Harvey Dent made his debut in Detective Comics #66 in 1942 under the name Harvey Kent (a particular Kryptonian’s name would soon be the cause for the edit). Throughout his first twenty years, the character appeared just five times combined in the 1940s and 1950s. He made a cautious comeback in 1968 with World’s Finest Comics #173, and by 1971 he had established himself as a regular. As is the case with the majority of DC characters, Harvey Dent has a number of distinct backstories that span the time periods prior to the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the time period that followed, and the days that followed DC’s New 52 reboot.
By Detective Comics #80, Two-Face had undergone plastic surgery, returned to his former life, and proposed to his love, quitting his robbery rampage. In Batman: The Long Halloween, Harvey Dent’s narrative is modified and clarified after the crisis. His past is tragic and includes a violent father. In fact, his father frequently chooses whether to beat him by tossing a coin (suddenly a coin from a crime scene seems favorable Due to this abuse, Dent begins to conceal and repress his schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, all the while maintaining the same successful legal career as his previous incarnation.
Harvey Dent was one of the few upright lawmen in Gotham, much like Jim Gordon. He was young and appealing; the media dubbed him “Apollo,” but underlying his good features was an unstable second personality that had its roots in his harsh upbringing. Dent finally got bathed in acid, which burned away the left half of his face until it resembled the monster inside. The specifics vary depending on the origin.
After that, Dent’s mind broke, and he declared himself to be nothing more than a puppet of fate. He is one of Gotham’s most explosive crime bosses, having abandoned his previous faith in justice and become intent on demonstrating the arbitrary nature of free choice. This time the mafia thinks Dent killed Maroni’s father, so he winds himself up in front of Maroni again and gets acid poured in his face. Dent transforms into Two-Face and starts abusing him with the coin his own father used to count. He has the odd habit of using a two-headed coin that is clean on one side and scratched on the other to make all of his decisions. Flipping this coin, with the scarred side signifying evil and the clean side signifying good, determines all of his significant decisions. His actions and victim selection are thus entirely the result of chance. Yet Two-Face regularly targets police stations and courts because he has a particular aversion to those who enforce the law.
Two-Face is one of Batman’s greatest foes, along with The Joker and Ra’s al Ghul, but not because of the danger he presents to the rest of the world. Instead, he serves as a reminder to Batman of how low even the greatest may fall and how he cannot save all of his comrades; as a result, one of the main themes of the character continues to be Batman’s remorse over having let his former friends down and his ongoing attempts to “redeem” Dent.
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Writer:
Risalat Rahman Hridoy
Intern, Content Writing Department
YSSE