The Batman: Faces plot is from the Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight comic book series. Matt Wagner wrote and drew the book. It was first released in 1995. This is one of the first Batman comics to include this level of open brutality and gore. It’s a breath of fresh air to see.
Let’s start at the beginning. It all started when Harvey Dent enraged Salvatore “Sal” Maroni, the mob boss of Gotham City. During a court hearing, it resulted in acid damage to the left side of his face. The acid also causes his brain to malfunction, transforming him into Two-Face as we know him now. He had Batman as an ally in the beginning.
Still, in his early days as a crime fighter, Batman tries to save his friend from a tragic fate. Two-Face, on the other hand, appears to have no desire to reform as the story unfolds, and the two become adversaries. Two-Face and Batman are featured in this comic as Two-Face attempts to establish a new nation by purchasing an island.
Face your Fears
The scene is set; we are at Arkham Asylum; Harvey dent flips a coin and loses himself. The coin flip seemed like a symbolic gesture to show the flip between Harvey and Two-Face. The scene cuts to Jim Gordon telling Batman about the murder and Harvey’s escape at 2:22 a.m. “Which means it’s not Harvey we’re after,” Gordon says, and Batman adds, “He’s Two-Face again.”
The continuity breaks, and we move two years, two months, two weeks, and two days in time from the night of the escape. Batman is at a masquerade party at the French Consulate. Nelson Wren introduces Bruce and Mr. D’Urberville to each other. The reasons why Bruce wants an island of his own are unknown; he claims it is for privacy but who knows. The deal gets sealed in a couple of minutes, and the island is sold for thirty million dollars.
Later in the evening, a beautiful French lady, Manon Barbe, comes up to Nelson Wren. She is quite obviously using him for information as Matt Wagner plays on the stereotypes of the femme fatale and the one who falls for her. While she is reeling him in, a murder happens back at the party. A plastic surgeon had died. His mask had been rigged with a slow-release molecular acid that bonded the mask to his flesh. It was a brutal and slow death which, according to Batman, was a diversion.
There was a jade yin-yang that was to be installed at the Gotham Museum that night. Batman’s hunch led him there, and it proved to be right. Harvey and his henchmen were stealing the disc. The henchmen used the massive jade disc as a battering ram against Batman, knocking him aside and completely numbing his arm as they fled with their prize. Never say that the villains never win!
Meanwhile, Nelson Wren is still reeling from his encounter with Manon, which went very well. They decided to meet again two nights later on the terrace of Excelsior Hotel at 8 o’clock. He then receives a mysterious disguised visitor who claims to be very interested in Wayne and D’Urberville’s deal. The visitor also has a French accent and offers to give ten million more than the offer provided by Bruce Wayne. He claims that Wren will be greatly rewarded for his work. After he leaves, we are left wondering who this enigmatic masked man is?
A man whose left eye we never see. I suppose it’s not entirely apparent since one could be fooled into thinking that it’s not Two-Face because his word balloons aren’t scratchy and horrific like they were during the robbery. But, if it’s Harvey, does that mean his good side is pretending to be a masked Frenchman while his bad side takes over the openly Two-Face stuff? That’s duality, in my opinion, but both sides seem to be working towards the same evil goal, so perhaps calling it, duplicity is more appropriate.
After the visit, Wren goes to Bruce Wayne’s house to let him know about the new buyer. He asks Wren to set up a meeting with Mr. Paul D’Urberville at 1:00 p.m. the next day. They meet at the running tracks, and Bruce offers to go higher if the need be. Again, within a couple of minutes, they finalize the deal. Paul gets fifty million with a 25% down payment effective immediately, while Bruce gets his private island.
The panels change, and Wren goes on his date with Manon. She admits that she will have to travel to France soon with her cousin, a fellow realtor. Before leaving, Wren encounters this “Cousin Hervé” himself, albeit briefly and only from the neck up. We see that Cousin Herve doesn’t have legs in the following panels, but the larger picture is still unclear to the audience.
What I love in these panels is how it depicts Wren as a very small man caught up in a very large scheme that will soon overwhelm him. Still, he’s too greedy and motivated by sexual desires to notice. Needless to say, this is where Wren makes his biggest blunder. Being sucked into Harvey’s scheme with the promise of Manon’s affections was one thing, but as Martin Prince’s father said, “You got greedy, Nelson!”.
Batman, meanwhile, is on the lookout for the next victim. He goes to save Charles Anerson, another plastic surgeon, who was celebrating his anniversary at the opera. While it is a highly crowded location, Harvey is a deeply conflicted man. One half of him loves chaos while the other hates it. Unfortunately, Batman isn’t able to save the doctor, but he does go after the killer and manages to catch him. Detective Jim shows up, and Batman requests him to let him interrogate the killer. Needless to say, it was a violent interrogation. Turns out, the killer met Two-Face in France.
On the other hand, Wren gets another visit by the anonymous buyer. He tells the buyer that he wants 25% of Wayne’s bid, which is 12 and a half million dollars. The French man agrees to it and tells Wren that he will persuade Mr. D’Urberville on his own.
Batman figs around the French angle and finds out that Two-Face had been finding and capturing more people like him, the deformed and disabled. Wagner brings in the point of view of Two-Face here. He talks to his little group and addresses their shared dream of a refuge, a place where they can break away from society’s prying eyes and their obsession with perfection.
I know that Two-Face is a villain, but when he talks about the injustices faced by people who are different, it seems to make sense. There is an obsession with perfection and beauty in the world, which creates insecurities in people. While disabled people are completely capable of living wonderful and fulfilling lives, I can understand the need to get away from mainstream society and find solitude in others like you.
Batman is on the prowl to save the next victim, Everett Baker, a plastic surgeon with a twin brother. He got the police to tail the twins while he kept a lookout at their house. He had double-checked everything. Dr. Baker had a little brandy and a cigar before bed, nothing really unusual for him, well, until his face exploded. Batman couldn’t believe his eyes! He had checked the humidor!
Two-Face had put a slow-acting poison in Dr. Baker’s food which relaxed his upper bowel so much that methane was leaking up his body. The cigar caused an internal explosion, but he would’ve died in his sleep anyway. A clever double-stage killing on Harvey’s part. While Batman was focused on his failures to save lives, Two-Face had sent Cousin Herve, the man with no legs, to spy on Paul D’Urberville to find blackmail-worthy information.
The next day, Wayne and D’Urberville’s deal proceeds as planned, with Wayne making his down payment of ten million. By night-time, Batman finally saves one of the plastic surgeons, Charles Keppler, by following his instincts. Around the same time, Paul D’Urberville received an unwelcome visitor. Following the visit, D’Urberville vanishes from public view, as does Wayne’s down payment, which naturally raises Bruce’s suspicions. Meanwhile, Wren relays Bruce’s down payment’s bank transaction number to French!
Harvey, in turn, sends Manon over to thank Wren for his loyal service, all night long. Later, he calls the French Consulate and learns that there is no “Comte de la Enhance,” He begins to suspect that something is wrong here. After hours of driving around in a haze of worry, he tracks down Manon and demands that she tell him the truth. Manon mercifully just shoots Wren rather than torturing us with more French-accented dialogues. She gave Wren a whiff of a sweet, sweet tranquilizer dart. Given what lies ahead of him, a bullet might have been better.
D’Urberville, now a miserable shell of his usual dashing self, begs Bruce not to fight the bid and admits to being blackmailed by someone calling himself “Count Enance” (say it aloud), which is exactly the kind of puns that work best in comics. Bruce then discovers that a pilot was kidnapped at the same time he rescued the one plastic surgeon. The pilot was supposed to fly “the first trans-Atlantic dirigible flight in over seventy-five years—the Gothzeppelin,” which is what Harvey thought to use to get to Isle D’Urberville.
Bruce goes to the hangar where the Gothzepplin is kept, only to end up getting knocked out. We see him tied up while Two-Face taunts him. He doesn’t attack Batman though, which is interesting considering he’s the only person standing in his way to getting the island. However, if we look at it, Harvey isn’t after Batman at all in this issue. He is only concerned with the island and wants a safe space for those who are different.
On the other hand, Nelson Wren wakes up inside Harvey’s “Fun House” and realizes that he has been duped. Harvey “thanks” him for the large down payment, then gloats, “Heh, you could not distinguish a real French accent from a fake one but were still lost to its charming allure.”
As if this revelation wasn’t enough of a shock, Manon visits Wren, and she bemoans the fact that he has only loved her form and face without ever truly knowing her. So, she shows him the real Manon, full beard, and breasts. He tries to run away from reality until he is conked on the head and put in a room with Mr. D’Urberville. D’Urberville is upset with Wren, and rightly so; Wren was the reason that D’Urberville’s well-kept secret got revealed.
Paul D’Urberville, you see, is also a deformed man. He has two extra arms protruding from his stomach that he and his parents have tried very hard to keep hidden. This says more about the society they are in than the actions of the D’Urbervilles, in my opinion. They are in a world that is more concerned with appearances where they have to save face than be themselves. This is where Wagner starts building up to the crux of the story.
Meanwhile, Batman has escaped from Harvey’s clutches and come to save D’Urberville and Wren. Unfortunately, he messed up and got captured by Two-Face once again. D’Urberville is stowed away safely, but the same allowances aren’t given to Batman and Wren. Two-Face flips a coin to decide which one to kill. Unfortunately for Wren, the fates were not on his side.
He is pushed out of the plane and to his death, while Batman has somehow managed to free himself once again. He reminds Harvey of the innocent people he has killed, to which he retaliates, “Beauty Merchants, All!”. He deeply seems to believe that his people suffer as much as he does. He claims that it is imperative for them to have a space isolated from the rest of society. However, his people, as he calls them, disagree. Turns out, a lot of them were not here willingly. “He said he’d kill me if I didn’t cooperate…” “He said he’d kill my children.” these are the statements they say.
Two-Face is revealed in this scene to be a fanatical hypocrite who does not speak for “his people,” but rather a villain who will force those he claims to protect to obey his whims. Any notions of him being a Magneto-style “noble villain” have been dashed, and now that he’s been revealed, all that remains is for Harvey to face the truth about himself. Most of them enjoyed their individual lives, while few had terrible experiences.
Harvey makes a break for it and ends up at a circus. The entire thing is quite strategic and brings the entire comic to a wonderful close. The circus has a performer who is a man with two faces as well, except he has a biological deformity, unlike Harvey.
The man with two faces starts to condemn Harvey, who keeps believing that the other man hasn’t suffered the way he has; he claims that their pain is different, and society perceives them differently. While Harvey has a long and illustrious history of epic meltdowns, this one may be the most emotionally charged. It’s a scathing indictment of the character, slicing him to the core and exposing all the ways in which Two-Face has been deluding himself.
Even with the scarring, he could have led a normal life, but he chose to become a bitter criminal instead. It’s the ugliest, most painful truth he could face, and it breaks him down so badly that he’s almost ready to defy the coin and shoot anyway, even though his “good” side is screaming at the time.
Marvelous Verdict
Batman: Faces is a comic with only the best things nestled in its core. Maybe others won’t agree with Batman when he says that Harvey was looking for justice in his own twisted way, but I do. It is a rather poetic and deep-rooted feeling of insecurity in Harvey that we explore in this comic. I think his intentions started altruistically but got mangled into selfishness in between when he found out that others like him are living happy and fulfilling lives. The Marvelous Verdict is that Batman: Faces is most definitely worth a read and even better for contemplation.