Sealed Judgment: McFarlane's Batman '89 Two-Face Is What-If History in a Blister Pack

There are figures you buy because the character looks cool, and there are figures you buy because you've already committed to the line and stopping now would mean admitting how far down the rabbit hole you've gone. Then there are figures like McFarlane's Batman '89 Two-Face, where the figure sitting inside the package represents something much more interesting than another version of a Batman villain. This one is tied to a movie history that never fully happened.

Billy Dee Williams played Harvey Dent in Tim Burton's Batman in 1989, years before Tommy Lee Jones became Two-Face in Batman Forever. Williams' Harvey was Gotham's district attorney, still intact and still firmly on the right side of the law. Whatever might have happened to that version of Dent disappeared when the Burton era came to an end, but DC eventually returned to that world with Batman '89, written by original Batman screenwriter Sam Hamm and drawn by Joe Quinones. The six-issue series picked up threads left behind by the movies and finally gave the Billy Dee Williams version of Harvey Dent his transformation into Two-Face.

McFarlane released Two-Face as part of the DC Direct Page Punchers line, specifically as a Red Platinum Edition based on his appearance in Batman '89. It is a seven-inch figure packaged with a display base, art card and a reprint of Batman '89 #6. For a line built around pairing figures with comics, this is one of those releases where the source material and the character choice fit together almost perfectly.

The figure itself looks great through the plastic. Quinones' design translates extremely well into three dimensions because Two-Face isn't simply Harvey Dent with some damage added to one side of his head. The whole figure is divided. One side carries the clean black suit and polished Harvey Dent look, while the other shifts into white, pinstripes and that blue-green damaged face. Even the shoes split between black and white, giving the entire figure a much stronger visual identity than a simple half-scarred portrait would have.

The packaging helps sell that idea. The large blister gives the figure enough room to stand out, while placing the comic directly behind him makes the whole package feel like one display piece. Flip it around and the back uses the comic cover artwork, which ties the figure and the source material together instead of treating the rear card like wasted space. For a sealed collector, that presentation is a difference maker because the package itself is part of what is being judged.

The copy I found wasn't perfect. There is some damage in the top-left corner of the card, and under normal circumstances that would bother me on a sealed piece. In this case, there was no chance I was leaving it behind. The figure, the character choice and the history attached to it made the decision easy enough that the corner damage became something I was willing to live with.

That is also where my problem with the release starts. There simply should be more here, and it is becoming a familiar issue with Page Punchers. I like the idea behind the line. Pairing a figure with the comic that inspired it should be an easy win, especially when McFarlane uses the format to tackle designs that may never appear in the regular DC Multiverse line. The problem is that the figure portion of these packages can still feel light once you start looking at what is actually included.

Two-Face practically asks for accessories. Extra hands would have helped, and a more substantial coin accessory would have made complete sense. An alternate Harvey Dent head could have pushed the release much further, and something specifically tied to Batman '89 would have made the package feel even more connected to this version of the character. I like getting the comic, but it shouldn't have to compensate for the figure side of the package feeling sparse. For a Red Platinum release centered on a character with one of the most recognizable visual identities in Batman history, there were plenty of directions McFarlane could have taken.

That history is also why I still like this release as much as I do. This is Billy Dee Williams' Harvey Dent finally becoming Two-Face decades after Batman left that possibility hanging there. It is Sam Hamm and Joe Quinones continuing a Gotham that had been left behind, then watching that continuation make the jump from comic book to collectible. A movie possibility that never happened became a comic, and that comic eventually became an action figure. That makes this a great piece of Batman what-if history and a strong sealed display piece, but I still wish McFarlane had given the figure a little more inside the package to match how interesting the story behind it actually is.