Thursday, September 18, 2008

Flip of the Coin #1: Why?



I've always had a fascination with people, since I was really young. For years I've always wanted to know every darn thing about a person. See, I used to heavily believe that you couldn't fully appreciate or love a person unless knowing everything, good and bad, and accepting them. With people, it's rather hard to see this. People are like coins. You see one side but don't see the other. They could be hiding something, something emotional or painful, but you could never tell. Or a very flawed side. Nowadays, my views on this is different. Now, if people I care about don't want to reveal a thing to me, so be it. Doesn't mean I can't appreciate or care for them.

But yes, moving on... Two-Face represents people. That is the main thing that attracts me to the character. He is the representation and personification of wanting to see both sides and my fascination with people as a whole. When written well, Two-Face is a very flawed individual. Sure, he is a Bat-villain, but in him he still has the potential to do good. As people, we have good and bad sides about us. One side could be greater than the other, but we have them. Two-Face represents that notion, even visually. We could be very beautiful at one point and very scarred and ugly. His obsession with allowing the coin to choose his or other's fate could represent our inner desires to want to do things people would deem out-of-character for us or even just plain wrong.

Also, since I was little I've always been fascinated by the whole multiple personality stuff. That combined with people having different personalities in general is what makes me so in love a the character like Harvey Dent, or someone like Jaime Madrox, the Multiple Man, over at Marvel. And in me is my own constant inner battles of making decisions that even I tend to flip a coin to decide or just plainly don't do anything.

And it also helps that Two-Face has had some fantastic writing for him. Writers like Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker, Chuck Dixon, J.M. DeMatteis, Jeph Loeb, Andrew Helfer, and many others writing essential Two-Face stories. Usually it's guaranteed that if Two-Face makes an appearance, it'll be an intense and interesting story. And who doesn't love reading those stories of a best friend or partner gone bad. Two-Face was once D.A. of Gotham and part of the Gotham Trinity trying to stop crime. But we all know how much that cost as his struggles against crime lead to the down fall of the great Gotham White Knight Harvey as he comes to twisted and deformed Two-Face. You can't help but fall in love with the character and his struggle when you watch his origin episodes in the 90s Batman Animated Series written by master Paul Dini and in Chris Nolan's recent masterpiece The Dark Knight where Harvey was such a huge and fantastic part of the film.

So yeah. All those stuff above and many are why I'm so in darn love with this character. Sheesh, what a rant. Hmm... but reading through this post I still couldn't quite fully seem to express in detail my full love for the character. Here's hoping at least a bit was expressed to convey it.

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