"Faces" and "Going sane": two great Legends of the Dark Knight coming in TPB.

By "The Ace of Knaves"

I was quite happy to see the announcement of "Faces" and "Going sane" in TPB, as these are two excellent story arcs from "Legends of the Dark Knight" which I just recently read as back-issue comics. "Faces" (by Matt Wagner) was published originally is issues 28-30 (march to may 1992) and contains a solid Two-face story. I can't really find myself in the "army of deformed super-powerful slaves" blurb used in the promotion of the TPB, as the to me the story seems to be more about the balance between interior beauty and exterior deformity (and vice versa) rather than about any "super-powers". Not every deformed body has a deformed soul and not every beautiful body has the soul to match. Quite ironic that Two-face has to learn this lesson in this arc. The art by Willie Schubert is absolutely spot-on for this theme. If you liked Tod Browning's movie "Freaks", you're going to love "Faces". I know I did.

"Going Sane" (by De Matteis) appeared in LOTDK65-68 (nov 1994-feb 1995) and features a quite tragic story about how Batman and the Joker are doomed to each other. I don't want to give away too much, but I do want to say that it contains some heart-breaking scenes when the Joker's fragile recovering sanity is once again broken. In fact at this point in the story the roles seem to reverse: whereas normally you'd be angry at the Joker for disturbing Batman's peace, here Batman seems to come close near the villainous part as he (probably involuntary) draws the Joker back into their eternal dance of death and insanity.

I can only hope that this heralds the appearance of more LOTDK TPB's, as there are some other marvellous story arcs from this period really deserving the treatment, such as "Prey" (LOTDK 11-15) featuring the always wonderfully unstable Hugo Strange.

Sodacomics Newsletter: 25-04-2008

New Arrivals this week + some reorders.

Partners in Crime