Two-Face - Crime Boss or Vigilante?

[ronny]

Okay, I know that there's already a Two-Face topic but I wanted a more in-depth discussion of this issue concerning the character.
So, which interpretation do you prefer in regards to Two-Face? That of a crime boss whose actions revolve around chance and the number 2?
Or the less common interpretation of him as a vigilante intent on enacting his warped sense of justice?
Vote and discuss!

 

[Greg]

Combination of both. I'd describe further, but I'm digressing too much from my studies.

 

[November Rain]

Doesn't he need to be both to be balanced.

He should be treated more like the hulk. Taking on bad guys sometimes, taking on good guys sometimes. A completely unbias entity ruled by a simple 50/50 choice. He should constantly hate himself for the decisions he makes whether good or bad except for rare occasions.

 

[ronny]

Doesn't he need to be both to be balanced.

He should be treated more like the hulk. Taking on bad guys sometimes, taking on good guys sometimes. A completely unbias entity ruled by a simple 50/50 choice. He should constantly hate himself for the decisions he makes whether good or bad except for rare occasions.

But the problem is that we've already got lots of characters who fit the criteria of a Mob Boss. There's Penguin, Black Mask and even characters like Falcone and Maroni.
I just find it hard to accept a former DA acting like an old style Mafia don with traditional thugs.
Isn't the fact that he wants to kill criminals with no trial or evidence sufficient to put him at odds with Batman? Why does he need to rob banks and have stupid deathtraps like loads of other villains?

 

[Cain]

He's a crime boss because he knows Batman's game is mental. He likes to take advantage of Batman always wanting to know everything and plays it against him by taking chances on a coin. He does it cause he knows it becomes a crisis of conscience every time for Batman because of who Two-Face was. Of course there is the vigilante side which stems from the man he used to be. He is both.

 

[ronny]

I don't know Cain, although Two-Face is certainly adept at paying with Batman's mind I don't believe that his coin is part of that. The coin to him is the only things that makes sense. Everything else he believed in was shattered and then it goes down to chance. The coin represents this new word view.
Athough I don't believe that the scarring should necessarily make him into a conventional criminal. Honestly, why would he become a mobster? It was a mobster who disfigured him and screwed his life up forever. Harvey Dent went from being a handsome, respected District Attourney to being a freak. And it was all down to the Mafia.
Why would he then stoop to their level? It makes little sense, especially as he always seemed to be so egotistical.
Just look at Face The Face. He helps Batman and then gets kicked to the curb. Everything in that story is handled really well until his transformation.
Then he goes to the zoo and wants to kill two of every animal?
It lowers the tone of an otherwise cracking story. I just don't think that version of the character works in any meaningful way.

 

[C. W. Saturn]

Half Robin Hood / half mob boss

 

[November Rain]

I don't know Cain, although Two-Face is certainly adept at paying with Batman's mind I don't believe that his coin is part of that. The coin to him is the only things that makes sense. Everything else he believed in was shattered and then it goes down to chance. The coin represents this new word view.
Athough I don't believe that the scarring should necessarily make him into a conventional criminal. Honestly, why would he become a mobster? It was a mobster who disfigured him and screwed his life up forever. Harvey Dent went from being a handsome, respected District Attourney to being a freak. And it was all down to the Mafia.
Why would he then stoop to their level? It makes little sense, especially as he always seemed to be so egotistical.
Just look at Face The Face. He helps Batman and then gets kicked to the curb. Everything in that story is handled really well until his transformation.
Then he goes to the zoo and wants to kill two of every animal?
It lowers the tone of an otherwise cracking story. I just don't think that version of the character works in any meaningful way.

I would like to think in his new approach he has served the public and given and given and given.

now half of him wants to take or at the very least show the mobsters what it is like to have something taken from then, aka, ganglands and money...

the same could be said about gotham's public

 

[Two-Face=Badass]

I am a little sick of saying this, but it is a good topic. Though I consider the title flawed, as Two-Face isn't just one or the other he is both and a variety of other things. Even when he is a mob boss he is enforcing his own "fair" law upon Gotham, appointing himself as judge, jury and executioner. He was a warlord in NML and that was one of his best stories because it showed how he tried to enact his own brand of justice upon the city. Two-Face must be able to reach the lows and highs. If he just killed mobsters it would be boring as all heck. Just read Batman: Faces. Wonderful book, and he didn't to either of these things, but it was still perfect to character as the situation was justified in his mind. That's the only catch with the character ultimately, the situation must be justified in his mind as a good thing, be it mob boss, vigilante, DA, mob killer, kidnapper or anything else.

 

[ronny]

I doubt whether Harvey did it all for the public anyway. Remember The Long Halloween? His repeated insistence that "I did what needed to be done"?
However noble his actions I think that a large part of Dent's mind was formed around that idea that he was going to save Gotham. Him alone because he was the only one pure enough to do so.
But he wasn't saving Gotham, he was only saving an idealised version of the city that he and Batman shared.
That's why the acid incident is so shattering, because of his ego. "Apollo" becomes "Two-Face".
And whilst I agree with your point about inflicting his pain on the Gotham Mafia I do not then see why he would take their place. Who would work for him? Most of the city knew his past, so why would criminals work for him and trust him as he went on petty robberies?

 

[BlueLightning]

Doesn't he need to be both to be balanced.

He should be treated more like the hulk. Taking on bad guys sometimes, taking on good guys sometimes. A completely unbias entity ruled by a simple 50/50 choice. He should constantly hate himself for the decisions he makes whether good or bad except for rare occasions.

That sums it up. Very well explained. I think Two-Face works better as a vigilante, he just do what he thinks its fair. He kills, enough reason for Batman to capture him.

 

[Cain]

I don't know Cain, although Two-Face is certainly adept at paying with Batman's mind I don't believe that his coin is part of that.

It is but not deliberately it's just a part of who he has become. He stands for taking chances, being spontaneous is a way of life for him his psyche is so shattered like you said the coin is the only thing that makes sense. To him true justice is split in half. Batman on the other is all about planification and having things in order this coupled with the personal association is why he is one of the best villains.

Honestly, why would he become a mobster? It was a mobster who disfigured him and screwed his life up forever. Harvey Dent went from being a handsome, respected District Attourney to being a freak. And it was all down to the Mafia. Why would he then stoop to their level? It makes little sense, especially as he always seemed to be so egotistical.

As already stated he is many things but it's because he is two people in one, one side is not always in control he's his own worst enemy. Even the animated series touched on that remember "Big Bad Harv"? there is a part of him that likes being a crime boss but the keyword here is crime to be a crime boss you don't neccessarily have to be a mobster. Joker for example is a crime boss and is far from being anything like the mafia.

 

[Greg]

Okay, here's my elaboration. When Harvey Dent was D.A. he was essentially one of the good natural good guys. Everything he did was to ensure the safety of Gotham City from the bad guys. Now, it was the Two-Face aspect of himself that pushed him to actually start killing people while he was still Harvey Dent. That there brought him to being a vigilante. I feel that the vigilante aspect of Two-Face comes from both sides in a strange way working together. Being a vigilante is in itself a crime, especially when you're killing the criminals. In the works of Two-Face, the vigilante, Harvey is putting away the crime while Two-Face is making sure they are put away as ultimate executioner.

The crime boss aspect I feel is more completely the Two-Face (let's call him Murray based on Batman: Jekyll and Hyde) side. Murray is the evil aspect all the way. Without any restraints, without the coin and without the Harvey aspect, he would be a no-holds bar madman making sure everyone suffered. And one thing the Murray side loves is crime and being some sort of a terrorist. The Murray side always represented the things Harvey hated the most in society and Gotham, and now its what his "partner" glorifies in, which brings about the crime boss aspect. We know how much Harvey hated crime bosses and the mob, etc, and now he becomes what he hates the most, which adds to more of the tragedy of the character when he has to take a sad backseat and see the wreakage he's causing. Now, just like how the Murray side causes Harvey to kill as a vigilante, the Harvey side should find some way to make Murray do good as a crime boss, but we don't see much of that. I feel that's something that should be elaborated and worked on more by writers. The Harvey side that does come out, though, is the side that allows certain characters to live and allow Murray to sit back and allow him to help someone in need.

So through those is how the two combined together really allows the character of Two-Face to be both a vigilante and crime boss and still don't seem out of character, at least for me. The coin helps him do all types of things. I do feel, though, that we don't get to see too much of the vigilante side. That I would love to see. The one thing I do find scary about the character though is in portrayals like David Hine's Two-Face one-shot in Joker's Asylum. It seems everything being done is due to the Murray side, but it seems as if it's Harvey also trying to showcase just how cruel life is, which sorta mixes both sides and aspects of the character and makes him even more dangerous. All I know is, I love the different interpretations of the character... except for the Batman Forever interp. Yeesh.

 

[Dark Victory]

Both