Disorder In The Court — Reviewing ‘Two-Face’ #5

All rise! Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye. The White Church court of Gotham City’s underground is in session again. The (dis)honorable judge Reaper is presiding, as (stand-in) lawyer Lake Cantwell presents the embezzlement case against one Warren “Great White Shark” White.

BOOM! What was that? Oh, just one of the remaining plans of “Bad” Harvey coming back to bite “Good” Harvey and the court in the butt. It’s all coming together as Christian Ward, Fábio Veras, Ivan Plascencia, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou present the penultimate chapter of this scintillating series.

This issue presents us with two situations.

There’s the situation in the White Church court as mentioned above, and also Harvey/Two-Face all alone, chained up, to prevent his bad-side’s return, fighting against his own nature. They have to decide what side they actually fall upon as everything Dent’s two sides have built are in conflict with each other.

There is tension and chaos permeating every moment of this story. Veras makes all of it quite tangible with his artwork. Each moment has a visceral and vividly distinct energy given to it, where the spaces and characters have weight, depth, and life to them. It hits that same light meets heavy feeling that has been present through the previous four issues.

I love the way that Veras handles paneling choices. He always maximizes space. The opening pages provide a real-time recap of sorts. Instead of taking up all the space for present with just captions or taking up all the space for the past, Veras combines the two. Shifting from pages which show past elements with captions to more present moments with intercut past and concurrent moments. This is the best way to turn Harvey/Two-Face narration into compelling imagery.

Building out to the more action heavy pages, things just flow so smoothly. Kinetic energy is off the charts.

Similarly, the way that Plascencia mixes and matches the portions of the color palette delivers so much. Darkness is a prominent tone in the story, both for the content and the visuals, showcased by the blacks and darker colors present. At the same time, there are lots of vibrant and flashy colors to contrast and connect with them. Often, they play into the weirder or fantastical theme that is part of this series.

Balancing the two are the tones which are more baseline or neutral. These are toned down to give spaces a more grounded or realistic appearance. It feels familiar to our eyes because they match what we tend to see color wise in spaces around us in the world.

Bridging the gap between the other two arts is the lettering. There is no way one gets just standard lettering with Otsmane-Elhaou aboard. There will be colors, shifted fonts or bubbles, and so much more brought to the page, elevating voices to a higher level so that we can really discern how to hear them in our brains. Visual flair is on the menu every time.

There’s a reason his name is on the lists of best letterers all the time.

Fighting against yourself, well, that is often a losing proposition. Especially when your self includes a mind submerged “bad” half who slips out at night, controlling your body, while plotting and planning for your eventual downfall.

Ward has delivered one of the best Two-Face stories around through these five issues. It allows a lot of exploration into who and what the character is, how he works, and what it all means. We’re led to question who the two halves of Harvey are in relation to each other as well as the world. This reveals that it’s not as black and white as one being good and one being bad. As with all things, there is nuance and depth to what happens.

Having Die and Lake Cantwell as surrogate daughters to either side was a nice touch. They speak to both sides wanting similar things but in their own, sometimes twisted, ways. Ward’s pacing has been impeccable throughout this series, not wasting a single moment or bit of story telling space in crafting this mystery and character study.

I applaud the restraint to hold off involving Batman till the very end. It’s best as it allowed the character(s) to stand on their own without the big sales character looming over them.

I’m sad that this series is only getting the six issues and isn’t one of the books getting the extension treatment. Hopefully there might be more to tell at some point, or more stories in this world for this creative team, because this team and this book are both gems that deserve far more attention.

Two-Face #5 is now available from DC Comics.