Welcome back to My Hero, where the obscure characters given the spotlight in our Custom Action Figure Collection get a chance to take center stage. Today’s entry is perhaps not the best likeness in the collection, but one where the choice of base figure is the decider: Paul “Two-Face” Sloane!
Getting Lost In A Role
Despite his legendary status as a Batman foe today, Two-Face AKA Harvey Dent actually only had three appearances in the Golden Age before he was “permanently” cured. There would be three imposter Two-Faces who popped up before Dent relapsed into villainy, meaning just under half of the Golden Age Two-Face tales starred fakes. The first and third fakes used make-up to become the villain, so we’re focusing today on the third Two-Face overall and the only one besides Harvey Dent who actually got scarred up, Paul Sloane. His one major Pre-Crisis appearance was in the cover story from 1951’s Batman #68.
![](https://gobacktothepast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/TwoFace2.png)
Paul Sloane was an actor hired to portray the role of Harvey Dent in a Hollywood film. However, the prop-master’s girlfriend had a crush on the heartthrob actor and the jealous man swapped in real acid for the scene where Dent’s face gets scarred. As a result, Sloane gets scarring very similar to Dent’s and decides that he’s fated to take-up Two-Face’s criminal career too. Batman managed to end his reign of terror by, somehow, tricking him into getting reconstructive surgery. Which is an ethically questionable strategy, but an effective one.
![](https://gobacktothepast.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/twoface.jpg)
The Takeaway
Despite a similar origin, Sloane’s Two-Face looked significantly different from Dent’s Two-Face. Most notably, his hair remained one color and his face wasn’t green. Why, then, would I conclude the Two-Face in our collection is Sloane?
Well, it’s important to note at the top that I am not working off of the customizer’s notes. It is 100% on me to identify who in the heck each character is – and it’s my responsibility because my brain’s storehouse of esoteric character knowledge dwarfs that of anyone else in the store. I decided that this figure represented Sloane for two reasons:
- I haven’t really seen many characters as mainstream as Two-Face show up in the collection so far.
- The figure itself is repainted lead figurine of legendary actor Humphrey Bogart.
It’s Two-Face, it’s an actor, it’s Paul Sloane, and this week he’s My Hero.