Batman '66: The Lost Episode #1 Review

Two-Face is easily the most iconic Batman villain never to have appeared on the 1960's TV series. As it turns out, legendary writer Harlan Ellison got as far as pitching a Two-Face-themed episode before the combination of the villain's gruesome appearance and Ellison's conflicts with ABC executives killed the idea. Decades later, that pitch has become the inspiration for this oversized Batman '66 comic. It's an entertaining look at a Batman episode that might have been, although it's far too expensive for anyone but the most hardcore Bat-fan.

Writer Len Wein adapts Ellison's plot outline into a scripted comic. There's a lot more interpretation and extrapolation involved on this project than, say, IDW's mini-series Star Trek: Harlan Ellison's The City on the Edge of Forever. Luckily, Wein is able to morph the outline into a coherent and suitably campy adventure. As with the main Batman '66 series, the writing manages to capture the playful tone of the show while also showing a certain shrewd, self-aware humor. Wein's handling of Two-Face is interesting in that the villain shows more pathos and darkness than you normally find from Batman '66's colorful villains. However, he comes across as a little half-baked at times. His mannerisms and tendency toward alliteration make Harvey read like a poor man's Cesar Romero Joker at times.

Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez illustrates this issue, giving the book an aesthetic that falls somewhere between the typical Batman '66 style and the more detailed, slightly darker vibe of '70s-era Batman. Given the choice of villain and the general tome of the story, it's an approach that's well justified. Garcia-Lopez is a bit sporadic in terms of how well he depicts the various actor likenesses, though his Two-Face definitely looks like a young Clint Eastwood. Not that I could ever picture Eastwood referring to himself as "The Duke of Duplicity."

This story is well worth a read for Batman '66 fans as a glimpse of how Two-Face might have fared on the show had things worked out differently. Unfortunately, the $9.99 price tag is a tough pill to swallow. Less than half of the issue is even devoted to the story itself. DC padded out the issue by reprinting every one of Garcia-Lopez's pages in raw pencil form, and then reprinting Ellison's story treatment in its entirety. Both sections will be of interest to some readers, but I'm sure most would rather just pay a far more reasonable $4 or $5 for the main event alone.

Jesse is a mild-mannered writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.