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Diametrically Opposed: Commissioner Gordon / Two-Face
Diametrically Opposed is a series exploring the best hero-villain rivalries in the DC Universe.
Batman’s rogues gallery is possibly one of the most significant in all of comics. Not only are they among the widest known catalogue of villains, but each presents a significant existential threat to the Dark Knight; the Riddler challenges his intellect, the Penguin challenges the influence and socialite nature of Bruce Wayne, and of course the Joker is the ultimate opposition to his quest for order. Indeed, Batman is made a more dynamic character by how perfectly his villains fit into and challenge aspects of his own character; however, that does not mean that all Batman villains are more his enemy than anyone else’s.
Many consider Two-Face to be one of the Dark Knight’s greatest adversaries, and while those people are not wrong, I’m proposing that just because the character goes up against Batman does not mean that Batman is his diametric opposite. What I propose is that the true arch-enemy of Two-Face is Commissioner James Gordon.
Commissioner Gordon
Commissioner Gordon and the Bat-signal – DC Comics
James Gordon is a military veteran turned policeman who was transferred from Chicago to Gotham City. There, within the Gotham City Police Department, he discovered the depths of corruption within both the force and the city in general. Refusing to relinquish his morality, his criminal investigations often bring consequences directly down on him: being threatened and assaulted by fellow GCPD officers, strong-armed by the mob, and even blackmailed by corrupt former Commissioner Gillian Loeb. His frustrations with the city’s insurmountable corruption lead to him entering a pact with the Batman and with District Attorney Harvey Dent to root out the mob’s influence, seeing them as the only two people he could trust. Their combined efforts would help dismantle much of the mob infrastructure in Gotham City and saw Gordon promoted through the ranks to Commissioner.
James Gordon is a skilled hand-to-hand combatant and marksman due to his military training and service. He is also a strong detective, though his lack of resources often means that he cannot follow up on his leads as quickly or efficiently as the Batman. His involvement with Batman often puts him at odds with other members of the GCPD, but he remains loyal to both the Dark Knight’s cause and to him personally. His daughter, Barbara Gordon, also works alongside Batman as the first Batgirl and later, when she is paralyzed by the Joker, as Oracle. Gordon is responsible for the creation of the Bat-signal, as a means of both communicating with Batman and for scaring low-level criminals.
Two-Face
Two-Face – Detective Comics #818, DC Comics
Harvey Dent was the youngest District Attorney in the history of Gotham City. An extremely proficient lawyer, Dent joined a pact with then Captain James Gordon and the Batman to take down Gotham’s biggest crime families and to end the corruption of public officials. His initial success and high profile, however, made him a target and he was horribly disfigured in a planned acid attack. The attack unleashed what was hidden inside Dent’s psyche; a history of childhood abuse at the hands of his father along with a host of other psychological effects. The result was that his mind fractured into two distinct personalities: Harvey Dent and Two-Face.
As Two-Face, he is obsessed with duality. In early interpretations he often committed crimes revolving around the number two, such as robbing the Second National Bank. He is also an expert marksman, usually employing twin pistols. In all cases, however, Two-Face’s obsession with duality includes an embrace of chance, using the flip of a large silver coin to make decisions of morality. The result is that “if the coin decides”, Two-Face has subsided and allowed his Harvey Dent personality to act as a force for good.
Two-Face is one of Gotham’s criminal kingpins and has been a member of the Injustice League and the Injustice Gang.
VS.
At first glance, it may seem like a ridiculous premise to propose that one of Batman’s greatest foes is really the arch-enemy of one of his supporting cast, but these two characters are truly perfect foils for each other.
Two-Face “letting the coin decide” – DC Comics
James Gordon’s career in both the military and the police force support the idea that he is a man who is willing to accept responsibility for his actions. He decides to work with the Batman, a criminal, and even though other criminals are apprehended one has to wonder if “justice” is really being done when a long list of civil rights and criminal laws are broken by the Batman in order to stop them. What if the Batman decides to commit heinous crimes? Then both Gordon and Dent would bear the responsibility for allowing him to operate freely in Gotham City. Embracing free will means that we must also accept responsibility for our actions. If we are self-determining, then there is no other force to blame for our failures. Perhaps the weight of that responsibility was too much for Harvey Dent. Perhaps, rather than face the notion that it was his decision to let Batman push the mob to the breaking point, that he was in essence the architect of the attack that disfigured him, he absolved himself of responsibility by renouncing free will and embracing chance. Two-Face’s iconic coin-flip is a capitulation – he cannot accept the responsibility of free will. Gordon, however, remains steadfast even in the face of tragedy. In The Killing Joke, when the Joker paralyzes his daughter and tortures him by repeatedly showing him the wounds, he is trying to break Gordon and prove that “all it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy”. Painful as it is, he knows that it was his involvement with Batman that led his daughter to become Batgirl in the first place, putting her right in the Joker’s sights. The difference is that Gordon accepts responsibility for his actions where Two-Face will not.
But perhaps more importantly, what makes this dynamic great is their different relationships to justice. Professionally, Gordon and Dent represent two opposing sides of the justice system: that of enforcement and that of interpretation. As a police officer – and later as Police Commissioner – it is Gordon’s responsibility to hold up the law. It is not for him to decide whether the law is or is not just; it is his duty to enforce. Conversely, the role of the judiciary is exclusively to interpret the law. Lawyers and judges are meant to sift through the facts of the case, the legal precedent, and of course the laws themselves to determine not only guilt or innocence, but also the degree of that culpability. The question of how guilty a person is is the exclusive purview of the judiciary. What makes the Gordon/Dent dynamic so interesting is that they seem to exist on the wrong side of that line. Commissioner Gordon is not meant to impose his own interpretation of right and wrong onto the law and yet he does exactly that every time he allows Batman to go free. He knowingly works with a man who, to the letter of the law, is a criminal. As for Two-Face, he has forsaken the grey area of the judiciary – literally, as some versions of the characters wear a half-black, half-white suit and tie. More figuratively, his face, appearance, and most importantly his affinity for coin-tossing are all aspects of a rigid duality: right or wrong, heads or tails, Harvey or Two-Face. The question of “how much” no longer figures into the equation for Two-Face.
Justice is not a concrete thing. It is not an objective tangibility. By definition, justice is a subjective act and therefore its outcome rests in the hands of those who grant it. For James Gordon and Harvey Dent, the pursuit of justice exposed each other’s true nature: a cop who could see the subjectivity of the law, and a lawyer who could not bear the weight of judgment.
Commissioner Gordon and Two-Face – Detective Comics #739, DC Comics
Modern Mythologies 
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