Harley Quinn
35 years ago - Harleen Quinzell is born in Bensonhurst, New York.
30 years ago - 5-year-old Harley begins studying gymnastics.
27 years ago - 8-year-old Harley, a gymnastics prodigy, is accepted into an elite gymnastics program.
22 years ago - 13-year-old Harley starts working with a new coach, who puts an unbelievable amount of pressure on her.
19 years ago - 16-year-old Harley discovers, while performing in nationals, that he mother has been sleeping with her coach and that her parents are divorcing. She snaps, attacking her coach, breaking her hand. She loses her national ranking and gives up on the sport, losing contact with her father.
18 years ago - 17-year-old Harley attends Gotham University to study psychology, escaping her mother and stepfather.
14 years ago - 21-year-old Harley graduates with her bachelor's degree in psychology, and begins medical school to become a psychiatrist.
10 years ago - 25-year-old Harley earns her PhD in psychology and begins her residency in Arkham.
8 years ago - 27-year-old Harley starts working with the Joker. He slowly twists their sessions, using her history of emotional abuse against her, making her fall in love with him. She begins submitting falsified reports showing that the Joker is recovering, and throws herself back into her gymnastics training.
7 years ago - 28-year-old Harley is heartbroken when the Joker escapes Arkham. He gives her a chance to come with him, subjecting herself to near constant exposure to his psychotropic drugs. She becomes his partner, Harley Quinn, suffering his emotional abuse.
5 years ago - 30-year-old Harley is abandoned during a heist by the Joker, and sent to Arkham as a patient. While there she develops a rivalry with Pamela Isley. When the Joker is also caught and sent to Arkham, he remains distant and cut off.
4 years ago - 31-year-old Harley, the Joker, and Pamela Isley are freed from Arkham by Bane. The Joker leaves Harley behind to enact an elaborate plan that nearly floods the entire city. Harley and Pamela leave a trail of destruction behind them. Harley is certain the Joker will come for her, while Pamela tries to get her to stand up for herself. When the Joker finally arrives, escaping Bane's underground, he tries to get Harley to kill Pamela, and abandons her to save his own skin when she does not.
3 years ago - 32-year-old Harley returns to Gotham during No Man's Land with Pamela Isley to try to recover her hybrid plants so they aren't lost in the earthquake. They take over Robinson Park, protecting a group of homeless children. They are attacked by Basil Karlo, but are rescued by Robin.
2 years ago - 33-year-old Harley and Pamela Isley take over an abandoned arboretum in Gotham's East End. They have a turf battle with several local gangs, and are helped by Holly Robinson, nicknamed the Gotham Sirens by the press.
now - 35-year-old Harley is confronted again by the Joker when he returns to Gotham. She stands up to him, announcing her own independence.
Harley is not as new a character as she seems. As I'm writing this she's been around for 34 years. If you compare that to Batman, we'd be in the early 70s, already post Adam West. There are plenty of characters that are even newer than she is, but I think the thing that makes Harley stand out among those new characters is that she's reached a level of relevancy so far beyond any characters that have been invented across the entirety of DC's publication history.
This is a hard thing to measure, of course. The Flash, Green Arrow and Supergirl all had TV shows recently... but are they as universally recognized and culturally relevant as Harley? I'm not going to answer, because I really don't know. but the fact that we can actually ask that question about a character that was created within my lifetime is huge. There is something utterly unique about Harley, and hopefully we can get a sense of what it is.
This is a hard thing to measure, of course. The Flash, Green Arrow and Supergirl all had TV shows recently... but are they as universally recognized and culturally relevant as Harley? I'm not going to answer, because I really don't know. but the fact that we can actually ask that question about a character that was created within my lifetime is huge. There is something utterly unique about Harley, and hopefully we can get a sense of what it is.
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Harley's Animation HistoryThis is common knowledge to the point of being folklore, but Harley Quinn showed up for the first time in 1992 in the Batman Animated Series, in the episode "Joker's Favor". Bruce Timm, the shows co-creator and character designer, has a history as a pinup artist and clearly found places to put his pretty girls into the show. In this case, if the story is to be believed, she was created for a scene where originally the Joker was supposed to come out of a cake, Bugs Bunny-style. She was based on (and voiced by) Arleen Sorkin, a friend of co-creator Paul Dini. She was a hit on the show, sometimes even showing up as a villain in her own right, including the now-famous episode "Harley and Ivy", featuring the titular villainesses on a Thelma and Louise style crime spree. All told she made 15 appearances across the 109 episodes of the Animated Series and the New Batman Adventures, which doesn't seem like a lot, but Catwoman only made 8. The Joker made 27.
Harley's backstory was slowly unrolled in a few episodes, and more specifically in a couple issues of the Animated Series tie-in comics. We learn that she was the Joker's doctor in Arkham who was manipulated into falling in love with him and becoming his accomplice and partner. When Bruce Timm, Paul Dini, Mark Hamill and Arlene Sorkin spoke about the relationship between these characters, they made it pretty clear that their intention, while not to delve too deep into the Joker's madness, was to use Harley to actually show the Joker's capacity for genuine affection. Arlene herself said "Everyone else sees the Joker laugh, only Harley has ever seen him cry. It's the only reason she stays with him." |
Harley's Comic HistoryHarley's first comic appearance was in the Batman Adventures, a tie in to the Animated Series, in issue 12 in 1993. she would regularly appear in the animated tie-in comics, (and also appeared in Howard Chaykin's Elseworlds series Thrillkiller in 1998) but her first actual appearance in the mainstream DC continuity was in Batman: Harley Quinn by Paul Dini in 1999, which made her a part of the No Man's Land storyline. I think a lot of people might have skipped this introductory issue, because it does a lot of work to establish the new core continuity Harley. For one thing it makes it abundantly clear that the Joker is just using her. He does start to develop feelings for her, immediately abandoning her and trying to kill her as a response. Harley actually starts out the book ready to kill him back, but flip flops between hating and loving him. Most notably; the book begins with Harley connecting with Ivy. Ivy is responsible for making her immune to poisons, as well as enhancing her strength and agility. The subtle bond between these two was firmly in place from her very first appearance.
Harley does continue to sort of pinball through Gotham for several years; a beloved bit of flavor in the world of Batman, but her actual story remained pretty static, defined as she was with her back and forth obsession with the Joker. |
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The really big shift for Harley happens in 2009, at a time when a lot of the DC comics were losing their editorial drive, but a few creators were really finding their voice. Paul Dini, Harley's co-creator, wrote Gotham City Sirens, a book about Harley, Ivy, and Catwoman forming an uneasy alliance. As the book begins, Harley announces she's left the Joker for good. At the time this just feels like business as usual, with the understanding that it's only a matter of time until she goes right back to him, but what's different this time is a) she's out of costume a LOT, and b) she has friends that are there for her when she starts to backslide. The Joker shows up in this series plenty, but we really start to see Harley stand up for herself, albeit while still being completely insane.
When DC rebooted it's continuity in 2011, one of the launch titles was Suicide Squad, which featured Harley on the cover dramatically showcasing a new costume that is so overtly sexual it's almost impossible to take seriously. I do remember seeing this and just immediately thinking No. This wasn't Harley. When you actually read the book, however, you see Harley confront the Joker, and suddenly it's made very clear what has happened. This is a HARD break. Harley is DONE. The costume all of a sudden kind of makes sense. She's reclaiming herself and her sexuality. Sure, it's on the cover of a comic so its obviously being played as weird cheesecake, but as the comic went on we were seeing Harley grow in some really interesting ways. |
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This is a really interesting period for Harley. This is around the time when the Me Too movement was quietly gaining momentum, and Harley's role as a formerly abused woman who was rediscovering herself and finding her own independence was slowly becoming a bigger and bigger part of her story. She stared in her own comic which had a very deliberately cartoonish style, playing with the 4th wall, making her very much DC's answer to Marvel's Deadpool. Her appearance in the 2016 Suicide Squad movie tied her to actor and producer Margot Robbie, which led to several more movie appearances within five years of each other. Comics responded, giving her a bigger and bigger profile, making her by far one of the most recognizable and popular characters in their entire catalog.
The long-standing bond between Harley and Poison Ivy had always read as romantic to fans, but comics had never out and out depicted them that way. In 2016, however, the Elseworlds series Bombshells, featuring all of DC's female characters in a pseudo-steampunk setting, showed the two of them finally kissing on a comic panel for the first time. They were then a couple in the non-canon Injustice series... the inevitability of their relationship becoming more and more obvious. The absolutely fantastic Harley Quinn HBO animated series made the growth of their relationship and how important it was in the growth of both women a core part of the whole series, and now they've finally kissed in the actual continuity, making one of the highest profile and most important characters in DC a queer woman, the importance of which I will try to get into... |
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Why is Harley So Important?Trying to understand the huge importance of Harley really starts with Wonder Woman. Diana has, for decades, really been the primary figurehead of womanhood in comics, and because of this she's been expected to represent feminism in all it's infinite forms. This has often been handled really well, but of course asking one character to do all of that is ultimately limiting. Women aren't a monolith. PEOPLE aren't a monolith. There are so many ways a person can be strong, and a lot of it isn't necessarily about being a bastion of goodness. Suggesting that the idea of a strong woman can only be someone who is so perfect and powerful can actually be limiting. Harley isn't Wonder Woman at all. She's strong, sure, but she's a long long way from perfect. She represents a whole other flavor of feminine strength, and it clearly connects with people who see themselves in her unconventionality and her refusal to fit in.
Her queerness is a big part of this, I think. The fact that the Harley/Ivy fan ship lasted for practically thirty years is a clear indication that this was something people NEEDED. There are lots of queer fan ships, but this was the big one for a very long time, and I think it's because lots of people identify with this sort of feeling, where neither of you fit in in the world, but it doesn't matter because you have each other. Harley and Ivy are, in a lot of ways, a return to romance comics happening right in the middle of this world of superheroes. |
Our Harley StoryHarley has probably had her timeline updated more times than most other characters in this project, specifically because she's such a huge character and yet she's seen such massive character development even within the past 15 years since we started. Our older timelines showed that the relationship between Harley and Ivy was clearly very important, but was still developing form a friendship into something deeper. Obviously, that's no longer the case. Moving them forward into a true romantic partnership is unbelievably important now.
So much so, that we actually had to spend a long time trying to work out just how long Harley's time with the Joker actually was. It feels like it needs to be longer, but when you really think about it even 8 or 9 months undergoing that sort of ordeal feels like a lifetime. We did two years, but even that feels like a lot. We also took a cue from the animated series, and wanted to include her backstory as a world-class gymnast. This is actually kind of an interesting backdoor for us to imply that the pressure cooker of being a professional gymnast really got to her. We included the affair between her coach and her mom (taken right from the movie Stick It) because it makes sense that there needs to be some unresolved trauma that the Joker latched onto. |
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Harley's FutureThere is so much going on with Harley all the time. She's always DOING things, and they don't always make sense. A lot of her standalone series are rooted in a sort of playfully loose disregard for the verisimilitude of the world, letting her just show up in unexpected places and be an agent of chaos. I think when this plays out in more mainstream comics it often has her interacting with characters she really has no business interacting with, but that's clearly part of the fun.
In our project, we're leaving the world with Harley and Ivy settling in in Gotham, both of them planning to just keep to themselves, but of course we can predict exactly how well that's going to go. I imagine Ivy mostly keeping to herself, but Harley is likely going to be all over the place. I imagine her being an ally to characters like Dick Grayson and Luke Fox as often as she's in their way. Of course, we all really do know that as crazy and dangerous as Harley is, deep deep down inside her, she's always going to wind up doing a version of the right thing, whether she means to or not. |
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