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Batman: Faces, while enjoyable, comes up slight in comparison to a certain blockbuster’s release.

There’s an element of sadness to the Batman/Two-Face stories you typically don’t find in other “duel” Batman stories. That may be because Harvey Dent is so obviously a slave to his madnes—a once-good man trapped in a dualistic, chance-driven worldview that simply can’t be shaken. (The Joker simply is his madness, so it’s hard to feel sorry for him, The Killing Joke notwithstanding.) There’s something mildly pathetic about Harvey and his struggles to build the kind of world that can accommodate him. If it weren’t for the bodycount, Batman might even try to help him do it.

Batman: Faces is a collection of Matt Wagner’s three-issue story from the Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight ongoing series. Bruce Wayne is interested in buying an inherited island from a carefree playboy friend of his, but a mysterious third party seems just as interested—and what a coincidence, Harvey Dent has just broken out of Arkham Asylum again. (If you consider that a spoiler, then I welcome you to the world of comics. These things can be fun!)

Harvey’s aims are oblique through most of the mini, with dark hints and gestures at a kidnapped army of genuine freaks (pinheads, bearded ladies, and so on) and a string of murders committed against plastic surgeons, all in the key of “two.” Hot tip: If you are a plastic surgeon and one of a set of twins, and you choose to live in Gotham City, then you deserve whatever happens to you.

There are minor twists and turns: the carefree playboy has a dark secret of his own, and the man brokering the real estate deal gets suckered in by a seduction whose endgame surprises no one but the man himself. Once Harvey’s designs for the island become clear and the playboy’s dark secret revealed, it’s a set of final confrontations between Batman and Two-Face and his freak army.

The story is what it is, and is no great shakes: men with secrets and deformities and how they find (or don’t find) a way to reconcile that with living in a “normal” society. Wagner’s script is serviceable but a far cry from “fresh.” What saves Faces from being yet another Batman vs. Two-Face in-one-ear-and-out-the-other tale is Wagner’s art, cartoony without being kiddy, rough without being incoherent. Wagner’s figures are sleek and clean, which makes the abrupt appearance of Two-Face’s uglier half—or the many freaks—all the more jarring and shocking, as they should be. The book is pretty if nothing else.

But I question the necessity for its collection. Oh, don’t get me wrong: I know why this series was released this week, but pairing this trade with that movie only invites an unfavorable comparison between an emotionally devastating rendering of Harvey Dent and one that simply uses the familiar beats of a character to tell a simple story. Did I enjoy Faces? Yes, a little. It certainly was nice to look at. Do I remember much of it, even a day later? Not particularly.

Writer/Artist: Matt Wagner
Publisher: DC Comics

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