Disclaimers: First of all—and this is super important—this is not my weekly post (which I generally save for the weekend). I’ll go on a rant when the mood takes me, and if it’s funny enough, I’ll post it here; but it will never count as my actual post for the week. Second, as where I kind of hope readers get something from my weekly posts, I don’t expect—or even want—anyone to take anything that pops up in Deep Thoughts seriously. You probably don’t know me, but if you did, you’d know immediately that something I wrote titled Deep Thoughts is absolutely not meant to be taken seriously. Finally, let me be clear; yes, this is a post about Two-Face, the Batman villain. Why? Because, I enjoy comics. And also, because seriously.
So, Batman has the best rogues gallery there is. I think that’s pretty safe to say. They’re all pretty great, and somehow, a new villain is added periodically and those additions are… also really great (I’m thinking of Professor Pyg). It seems like no one else’s rogues gallery does that. But anyway, the point is, they’re all great.
Now, I don’t want to say that Two-Face isn’t charming. Like all of Batman’s best rogues, he has an awesome name, a great origin, a really charming and badass shtick with the coin…
But at the same time… Two-Face is a guy. He’s just an angry, crazy guy. What is the major thing that separates Two-Face from an angry mobster? That mobster maybe doesn’t like the number 2 as much. What separates him from, say, the Joker, who is also a crazy guy? Well, Two-Face may ransom something for an extra one million dollars.
But also the Joker definitely doesn’t create a new Gotham landmark every time he pulls a heist. Seriously, how many Janus Theater’s and Twin Casino’s are there in Gotham at this point? How many banks on 2nd Ave.? And for that matter, seriously, how many banks on 2nd Ave. and 2nd St.?
And realistically… that mobster, who’s been working in the mob for a good long while? Probably a better shot than Harvey Dent, former District Attorney who just now went crazy and picked up a gun.
So really, Two-Face walks into the room, and I can’t help thinking, “Well, shit could be worse. Killer Croc could’ve just walked in. I mean, that motherfucker’ll eat you. He’ll eat you without flipping a single fucking coin.”
Like, I understand that there’s supposed to be tension and total unpredictability with Two-Face and I appreciate that. I know that he’s supposed to be cerebral and an interesting example of the good and evil in all of us. But… Ventriloquist / Scarface does that better? Legitimately, once Harvey turns into Two-Face, he kind of just… stops being Harvey. But Scarface is literally always Scarface and Ventriloquist. I don’t want to get too deep here, so I’ll just say that I find Ventriloquist a lot more compelling even though he’s not popular. Also, I like to imagine Arnold Wesker (Ventriloquist) is actually Albert Wesker’s brother. Or dad. Neither makes any sense at all for so many reasons, but in my mind, that’s cannon.
Anyway, like I said, I do like Two-Face and I love the coin toss. But… Okay. The coin toss. Imagine that Two-Face and his thugs have you hostage and one of his goons looks at you and asks, “What do we do with this one?”
Two-Face takes out his coin.
You say, “What? You’re just deciding to flip that thing? Aren’t you supposed to flip it to make all your decisions?”
Two-Face stares at you for a moment. Then he looks down at the coin.
And then the paradox makes his head explode.
House of Error 