next twelve days, you review each issue with a different co-reviewer - preferably someone who frequents your LJ/tumblr. It's sort of like your Twelve Days of Who's Who posts, only more interactive. And this way, you'll only have to pull half the weight (ideally) during each issue.

It's a lot of work, and many of the folks that frequented your blog when I first proposed it are long gone or otherwise MIA. Nevertheless, I do believe that it can still work.

From what I've gathered so far, the people most likely to participate now (judging by frequency of posts) include:

mothy_van_cleer
barcavolio
crows_talon
ifyouresosmart
akselavshalom
psychopathicus

As of late, yaseen101 seems to have been making a comeback. And I hope to be able to get abqreviews onboard, since he seems to have the most experience at actually reviewing stuff (aside from you). I'm also hoping that either Henchgirl or Captain might be able to contribute to at least one issue.

[mothy_van_cleer]

That Wizard page is turning my stomach with its oh-so-90's "bad attitude". It really takes a juvenile sort of mind to crack a off-colour joke about a modern-day treasure like Bone.

[about_faces]

Yeah, I know, right? And this was just a typical page from an average issue! I owe a lot to Wizard for helping me become the fan I am, as there was nothing else like it that hooked me up with the wide world of comics, but it's a really awful magazine in retrospect. The mentality of its writers and editors can be traced to the douchebro asshole attitudes of fans and writers to this very day.

[psychopathicus]

I don't know if I'd call it awful, exactly, but they were certainly a lot better when they were dealing with the directly comedic or more informative articles, rather than stuff like this. At their best, they had a sort of 'just a bunch of guys goofin' around' aspect that I found enjoyable; at their worst - yeah, they could be pretty obnoxious, I agree. Still, like you, I do owe the magazine a lot, all things considered, so I can't be too hard on them.

[about_faces]

I just meant "awful" in regards to knowing how it's just indicative in a small way of a pervasive sense of humor and mentality that only got worse with each passing year. I have very complicated feelings about Wizard.

[psychopathicus]

I can't say I'm all that surprised; in retrospect, 'Two-Timer' is definitely a lot more cinematic in feel than many of the other DCAU comics. As for how it would have actually turned out as a movie, I may point out that almost all movies go through various different rewrites/fleshings out/etc. before they actually hit the screen, so I'm guessing that a big-screen 'Two-Timer' would have been a somewhat different animal. (As it is now, the comic version strikes me more as a couple of episodes from the show than an actual movie; as it currently is, I get the feeling that it would run a little short.)
Boy - Batman: Man-Bat; I remember that one. I used to have the TPB. Not a good comic, I thought; Langstrom was wildly out of character and Batman seemed to be written more as a farcical version of Judge Dredd.

[about_faces]

Yeah, I can only imagine how much it might have changed over the course of the scripting process, especially if Dini's fellow MotP writers Alan Burnett, Marty Pasko, and Michael Reaves developed it further. I like the talent of all involved, especially when they collaborate, so I can only wonder if maybe Two Timer might have turned out to be a much stronger story. Oh well, we'll never know

[psychopathicus]

Sub-Zero is definitely the weaker movie, but I don't recall it feeling particularly two-part episode-ish - it has a decently complex three-act structure that was pretty clearly conceived of as a film, or, if not, retrofitted until it worked as one. What I recall reading is that Warner Bros. wanted them to do a spin-off based on one of the Batman and Robin villains - Timm and Dini wanted to do Bane, but WB said no, Mr. Freeze is the main villain, do one about him. So presumably, they just took any lingering Freeze concepts they had and based a movie around them; whether or not they were initially going to incorporate said concepts into the show is a matter of speculation. (As for Bane fans like me, we can only dream of what might have been - I'd love to have seen what they could have done with the character outside of the limits of broadcast TV. Oh, well

[lego_joker]

According to Wikipedia (so take it with a grain of salt), Bolton only did the Man-Bat mini because its main character was a villain - evidently, he considered Batman "too winning", whatever the hell that means.

[barcavolio]

I left you a long-ass comment on your "Holy Terror" post, mostly about the historical background and other stuff that no one except me actually finds interesting, but I'm not sure if you've received it?

[about_faces]

I saw! I couldn't bring myself to reply to it just yet because I don't have the brain capacity to properly respond to such a detailed, thoughtful post! I did start writing a reply, but then it was eaten, and I got discouraged. I'll try to get to that soon, though. I'm so glad you read it and commented because I truly adore that story and its author.

[barcavolio]

Good to know. :)

[akselavshalom]

Two Timer did the unfortunate mistake of going the "Harvey Dent is dead"-route. As such, I'm glad it didn't get transformed into a movie-format, as I fear it would have been even more troubling. Troubling because, well, I get the distinct impression that it plays with tropes concerning mental illness that really does not help. You know, the kind of tropes that your dear miss(us) Lydia and wo_meimei tore apart in your review of The Great Leap among other tales. But, if Alan Burnett got involved, maybe things would have gone better. He actually cares about Harvey.

Speaking of such, I recently acquired Prey, and I loved Hugo's analysis before he mentioned schizophrenia and split personality disorder. I don't know, but it vaguely scented bull-shit to me, like most other times diagnoses get thrown around. It also suffers a little bit for being written by Doeg Moench, but it is so little that I barely notice. (Løøøv it. ;))

[mothy_van_cleer]

I loved Hugo's analysis before he mentioned schizophrenia and split personality disorder.

It's always difficult for someone to invoke such matters without straining their credibility. The key to writing a good Hugo Strange, I find, is that about 90% of his psychiatric diagnoses have to be accurate - the remaining 10% of the truth, however, is obscured through the lens of his own twisted perception (for example, his assertion that Bruce dresses up solely for the thrill of fascist kink

[akselavshalom]

It's always difficult for someone to invoke such matters without straining their credibility.
If I hadn't written that comment at four in the morning, I'd addressed that.
I think that could be a lesson to anyone attempting to tell stories with basis in psychology. Be it Thomas Harris books, poems or the Batverse, psychological diagnoses is a tricky subject to comment on and will for the most part be written from an armchair perspective. Tearing apart patterns, symbolism and overall behavior of people as if they were characters from a book, like you quite clearly demonstrate in your Hugo-monologue, is effective and relevant enough. In other words, you're awesome.
I hear Corey Burton reading this in his Chris Lee impersonation.

[yaseen101]

I would say not even 10%. More like 50% truth and 50% bullshit.

Having read Prey again after several years, I got the impression that Hugo is also meant to be an allegory of fans who over analyze their favorite character and end up projecting most of their self and insecurities on to the character. At the end of the day, things were far more simpler than what Hugo thought and he was simply too in love with his own voice but the conflict came from Bruce wondering whether Hugo was correct in his diagnosis. Heck, I could imagine Grant Morrison saying half of Hugo's dialogue in Prey.