Just Stay at Home

Very soon -- but not soon enough -- the next set of DC Heroclix, Arkham Asylum will be out.

The set is full of gems, but I want to highlight a few of my favorite villain in the set.

BLACK MANTA

Yes, he is riding a shark with a frickin' laser beam on its head. Because that is how evil he is. There was a Black Manta in the very first set of DC Heroclix. But they were still getting the bugs out of the system, and he quickly gained a reputation as, point for point, the most useless piece in the game. Well, no one on the beach will be kicking sand is this one's face. The figure represents his eyebeams with the penetrating Psychic Blast and Energy Explosion, and his underwater prowess with Superstrength, Toughness. And his "Pirate" power lets him Perplex up his stats or those of another aquatic figure.

Like Black Manta, the Riddler appeared in the first DC Heroclix set and was of questionable utility. That won't be said of the new one, who is a masterpiece of capturing what a Batman villain does without making him a powerhouse. He has Stealth and Leap/Climb, which are pretty key when fighting the Batfamily. Mastermind and Exploit Weakness made him a threat at close range, and at a distance he's got some "riddle-related" powers. One givex him Outwit and Perplex at the same time; it's a special version of Perplex that allows him to lower an opponent's battle stat by 2. Those ultra-high-defense figures, like Jay Garrick, might be in for an unpleasant surprise when the Riddle catches them off guard with some puzzle, and they let down their defenses. And "Riddle Me This" is a special version of Incapacitate as a free action (with the possibility of double-incapping an opponent). The Riddler can seriously mess up your opponent's team, as long as you have other character to do the actual punching for him; which is exactly as it should be.

The villainous Riddler is 90 points. But there's also an LE version, Edward Nigma, which for 60 points represents the reformed Riddler, the private detective. It has the usual Riddlerish powers (Outwit, Incapacitate, Perplex, Leap/Climb, Mastermind).
The Penguin is another villain whose remake was badly needed, as his original version was useless. This time, they figured out that his crime umbrellas are an excuse to give him nearly any power, including Energy Explosion, a special joint power for Smoke Cloud and Blades/Claws/Fangs, and Defend. That Defend is going to make him popular on Batman Enemy teams, where he can lurk behind others and keep their defense values high. His criminal acumen is represented by Mastermind (passing damage on to adjacent allies), Willpower (the ability to more twice in a row without penalty), and Outwit (the ability to cancel someone else's power from a distance).

Like the Riddler, Two-Face has two versions: the regular criminal genius version and a Limited Edition "reformed" version. The regular version has some expected powers, like Stealth, Mastermind, and Perplex. Flurry (the ability to attact an adjacent character twice) is a nice touch, but even nice is a special power that represents his coin toss, giving him either Incapacitate or Psychic Blast (either of which makes him useful against the big boys). The "reformed" version is similar, with both Flurry and Mastermind. But it is more of a personal combatant, with Combat Reflexes, Exploit Weakness, and a special power that grants Outwit and Willpower. The best touch is giving him the Batman ALLY ability. This "permanent stealth" will force most foes to come face to face with him, where his Combat Reflexes and Exploit Weakness will be to his advantage.

As welcome as all these figures are, they are capped by the creation of a new generic Thug with the Batman Enemy Ability (sharing Attack Values among adjacent Batman Enemies). These guys will be perfect to put in front of a supercriminal to share his Attack and absorbs his Damage (courtesy of the Mastermind Batvillains often have). That figure's dial hasn't been made public yet, but the generic has an LE version that has been revealed: The Henchmen. He's only got five clicks, but he's packed with a grab-bag of abilities that make him a great utility player. He's got a special ability that makes him a wildcard for team abilities and keywords for all the major villainous groups, which makes him the ideal sidekick for most any villain.

Now, I've thought often about the character of Two-Face; he's one of my favorites. In fact, I've written about him on this blog several times. Unlike most people, what I was anticipating in the Dark Knight film wasn't Ledger's performance as the Joker (the trailers were pretty solid clues about that), but Eckhart's performance as Two-Face, and what the script would give him to work with.

Yes, Ledger's take on the Joker was very important and powerful. But the Joker's reputation as a solid character didn't necessarily rely on Ledger doing well. If Ledger had not acquitted himself so finely, it would have been taken as a reflection on Ledger, not the Joker. But Two-Face needed to be done well in this film to establish a broader public reputation as a serious Batman villain. He may be almost as famous as the Joker within the comic book world, but the only exposure to him most people have had is Tommy Lee Jones' performance in Batman Forever, which didn't really do the character justice.

But how do you do a character like Two-Face justice? First and foremost: don't portray him as a split personality. He wasn't portrayed that way when he was introduced, and to do so vastly oversimplifies and weakens the character. The Ventroliquist/Scarface is a split personality. Harvey Dent is a man whose concepts of morality have broken down and Two-Face is the man who forges a new concept of morality to work from. As I have said before, Two-Face isn't Harvey Dent's problem, he's Harvey Dent's solution. And, with unexpected wisdom, Christopher Nolan wrote Two-Face exactly that way. That alone makes the Dark Knight a great film in my eyes (although, there are certainly many other reasons, as well).

Note only did Dark Knight's Two-Face meet my high hopes it exceeded them; it taught me something about Two-Face, it gave me a perspective on him I'd never had before. Someone finally showed me that Harvey Dent is a perfectionist and a control freak.

Gordon's men aren't "pure" enough for him, even though they're helping Gordon and him clean up Gotham. His effort to clean up Gotham gangs isn't just about justice, it's about tidiness and control. Remember the courtroom scene with Rachel, where he plays -- lies, really -- about letting Rachel take charge of the case if his coin comes up tails? It won't, of course, because it's a two-headed coin. It's rather a cruel trick to play on her; I mean, is that really an appropriate thing to do to ones co-worker and fiancee? Dent uses the coin as a mechanism of control, or, as he puts it, he "makes his own luck". He doesn't believe in luck, or fate, or chaos; only control.

And, like a good attorney, he works the law to his advantage, redefining justice in a way that suits his purposes. The biggest example is the hat trick of the use of RICO laws against the Gotham gangster. His pointless grilling of the asylum lunatic he captures is another; "This is craziness," Batman points out, "you can't control it through sheer force of will." But even trying to gain control of the Joker situation by claiming that he is Batman is an example of Dent's need to control everything with his own plans.

Now, I'm not saying that's bad per se; but it doesn't work out perfectly well for Harvey, does it? In his comic book origin, it's the scarring of his face that sends him around the bend, as a perfectionist pretty boy like Dent isn't well equipped for such a thing (if anyone is). In the filmic origin, it's the essential unfairness of what happens to him, his own failure, that undoes him. He did everything he could to control the situation; but he couldn't. He couldn't "make his own luck", and he doesn't know how to handle a world where he can't be in control. Thus, the Joker easily seduces him into adapting by abandoning control of his decision and abrogating them to a flip of his coin.

The coin releases Dent from further moral dilemmas. It creates a form of "justice" -- or, at least, the fairness of even odds -- that seems more adapted to this world he now sees he cannot control, where justice cannot always be forcibly imposed. It's not something he's tied to, or controlled by; it's something he uses to relieve himself from the burden of controlling the world. The relief is very evident in the scene where he put a gun to his own head to decide whether he lives or dies to pay for his role in Rachel's demise. There's no tension at all in the decision, it's no more difficult for him then deciding whether to shoot Batman or Gordon's kid.

Of course, Two-Face isn't an entirely different person than Harvey Dent, and how he uses the coin is proof of that. I remember being shocked when the coin spared Maroni; "Wait," I thought, "Is Two-Face just going to let Maroni go with equanimity? That's hard to believe!" Of course, he didn't. Having abided by the coin flip, he immediately redefined the process to get his own way, and shot Maroni's driver (thus killing Maroni). Two-Face, like Harvey Dent, still works the system. He still manipulates others and the world, he's just let go of controlling himself.

One of the things I like in comics is when the characters aren't simply characters, but are also symbols of some sort. In enriches their stories, because their actions and interactions become not just plot but an exploration of ideas and concepts.

I hold that part of the appeal of many characters, particularly in the Gotham City stable, is that they represent natural desires or human defense mechanisms "gone wild". The Joker can be viewed as the very useful, very human "sense of humor" gone very, very bad. The Catwoman can be seen as personifying self-interest taken to the point of amorality, the Riddler as intellectual curiosity fallen into obsession, and the Penguin as ambition rotting into ruthlessness. To some degree, this applies even to Batman, who can be seen as the natural desire for justice taken to the extreme (assuming you consider dressing as a bat and hurling boomerangs at people's heads "extreme"; tastes vary).

That's why Two-Face (who's featured in the forthcoming Batman Dark Knight film) has always been one of my favorite characters. He's certainly not the first figure in literature to reflect man's inherent duality; Two-Face was very consciously adapted from R.L. Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (in fact, it's the book he's reading on the splash page of his first appearance). But he's certainly one of the best, because instead of just representing the "angel and the devil on our shoulders", he also shows the often-difficult process of making a decision based on conflicting impulses. And, you may be interested to know, science backs him up... .

Yesterday, I read "The Conflicted Brain" (by ingenious evolutionary theorist Jon Wilkins, Sante Fe Institute Bulletin, Spring 2008). The article examines the question of how one person -- their brain, really -- can be at odds with itself, and shows that the brain is physically "designed" to be in self-conflict as the result of evolution.

"Brain-imaging studies suggest that different brain regions come into conflict with each other over certain decisions. At the same time, many genes that are expressed in the brain show evidence of having been in a long-term evolutionary conflict with each other. It is possible that when we feel as if we are of two minds, it is precisely because different sets of our own genes have effective control over different regions of our brains, and these different brain regions are exerting antagonistic influences on the decision-making processes. ... In fact, it may turn out to be misleading to talk about the notion of individuals having a single 'self' at all. "