Sometimes I remember that A Lonely Place of Dying (1988) just casually included details about the Dent family and possibly even Harvey’s childhood home. The only other story to reference this was the prologue to Prodigal (1994), which outright described it as the “Dent ancestral home.” Which Harvey blew up.
Like, Lonely Place—written by Marv Wolfman—doesn’t say anything about it being the Dent ancestral home. Just that it was “constructed” by Harvey’s grandfather in 1899 and finished two years later. That could mean that the grandfather was anything from an architect to a contractor to an actual laborer who literally built the house with his own (two) hands. What’s more, it might not have been HIS house, but just a particularly impressive job he did for someone else. It’s not like Frank Lloyd Wright lived in all those structures he designed.
But let’s say it WAS intended to be the Dent ancestral home, and possibly even Harvey’s childhood home. Because then it gets way weirder and sillier when you backtrack before its destruction.
So now we all but have the exact address of the Dent home: the northwest corner of Fourth Street and Fourth Avenue, “right through Apollo Square.” Harvey had almost never been referred to as “Apollo” since 1942, but this was surely a reference. And while Wolfman likely just wanted to play into the story’s themes of Harvey’s worsening obsession, one could reverse-engineer these details into imagining how Harvey’s whole life and identity—even from childhood—was dominated by recurring patterns of twos and even the god Apollo. There’s some fodder for those of us who think of Harvey in terms of hyperfixations, pattern-seeking behaviors, and OCD.
And speaking of being obsessive, I checked the Gotham map from the 80’s DC RPG to see if any areas might potentially correspond to the part on Nightwing’s proto-GPS, and the only area that possibly works is Bristol, the same area where Wayne Manor is located. While that provides some fodder for those of us who like Bruce and Harvey being childhood friends, the Dent home seems to be within the city proper, rather than on the outskirts where the rich can escape the riffraff. And while that does seem to be an expensive house, I prefer the idea of Harvey growing up in poverty. His family might have once been wealthy, but we’ve seen how Christopher Dent lives. So yeah, it’s probability not in Bristol, cool as it would have been to maintain consistency with the RPG map.
With all that said, it’s worth remembering that Harvey didn’t JUST blow up his grandfather’s house. First he completely gutted and redesigned the interiors to flip everything upside down, just better play cat-and-also-cat with Batman.
I know we’re not supposed to think too hard about the logistics of comic book deathtraps, but it’s fun to wonder how and when Harvey pulled this off. Did he hire people? Did his force his goons to take up carpentry? Was all the water and electricity still functional, and did he have to get those redone too? Did he just do this all by himself, using a hammer while trying to hold nails in the side of his mouth where he still has lips? Either way, he put SO much effort into being ridiculous, all so he could ultimately blow it up as part and his and Bruce’s ongoing toxic divorce (reluctantly guest-starring Nightwing).
My point is, trying to cobble together backstories for characters like Two-Face involves reading way too much into throwaway details that writers never intended as important, and then going down the rabbit hole as you realize how that implicitly makes stories like even MORE ridiculous. It’s fun!
