Comments | about_faces: The Grace of Gilda: The Complete History of Gilda Dent, Part 1

about_faces

The Grace of Gilda: The Complete History of Gilda Dent, Part 1

Jul 29, 2021 11:44

What must it be like, to be a villain’s love interest?

To be a supporting player of a supporting player, vanishing into comic book limbo and emerging once every ten or thirty years to again play your role on the sidelines of someone else’s tragedy? What happens when writers think that your love isn’t enough, and that you need to be something else ( Read more... )

the grace of gilda

Comments 15

lego_joker July 30 2021, 04:18:26 UTC

Alright. It's a Brave New Site we've got, let's see how this rolls...

Nobody can deny the cliché of having the wife/girlfriend shoulder a villain's entire redemption potential (see: "I can fix him"), but revisiting the original saga of Harvey Kent, I find there's still something fundamentally sweet about it. There's the proactivity you mention, plus the fact that by the standards of the Golden Age (and even moreso by today's), Two-Face isn't really that bad a guy. I think the only people he definitely kills are his own men, who are themselves killers.

I'm exactly the wrong age and demographic to comment on the Family aspect that 95% of writers take for granted with Gilda, but I'll do it anyways: I think the main plank that needs to be added to Gilda, going forward, is to explain why she likes Harvey as a person, not just a checkbox labeled "Spouse" (or worse, an abstract Apollo). The easiest one would be his Tireless Dedication to Justice, but Bruce already view(s/ed) him that way*, so having Gilda use it would be redundant unless ( ... )

about_faces July 30 2021, 17:42:46 UTC

Ok, my turn to see what it's like commenting here. Aah, it's weird! And my icon is so tiny! 100x100 dpi doesn't go as far as it used to, does it ( ... )

akselavshalom July 31 2021, 13:05:17 UTC

Hope I'm actually helping to nuance rather than just repeating what's already said up here, but here goes: regarding what the both of y'all said above about differentiating between Batman's relationship with Harvey and Gilda, I feel like one of the things Peter Tomasi is usually pretty on-point about with Batman's douchier elements is that Batman might lack (some of) the capacity to think of things outside of his world. He will do his damnedest to help people at the drop of a hat regardless of what their lives are, no doubt, but he's got a fairly limited scope on what makes an existence, at least his OWN existence, truly meaningful. Throughout a lot of Batman's history across continuities I get the sense that a civillian life would be utterly incomprehensible to him, intimidating even. And Harvey he knew only in the context of his own cause, so Harvey might just being a dude after reform and not coming back as an ally could potentially be a bit of a syn-tax-error paradox for him. (I refer to The Big Burn's "LIKE YOU DID, BRUCE" as ( ... )

about_faces August 2 2021, 02:14:40 UTC

This is some good insight on Bruce and what makes his relationship with Harvey so different than Gilda's. Both are important, and I'm glad to see an uptick of it on the Bruce side, but Gilda brings something to the table outside of The Crusade ( ... )

Thread 7

ext_5799348 July 30 2021, 09:02:35 UTC

Holy crap, he's BACK! At long, long last, he's back! Hey, man! How's it going ( ... )

about_faces July 30 2021, 17:59:07 UTC

Allow me to offer my own "holy crap" in response! You're here! I truly didn't know if any of the old gang would notice if I posted something! And I'm especially glad it's you ( ... )

ext_5799348 July 30 2021, 23:40:37 UTC

I'm doing all right. I've regrettably had to put the YouTube stuff on hold for a while - technical issues, plus a raft of other complications I was tired of fighting past. I do still hope to pick it up at some point in the future, but it'll have to wait for a while. Plus, yeah, 2020 sucked; so far, this year is pretty sucky as well; I've been going through some family issues which haven't been much fun, and, you know, western civilization keeps threatening to take that final toilet-plunge no matter from what perspective you look at it - so, yeah. Happy happy ( ... )

about_faces July 31 2021, 02:05:46 UTC

I hope you're able to get back to it when life and logistics are able to work out for you. I actually was considering doing something like that myself, taking you specifically as an example and moving these sorts of discussions to vlogging, but I am far too insecure about my appearance to do that. Similarly, planned to do podcasts, but couldn't bring myself to do it. So here I am again ( ... )

Thread 8