One Face... No... Two-Face! No... Five-Face?

   There was a fifty percent change of Harvey Dent's transformation into Two-Face, right? Kind of the entire gist of it. When they first introduced the character as Harvey Kent, (yeah, Kent, probably Superman's long-lost cousin or something,) there was if I remember correctly a bit with a trick Batcoin that landed on its side instead of on either of its faces, so he agreed to have plastic surgery (and presumably plenty of psychotherapy) to help him become an upstanding citizen again. Not wanting to let such a compelling character go to waste (and really, what an awesome high concept idea ohmigosh) the DC team went through four different non-Harvey Dent Two-Faces.

   There was the Two-Face copycat criminal who tried to frame Dent for his own crimes, but was foiled when the World's Greatest Detective realized that the Two-Face wounds were on the wrong side of his face. Two Two-Faces were actors recreating the iconic courtroom scene that led to his scarring (which of goes inevitably wrong with real acid,) both blissfully unaware of each other. One of those was itself rewritten and redrawn slightly with an exploding spotlight instead of a face full of acid in order to get published in a code-approved reprint comics collection. (It makes you wonder how many other actors went insane after trying to recreate the rise of Two-Face for television only to have it go wrong (is that role curse or something?) but then not go evil because their coins came up good side up when they decided whether to go through with it or not.) And finally (but chronologically the second of these four examples,) then there was one more time where the Two-Face was just a Two-Face impersonator. Who could have done it this time? Oh, yeah, it was the butler. The butler did it. (The Cape Crusader figured this one out when the impostor Two-Face used a coin with both sides scarred, which the real Two-Face would never do.)

   So, that's four non-Harvey Two-Faces. It's kind of poetic and fitting of the character, though. Two different methods each of becoming two different copycat versions of Two-Face. Dent himself would have approved. Speaking of Dent, the role settled back to him. Of course it would return to him. You kidding? It was just meant to be. Take a gander yourself:

(Via http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2009/08/27/comic-book-legends-revealed-222/) That link has a whole bunch of other good info on the alternate Two-Faces, so check it out.

   I really like this. An explosion when he's doing good causes him to permanently revert to being a villain. I guess the acid-free origin in Dark Knight still pay homage to this, with explosion. Still, aside from the kudos I must give them for correctly using the word "coincidence" instead of "irony" in the second panel, I've still got a few niggling doubts on this. Harvey Dent thinks to himself that he would have passed safe crackers right on by were he still Two-Face, but I think that there'd only be a 50% chance of that. Also, how did he get all the way home in that taxi with half of his face melted off like that? I guess it was a not uncommon seeing Two-Face around after so many recreations gone wrong. I sure hope that's the reason. Because that'd be pretty awesome.