BATMAN #234 & #235

"HALF AN EVIL"
Story by: Denny O'Neil | Art by: Neal Adams & Dick Giordano | Edited by: Julie Schwartz

Note: Screenshots below come from BATMAN ILLUSTRATED BY NEAL ADAMS VOLUME 2 and are not representative of these stories' original colors (the covers are presented as published, however).

At some point in the late sixties, a decision was made to "retire" Batman's classic rogues' gallery for a time. This effort began prior to the first story we read, "One Bullet Too Many", and has been in place since then. In that time, both in the stories we've read and the issues we skipped, Batman has fought common criminals and new super-villains -- but there's been no sign of the classics such as Joker, Penguin, Catwoman, and so forth.

My understanding is that the villains were written out due to concerns of overexposure thanks to the Adam West TV series, plus the fact that the comics were going "back to basics" with more (relatively) grounded stories. But whatever the reason, the fact remains that until this issue, it had been some time since Batman had taken on any of his more recognizable enemies -- and even here, the first classic villain brought back is one who did not feature in the TV show.

But Two-Face is definitely a classic foe, having been created by Batman's co-creators themselves, Bob Kane and Bill Finger, in the forties. According to Wikipedia, he was mostly dropped following that decade, appearing only a small handful of times in the fifties and sixties -- I would assume due to his gruesome appearance conflicting with the values of the Comics Code Authority. But now, thanks to the creative duo of O'Neil and Adams, he's back.