Though not surprising in the slightest, I was pleasantly happy to see Two-Face Year One in this week’s pull lists. I was however surprised that it was only a two parter, but then I found that it was 48 pages long, and … needless to say, as a big Harvey Dent fan, I’ll be looking forward to buying this in TPB.
But for the moment, we’ve got 48 pages worth of Harvey Dent to review, and I was once again pleasantly surprised with how this turned out.
It’s no surprise to see this book turn up when it did. The Dark Knight is a giant love fest for fans of the Joker and Two-Face (albeit a brilliant love fest), and with ‘Jokers Asylum’ kicking out a new story each week, it’s only fair that Two-Face get a bit of the action.
The moment I opened to the first page of panels, I was happy. I was a bit confused as to why Harvey Dent looked like Sal Maroni from The Dark Knight, especially seeing as Sal Maroni had just been hand delivered to them by Bats, but apart from that…
Jesus Saiz’s panel layout is really nice, and makes nice use of space and still keeps it interesting. Even though I was really happy with the way Batman and Jim Gordon were drawn, two iconic characters (obviously), the sixth page in has a panel at the bottom where I swear Eric Roberts has been traced on to the page.
Written by Mark Sable, this newest addition to DC’s Year One series of books was definitely worthwhile. Any story that feasibly tells the story of Harvey Dent’s transition from District Attorney to Two-Face is worth anyone’s time. But I kept feeling like I’d recently seen this story done somewhere else. Having seen The Dark Knight twice already, we may have found the problem. That’s not to say that Sable decided to follow the script for TDK, he probably didn’t even get to see it, but they do run parallel at times.
This book makes good use of flashbacks as well, flashing back (or across… I’m not sure of the timeline here) to Harvey’s shrink appointment, as well as some small history points for some small minor characters that pop up. With some of these flashbacks, the coloring changes as well, in particular for Harvey’s shrink appointments, where everything goes gray scale.
We’re basically being introduced to Gotham’s first crime fighter, and how he had to deal with his own competition and struggles. Gotham was always a crime riddled city, and Harvey was there before Commissioner Gordon and before Batman (apparently. It says so, right there at the end!). And as Sable and Saiz take us through the story, we get to see glimpses of how he got to where he was, and the slow slip and slide that Harvey is taking towards becoming Two-Face.
I was particularly happy to see the return of Harvey being splashed with acid in the face by Sal Maroni from the witness stand in court. It’s the way that Harvey should receive his gruesome scars, though I’m still not certain how burning acid manages not to burn its way out of a container.
Two-Face Year One gets 3 out of 5 from me. The artwork was nice, but I couldn’t help seeing Eric Roberts in Harvey Dent, and that is a problem considering the books links between Harvey Dent and Sal Maroni, the latter being played by Eric Roberts in TDK. Either way, maybe just wait on buying this until you can get the trade paperback. At $5.99, this book just isn’t worth the cover price.
