Friday, May 25, 2012
BATMAN FRIDAY
Why We Love Detective Comics
A Two-Headed Contract Killer!!!
His name is Two Tone.
As far as I know, he only appeared once. (In Detective Comics #630, with a cover date of Jun 1991.)
This is the cover. It's very deceptive. You cannot even begin to guess how AWESOME it will be just from this cover. But Batman knows how tough it will be, so he's thrown himself down the stairwell to his death.
Yes, it's true, Two Tone only appeared once. For does not the brightest candle burn twice as fast?
And yet, with that single appearance, he stumbled onstage, ramapaged through the Batman chronicles, then entered that rarefied pantheon of unique entities whose awesome lameness transcends mere absurdity and catapults them into the company of the greatest stupid characters in comics.
Yea, verily, I proclaimed him The Official Stupidest Batman Villain of All Time. But is there not a breathless grandeur inherent to the holder of such a title!? Of course he only appeared once! He was too good, too pure for the medium, and the only possible outcome was that he would be spurned. (Maybe he later found more suitable work in a less discerning artform. A Punch and Judy show, perhaps?)
So, what else can I say about Two Tone?
Well, he had two heads.
He was a contract killer for the mob.
(Stop me when you think I am just making things up!)
He dressed up like some tough guy in a Humphrey Bogart movie, with a couple of 1940s-style hats, wearing a suit (custom-tailored so the shirt had two neck holes.), and he wore two ties.
One of the heads was white and the other was black.
I'm not kidding!
Take a look!
Oh, the awesomeness doesn't stop there!
He was dead on the first page! (Batman finds him dead at the beginning and the bulk of the story is a flashback.)
In his best scene, Two Tone crashes a commandeered Greyhound bus through the wall of a bus station and hangs out of the door with guns a-blazing! In the ensuing fight, the black head bites Batman! There's a weird bus chase in the streets of Gotham. (Not to mention the wonderful "Battleship Potemkin" moment where Batman must save a little girl who is about to be crushed by a tottering luggage cart!)
Well, I guess I can see why the Hollywood stars aren't beating down the door to play Two Tone. Sigh. It's a pity. I see Chris Hemsworth and Denzel Washington.
As much as I love Two Tone, I'm glad he only appeared once. Seriously. Who could stand that kind of competition?
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A Two-Headed Contract Killer!!!
His name is Two Tone.
As far as I know, he only appeared once. (In Detective Comics #630, with a cover date of Jun 1991.)
Yes, it's true, Two Tone only appeared once. For does not the brightest candle burn twice as fast?
And yet, with that single appearance, he stumbled onstage, ramapaged through the Batman chronicles, then entered that rarefied pantheon of unique entities whose awesome lameness transcends mere absurdity and catapults them into the company of the greatest stupid characters in comics.
Yea, verily, I proclaimed him The Official Stupidest Batman Villain of All Time. But is there not a breathless grandeur inherent to the holder of such a title!? Of course he only appeared once! He was too good, too pure for the medium, and the only possible outcome was that he would be spurned. (Maybe he later found more suitable work in a less discerning artform. A Punch and Judy show, perhaps?)
So, what else can I say about Two Tone?
Well, he had two heads.
He was a contract killer for the mob.
(Stop me when you think I am just making things up!)
He dressed up like some tough guy in a Humphrey Bogart movie, with a couple of 1940s-style hats, wearing a suit (custom-tailored so the shirt had two neck holes.), and he wore two ties.
One of the heads was white and the other was black.
I'm not kidding!
Take a look!
He was dead on the first page! (Batman finds him dead at the beginning and the bulk of the story is a flashback.)
In his best scene, Two Tone crashes a commandeered Greyhound bus through the wall of a bus station and hangs out of the door with guns a-blazing! In the ensuing fight, the black head bites Batman! There's a weird bus chase in the streets of Gotham. (Not to mention the wonderful "Battleship Potemkin" moment where Batman must save a little girl who is about to be crushed by a tottering luggage cart!)
Well, I guess I can see why the Hollywood stars aren't beating down the door to play Two Tone. Sigh. It's a pity. I see Chris Hemsworth and Denzel Washington.
As much as I love Two Tone, I'm glad he only appeared once. Seriously. Who could stand that kind of competition?
