Harvy Dent, AKA Two Face is one of the Batman villains who is really easy to overthink. Just how does his dissociative personality work. Is he quite as much obsessed with dualism and random chance as he thinks he is. For that matter even if you’re flipping a coin to make a choice, do you have to flip the coin to propose what choices to make in the first place.
Fortunately, for the sake of the visuals, all that matters is the face and the coin.
As for approach in the setting this challenge I think I’ll stick with the approach created in Dark Knight.
For this week’s selection, I watch films about Napoleon Bonaparte.
The first on my list, Sergei Bondarchuk’sWaterloo, was a film that I had heard mixed things about. On one side I definitely heard that lots of people like that thinking of it as an epic and historically accurate production of the Battle of Waterloo. On the other hand, I heard that it flopped in 1970.
Now it was time for me to see for myself.
Waterloo starts with Napoleon(Ron Steiger) exiled to the island of Elba. Nine months later he’s back and pigs control over France again. With the forces of Europe against him, he leads his army to Brussels where the English troops are gathered. know, it’s up to The Duke of Wellington (Christopher Plummer) to stop him once and for all. But with such a force against him is there a chance?
Count me as one of the people who like this movie. This was an incredible epic spectacle which has which history has forgiven. The scale of this is just breathtaking with the arm both armies played by Soviet soldiers. It was a joke at the time that the director was in control of the six largest army in the world. Looking at it this does not appear to be an exaggeration.
Steiger is fantastic is Napoleon playing him up as a hyperactive larger than life mix of ego and intellect. Plummer as Wellington is the complete opposite, a very proper, but sarcastic, British gentleman with ice running through his veins. Who will do what it takes in order to win? Together the contrast is amazing.
If I have one problem with it, it is that by definition half the film consists of only one fight scene.
The next film on my list, Antoine de Caunes’sMonsieur N, was one I hadn’t even heard of until I was doing my research and the page about Napolean films, I was looking at, claimed it was the best of the lot.
This British-French bilingual tells the story of Napoleon’s imprisonment in St. Helena from the point of view of a British lieutenant (Jay Rodan)who is one of his jailers. It also suggests an interesting little conspiracy theory that instead of dying in St Helen, Napoleon eventually escaped from the island using a body double and lived out the rest of his life in Louisiana with the British none what the wiser.
I mostly enjoy this film, at least the first half Philippe Torreton does a very good job as Napoleon playing him as someone who is living in the past, but at the same time, he is sure of himself at all times preserving the loyalty of his handful of remaining followers who went into exile. The rest of the cast is a wonderful ensemble of character actors I never heard of most notably Richard E. Grant as Major-GeneralSir Hudson Lowe the overzealous governor who sees himself as Napolean’s nemesis but in reality is terribly outclassed. My only real problem with it is it kind of loses its momentum in the second half and the premise of Napoleon’s hypothetical escape feels more than a little far-fetched.
Today’s sketch, Hugo Strange may have been the harder sketches I have in this challenge. First there’s not much to do with Hugo Strange. Since he first appeared in the 1940s, he’s gone back and forth between generic mad scientist and evil psychiatrist.
When I first came across him, in the eighties, the writers were doing him as one of those cartoon knee-jerk psychiatrists who would show up on talk shows saying how criminals, like the Joker, were just victims of the Bat, while in secret obsessing about Batman and doing lots of evil plots, usually involved brainwashing his patients, as weapons for his cause.
Later on, most notably in Matt Wagner’s wonderful Batman and the Monster Men, he’s brought back to being a standard mad scientist and the one responsible for the aforementioned Monster Men.
So for this, I went more for the mad experimentalist, (a psychiatrists office doesn’t really say evil without another context.) Here he’s doing his very own version of the Ludovico Technique.
Incidentally, in case anybody was wondering if I forgot, second this composition was a mess because I was having trouble fitting both Strange and the “patient” he was administering the eyedrops to into the panel.
James Gordon is really one I hadn’t thought about. In a way, at least visually, he’s one of the easiest ones to do. But when you think about it, he’s also one of the hardest.
For the most part, I’m drawn towards Frank Miller’s version from both Dark Knight and Batman: Year One, The one good cop in a dirty and corrupt city.
This works better in comic books then elsewhere… I also watch the Wire.
A big city like Gotham isn’t a one-horse town for a sheriff to straighten out, and will eat the good cops with the bad.
Perhaps this is why Gordon turns a blind eye to a mysterious vigilante.
As I’ve said in previous posts, I’m always fascinated about what new characters get put in the regular cast and which ones get forgotten almost immediately.
For me, The Ventriloquist was the first “modern” character who was put into the regular Batman rogues gallery.
I really liked the initial concept a quiet nondescript man, who stands slightly in the shadows as he controls a powerful criminal gang through a loud, boisterous, larger than life puppet named Scarface.
Since then a lot of writers have tried to embellish the original concept by making Scarface some supernatural icon or replacing him with an “improved” ventriloquist. but in the process, I think they forget what made the character work in the first place.
I remember when I first read his first appearance in Detective Comics #583 I thought Scarface came off as silly despite his brutality. I didn’t even notice the Ventriloquist until I reread it, and then I thought the concept was brilliant.
So here we are back to basics with Scarface holding council with the ventriloquist standing behind him unseen in the shadows.
I wasn’t completely sure whether Renee Montoya is technically still part of the Bat-franchise since she became the second Question but she started out in it so that’s good enough for me. (Besides the hero side tends to be a bit of a sausagefest, so anything to balance things out the better.)
I don’t have much to add on this one, beyond being annoyed DC mostly dropped her in the New 52 and presumably Rebirth. So I’m bringing her back. She probably has most of the same background as she does in the 52 series. (though maybe some of the sci-fi bits from 52 will be toned down.)
I’m mostly following the Justice League Unlimited version of the question (except for her being Renee and slightly saner.)
I’m seeing her more of an investigator than a vigilante… after all, when you think about it there are no solutions to anything… only questions.
Harvy Dent, AKA Two Face is one of the Batman villains who is really easy to overthink. Just how does his dissociative personality work. Is he quite as much obsessed with dualism and random chance as he thinks he is. For that matter even if you’re flipping a coin to make a choice, do you have to flip the coin to propose what choices to make in the first place.
Today’s sketch, Hugo Strange may have been the harder sketches I have in this challenge. First there’s not much to do with 
As I’ve said in previous posts, I’m always fascinated about what new characters get put in the regular cast and which ones get forgotten almost immediately.
I wasn’t completely sure whether Renee Montoya is technically still part of the Bat-franchise since she became the second Question but she started out in it so that’s good enough for me. (Besides the hero side tends to be a bit of a sausagefest, so anything to balance things out the better.)