10 Things DC Comics Want You To Forget About Two-Face

10. The Existence Of Plastic Surgery

Superhero comics operate with a strange sort of logic. The concept of comic book death has it that any major (or even minor) character who kicks the bucket can and probably will eventually be resurrected, through some combination of the sci-fi tech, magic or continuity fixes which are the norm in the fantastical world of cape comics. That is, unless the character's death is an important narrative device, like that of Batman's parents; Bruce Wayne is fuelled by their murders to become the Dark Knight, and in his time he's come across numerous ways he could bring them back to life, but never has. Because it'd ruin the story. The same is true, in a smaller way, for Harvey Dent. In a DC Universe which has clones, the Lazarus Pit and people with reality-warping superpowers, "fixing" the scars that transformed him into Two-Face would be a doddle. In fact you could do it with stuff we have in the real world - skin grafts and plastic surgery have advanced to the point that people with such disfigurements can have their faces put back almost exactly how they were before. There have been a couple of times where DC admits to this glaringly obvious option to rehabilitate Harvey Dent, but it's not really worked out either time. In both contemporary stories and Frank Miller's future-flung Dark Knight Returns, Two-Face has been temporarily "cured" of both his facial scarring and his insanity only for the latter to return and convince him to bring back the former, often in gruesome fashion. As bringing back Thomas and Martha Wayne would, reuniting the two faces of Harvey Dent would ruin the character. Poor guy, his happiness squandered by the demands of telling a good story.