9 Reasons Two-Face is Not Black in Batman: The Animated Series

Recently, we lost American actor Charles Richard Moll. His most well-known character is the bailiff “Bull” Shannon on the NBC sitcom Night Court. Plus, he has a long history of voice acting. Most famously, he’s the voice of Two-Face in Batman: The Animated Series and Batman: The Brave and the Bold. He often used his deep voice to play evil characters in animation and video games.

The show aired decades ago, but one question keeps popping up around his role in Batman. Was Two-Face in the animated series Black or White? If Harvey Dent was supposed to be black, why did they hire Moll? Was the character based on the movie version of Two-Face? Does his face prove Two-Face in the animated series is black? No, and the history of the character, the character design, and comments by the show creators prove it.

1. Harvey Dent is Not Black in the Comics

Harvey Dent, better known by his comic book alter ego Two-Face, is a supervillain who frequently faces off against Batman. Bob Kane developed the character, who made his debut in Detective Comics #66 (August 1942). Two-Face is one of the most popular foes of Batman and a member of his “Rogues Gallery”.

In the comics, Harvey Dent was a morally pure Gotham City district attorney who worked hard to clean up the city’s streets of crime and corruption. However, after mob lord Sal Maroni threw corrosive chemicals at him during a court case, Dent suffered terrible facial scarring on the left side of his face. After that, he loses his mind and takes on the guise of “Two-Face”. He turned into a criminal fixated on number two, duality, and the struggle between good and evil.

Harvey Dent’s every significant decision is made by tossing a two-headed coin. One side of the coin is damaged. The character was redesigned for the Modern Age of Comic Books to have dissociative identity disorder (or split personality). Two-Face serves as an alter.

Throughout the comic book history of Two-Face, he’s always been white. Did the show plan to change his race?

2. Harvey Dent Was Always Designed to be White

Considering the origins of the comic book, it’s no surprise that the team always designed him to be a white guy. In fact, in the book Batman Animated, Bruce Timm, the co-creator of the show, said he was inspired by an old-timey actor from the 30s and 40s named Ralph Bellamy. He drew a matinee “idol photo” for the 23rd annual San Diego Comic-Con program book in 1992 using Bellamy.

You may be asking yourself “Who in the world is Ralph Bellamy”? It turns out you’ve seen him plenty of times. He’s best known for 1937’s The Awful Truth (for which he received an Oscar nomination), His Girl Friday (1940), and The Wolf Man (1941).

But when he was older, he played one of the old guys in Trading Places, one of the old guys in Pretty Woman, and one of the old guys in Disorderlies, starring the rap trio The Fat Boys. Ok, you probably didn’t see that one.

Anyway, when he was younger, he was pretty handsome. He kind of looks like Harvey Dent, but more importantly, the guy had a suave charm.

All of the character designs for Two-Face show a Caucasian.

There’s no doubt the creators intended “Big Bad Harv” to be a white guy. But could they have changed their mind during the design phase?

3. There Are No Other Race Changes

It’s unlikely they made a race change for the character. Mainly because the animated series didn’t do any race-changing of the main characters. A white actor may have been a minor ethnic character. But none of the major ones changed.

One example is Killer Croc. In the comics, he’s a black man with a skin condition named Waylon Jones. A white actor named Aron Kincaid does the voice on the show. But it appears that the man shares the nickname Killer Croc, but he’s a different person. The show never reveals his real name, but in one episode, it says his wrestling name was “Killer Croc Morgan”.

None of the major characters changed races for the show. So it’s unlikely that they made an exception for Two-Face and changed him from white to black.

4. The Voice Actor is Not Black

The voice actor playing Harvey Dent is Caucasian actor Richard Moll. Moll is not black. How did Richard Moll get the role?

After his role as the evil Mestema in The Dungeonmaster (1984) the casting director Andrea Romano noticed his voice. Paul Dini wanted Two-Face to have a voice like The Godfather’s Marlon Brando. But Moll said they decided to lean more into his “nasty wizard” voice. They felt the “messed-up” rattle sound worked for the character.

So a white dude did the voice of Harvey “Two-Face” Dent. But does that mean the character is white? Not on another show, but it does in this one.

5. Ethnic Characters Got Ethnic Voices

Now we’ve established that the voice actor isn’t black. Does that mean anything? There’s a long and tragic history of white actors playing minorities. The most notable example is the Indian immigrant Apu Nahasapeemapetilon from The Simpsons. He’s voiced by white actor Hank Azaria.

While voice actors often play different ethnicities, the Animated Series was the exception. For example, African-American actor Brock Peters plays Bruce Wayne’s business manager, Lucius Fox. When Batman faced the Asian villain Kyodai Ken he was voiced by Japanese actor Robert Ito. Black actress Vernee Watson plays Dana Blessing, and Star Trek actor Levar Burton plays Hayden Sloane.

So most of the ethnic characters were voiced by actors of color in Batman: The Animated Series. If Harvey Dent were supposed to be a black man they would have gotten a black actor with range like Sidney Poitier, Billy Dee Williams, or even Eddie Murphy.

6. Why Does Two-Face Have Big Lips?

Many point to Two-Face’s pronounced lips as evidence of his ethnicity. But it’s a style and character design. Several other characters have pronounced lips. Italian mobster Rupert Thorne has thick lips. We know he’s not black since his brother isn’t black either.

So having big lips doesn’t make Two-Face black.

Some people have looked at Lex Luthor’s lips and asked if he’s black too. For the record, Luthor is based on the Greek actor Telly Savalas. That guy had big lips and wasn’t even 2% black.

So who is Harvey Dent based on?

7. Harvey Dent is Based on Popular White Actors from the Past

Harvey Dent is supposed to be exceptionally handsome, in contrast to his scarred and deformed side. You might wonder what people thought was handsome back in 1992. Look no further than People magazine.

The annual “Sexiest Man Alive” pageant is billed as a measure of male attractiveness and usually only includes famous people. It is determined in the same way as Time magazine’s “Person of the Year”. The origin of the title was a discussion of Mel Gibson’s proposed story. Someone shouted, “Oh my god, he’s the sexiest man alive!” And someone else said, “You should use that as a cover.”

When Batman: The Animated Series came out, the sexiest man of the year was Nick Nolte. It’s hard to imagine now, but in 1992, he was considered a hunk. Not the drunken whacko today, but the handsome macho man in The Prince of Tides. The year before, it was Patrick Swayze. Both guys have pronounced lips and a strong chin.

So it makes sense that Harvey Dent would have a handsome face similar to the two white men. But maybe the creators don’t know how to draw black guys.

8. Timm Designed Black and White People Differently

Bruce Timm designed most of the characters, and there’s a clear distinction between black characters and white ones. Look at characters like Dana Blessing (Vernee Watson), Dan Riley (Dorian Harewood), and Earl Cooper (Paul Winfield). Besides having pronounced lips, they also have wider noses. But it’s not just Batman.

If you look at the designs for Superman: The Animated Series, the character designs of African-Americans are also distinctive. John Henry Irons/Steel (Michael Dorn), Ron Troupe (Dorian Harewood), and Professor Felix (Ernie Hudson) are unmistakably African-American men.

When you look at those designs, it’s obvious Two-Face isn’t remotely black. But maybe it’s a subtle reference to the black guy playing Harvey Dent in the movie?

9. Is Two-Face Black Because of the Movie?

Some people have pointed to the Tim Burton Batman 1989 movie to prove Two-Face is black. In the film, District Attorney Harvey Dent is played by African-American actor Billy Dee Williams. He only appears as the district attorney, but it’s rumored that he was going to become Two-Face in the sequel.

So they assume the show is an homage to the movie. After all, the show uses the opening of Danny Elfman’s score. Creators Bruce Timm and Eric Radomski sought to recreate the “otherworldly timelessness” of the Burton films in the series design. They brought in elements from that film like police airships, black-and-white title cards, and a “vintage” color palette with film noir touches. Plus, the Penguin looks a lot like the design from Batman Returns. Unfortunately, this argument falls apart when you look at the history of the show.

The producers of the animated series decided early on not to follow in the footsteps of the Tim Burton films. Before the blockbuster movie, Batman had fallen out of favor. Most people didn’t read the comics and thought of the campy series from the 60s.

Before Burton’s Dark Knight movie came out, they pitched a Batman cartoon based on the 1930 Max Fleischer Superman cartoons. No one was interested. But after the success of the Batman film, Warner Bros. agreed to let them make the pilot.

“Thank God for the Tim Burton movie,” Bruce Timm told Wizard magazine in 2006. He had reason to give thanks. Batman: The Animated Series got the green light in the wake of that wave of Batmania that was set off in 1989.

Timm said, “We have a love/hate thing going on with the Tim Burton movies.” He was insistent that TAS not be “just a spin-off of the movie”. They recognized that people loved the movie but didn’t want the show to look just like the movie. But that’s not what the creators wanted. “I didn’t want to use their Batman design. I didn’t want to use much of anything they did…I had my own ideas of what Batman was. They coincided in some places with the movie, and in some places, they didn’t.”

The show owes a lot to the movies. But the only character designs from the movie are Penguin and Catwoman. Those were forced on them by the studio since the first season coincided with the production of Batman Returns. 

So the idea that the team went out of their way to make Two-Face look like Billy Dee Williams is laughable.

So what have we learned? Is Harvey Dent black in Batman: The Animated Series? No. His design was based on popular white actors. The lips were just a stylistic choice, and Two-Face looks and sounds nothing like other black characters on the show.

What do you think? Do you still think Two-Face is a black man in Batman: The Animated Series?

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