Legends of the Dark Knight #28

History

The issue was written and illustrated entirely by Matt Wagner, the creator best known for the indie series Grendel and Mage, making 'Faces' his first major Batman story for DC. It was published with a cover date of March 1992, edited by Archie Goodwin (with Bill Kaplan), and colored by Steve Oliff with lettering by Willie Schubert. Legends of the Dark Knight itself had launched in 1989 in the wake of the Tim Burton film as a rotating-talent anthology deliberately styled after the grounded, Year One sensibility Frank Miller had established — each arc was self-contained and allowed creators like Wagner unusual freedom to bring a personal voice to the character. The 'Faces' arc earned Wagner three Eisner Award nominations in 1993 — best cover artist, best penciler/inker, and best writer/artist — a rare clean sweep of the art and writing categories for a single story.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Issue #28 is 'Faces, Part 1,' the opening chapter of a three-issue arc running through Legends of the Dark Knight #28–30 (cover dates March–May 1992).
• The entire arc — story, pencils, inks, and covers — was the sole work of Matt Wagner, functioning as his debut Batman story for DC Comics.
• The story's central premise: Two-Face escapes Arkham, orchestrates a blackmail scheme and a series of plastic-surgeon murders as misdirection, and seizes a small Caribbean island to populate it with people bearing congenital physical differences — a society built in his own scarred image.
• Wagner depicted Two-Face's scarring in red rather than the traditional green, a visual departure that Tim Sale later echoed in Batman: The Long Halloween and that gradually became the modern standard rendering of the character.
• The 'Faces' arc earned Matt Wagner three Eisner Award nominations in 1993: best cover artist, best penciler/inker, and best writer/artist.
• The arc was collected in the trade paperback Batman: Faces (ISBN 1-56389-126-3) and later reprinted in the DC omnibus Legends of the Dark Knight: Matt Wagner (2020), which also includes Wagner's Batman: The Monster Men, Batman: The Mad Monk, and other Batman work.
• Archie Goodwin and Bill Kaplan are credited as editors on the issue; colorist was Steve Oliff and letterer Willie Schubert.
• No in-story continuity events from 'Faces' were carried forward into the main Batman titles — consistent with Legends of the Dark Knight's general format of standalone, self-contained arcs set loosely in Batman's early years.

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