I talk Maybe Too Much About Two-Face in Batman Caped Crusader

I like to consider myself an armchair Batman pop culture historian. I once toyed with the idea of making a podcast over some of the studying I've done - but as I mentioned in this defense of 1966 Batman, "do we really need another white dude talking with false confidence on a niche topic?" I'd still like to write full posts on them - maybe even some kind of book?

Whether or not there's interest in something silly like that, I take watching media on The Batman very seriously. In my research on Batman villains, I happily consumed the 1966 episodes, skimmed the Wikipedia synopses on the episodes of Super Friends, reveled in the Batman The Animated Series, and had hit or miss of the pre-Nolan films. From there, you suddenly have an explosion of Batman: Year One, Batman Begins, Batman Beyond, The Batman, Beware the Batman, Batman: Brave and the Bold, Son of Batman, Batman and Harley Quinn, Batman: Gotham Knight, Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, and so on and so on. I even watched the incredibly middling Gotham television series to see what impact it might have on pop culture (a shockingly minimal amount for a show that ran for five seasons).

Enter Batman Caped Crusader. What caught my attention was that Bruce Timm, one of the creative leaders of the phenomenal 90s Batman The Animated Series was heavily involved. I've already devoured the first season and the second just dropped. I'm still getting through it but I wanted to take a second to celebrate the first season.

There will be some spoilers in this post. I highly recommend just going and watch the first season before reading further. Or don't. I ain't a cop.

We get a litany of the classic villains with new inventions - Penguin as Oswalda Cobblepot, a matron with a trio of idiotic spawn, is absolutely a blast; Clayface is a treat in a mystery style story; Catwoman is alluring as always. With Gentleman Ghost we get a thrill of not knowing whether this is an actual ghost or just a really well conceived ruse. Everything before Gentleman Ghost's episode is grounded so it had me double guessing - with Batman - that there's no way it could be a real ghost. Right?

And Harleen Quinzel is absolutely phenomenal. Leave it to the creator of her to decide to bring her fully out of the Joker's shadow and make her her own villain. She is terrifying and a phenomenal foil to Batman.

But my favorite treatment? Two-Face. Voiced by Diedrich Bader who, for the better part of a decade, has been providing the voice for the Caped Crusader in most situations until this point. I was excited to see them bring him in as Harvey Dent through the season. Instead of the traditional approach of Harvey being the shining White Knight, he seems to be delving more and more into corruption to Get His Way. When Dent is finally ruined - when Two-Face is born - there is a bit of a rug pull that I never would have guessed.

Two-Face runs deep in the Batman mythos. Batman was created in 1939, Two-Face in 1942. He sprang from the pages almost exactly as we know him today, a lawyer scarred by acid thrown in the face, mentally shattered into two personalities: Harvey Dent, the defender of order, and Two-Face, a rampaging agent of chaos. How is the decision made of who gets to sit in the driver seat? A coin flip. This has been true through the Golden Age of comics all the way to today. In a study of how pop culture has influenced the comic characters - Two-Face is an absolute fascinating counterexample of how some things are still as good as the day they rolled off the assembly line.

In every incarnation of the eighty years of Two-Face this has been the rule: Dent is the shining unmarred side and Two-Face is the product of the accident.

In Batman Caped Crusader, we get the inverse. Harvey Dent is pushing the line of what is "right," encouraged by his hubris, until his fated fall occurs. When Two-Face is born, we get an unrepentant, emboldened version of the Two-Face. When he talks, the remaining unblemished face is the focus. And the other side? The scarred embarrassment of his ruin? We hear from what's left of Dent: a shattered, apologetic man, who can't believe he's let things go so far.

I just love it, y'all. As stated, Two-Face has been more or less the same. Mr Freeze has gone through more changes than I can explain without his own post; the Joker sways heavily with the source material to be Batman's foil; Harley Quinn has been able to crawl out of the shadow of Mr J; but Two-Face has always been the same. I am absolutely unsurprised that Bruce Timm was the one who was able to bring something new to the character.

When I started this article, I wanted to do a general celebration of Batman Caped Crusader, and it seemed that what I really needed to do was drive in the specificity on one of the many reasons I loved the first season. The fact that this has probably broken 800 words without me even trying is telling me that maybe I should go and write a manuscript or something.