Hey folks, SinSynn here.
How the hell are ya?
So life is good in SinSynn land right now.
The Crazy Lady I Live With isn’t mad at me at the moment (Which is surprisingly rare. I haz no idea why -_-), so I figure this gives me a lil’ bit of leeway.
Maybe a tad…a smidgen…a wee bit.
Also…leeway. Heh. Cuz my name is Lee…Iz funny, and…See wut I did there?
…
Right. Moving on…
Since the surest way to get myself in trouble with the Crazy Lady is to go spend a buncha money on stoopid stuffs just fer me, I figgered I’d use up my leeway (Ha!) on a new game or three…
I am dumb. Don’t you judge me.
Ultimately I managed to walk in and out of a GameStop without spending an unreasonable amount of money and without being arrested for flipping out at a GameStop.
No I won’t be trading in anything today. No I don’t want to join yer club. No I don’t wanna pre-order anythi- Oh Gawd, yer gonna list all the games I might wanna pre-order, aren’t you? Sigh…
*Pfft. That was last week’s prices, my friend. They just announced Ebola II, the Sequel*
I purchased a headset, since I go through a headset every couple weeks or so. The stoopid cords attract cats, or I put my controller down and walk away still attached via the headset, or something equally awkward.
*shrug*
Waddayagonnado?
…Buy a new headset twice a month, apparently. And deal with the Crazy Lady’s mocking laughter when I clothesline myself getting up from my chair.
-_-
It’s that time of year for videogames though, when all the big ‘holiday titles’ have done their thing, and we won’t see a big release until spring, pretty much. Everybody will be playing Call of Duty Black Ops III, or Fallout 4, or whatever, for the foreseeable future.
So I went and bought some comics.
And that means now we’re gonna talk about Harley Quinn, ‘k?
K.
*The original Harley Quinn, from Batman: The Animated Series*
Suicide Squad seems like the most interesting of the next wave of Comic Book movies we’ve got coming our way.
I mean, that’s just my opinion an’ all, and I’m sure some people are really looking forward to Deadpool, but I like the looks of Suicide Squad better. Feel free to bomb the comments in favor of whatever upcoming comic book movie you prefer.
Unfortunately, I’ve only read a few DC comics, and I’m pretty sure they were all Deathstroke joints. I pretty much stuck to Marvel, Dark Horse, Vertigo, Malibu and a few other brands. DC was the home of boring ol’ ‘Supers,’ in my mind.
I’ve been branching off lately, soaking in some 2000AD stuff, cuz Dredd.
*Dat scowl doe 
Dat scowl is LEGEND*
It’s impossible to read a Dredd comic without getting sucked into the whole ‘2000AD Universe,’ however, cuz it’s just so…campy an’ wonderful an’ colorful an’ crazy and ohmygawd it’s awesome. Villains like the Four Judges, Mean Machine Angel and others- Mutants are a huge thing in 2000AD books, and they really need to bring that element into the TOTALLY AWESOME AMAZING TV SHOW THEY NEED TO MAKE ABOUT DREDD.
With Karl Urban and Olivia Thirlby, natch. Cuz they were awesome and Karl Urban owned the scowl.
*I can’t think of another Comic Book movie that was as perfectly cast as Dredd. Fer realz*
The 2000AD Universe has become one of my favorite places to spend time of late. Hey, broadening my horizons, me.
So since Suicide Squad is an impending thing, and it looks cool; all flashy an’ filled with wacky characters an’ whatnot, I figgered hey, lemme broaden my horizons s’more.
…
But let’s be real.
The most popular female Comic Book character of the current gen is the primary feature of Task Force X, aka The Suicide Squad. I’m not even gonna front here. Not in the least.
I love Harley Quinn.
You do too, prolly. Cuz Harley is awesome.
*The name, the character design, it’s all perfect. It all came together just right*
Harley Quinn initially appeared on the Batman: the Animated Series TV show, and I was fortunate enough to be a fan during it’s original run. I dunno where you can see this TV show nowadays; I’m sure it’s being repeated somewhere. I’m sure you can buy it in 50 different formats on ITunes and Amazon and everywhere else, but you ain’t gonna see it on Netflix.
Despite having like, the dumbest name ever, it’s pretty much considered a classic now, and they’re gonna make you pay for it or suffer through commercials unless you wanna steal it.
I’m not advocating stealing Batman: the Animated Series. It’s one of those rare things that’s totally worth paying for.
Anyway, Harleen Quinn, the psychiatrist, was a hard-knocks girl from New York City who worked her way outta poverty and into some scholarships. Eventually she becomes a someone in the psychiatry biz, and is given a crack at the Joker.
…I really fail to see this as any kinda reward for a psychiatrist. Pretty sure the Joker has a record for killing…pretty much everyone, really.
*shrug*
*I gotta tell ya, Caesar Romero (from the old, campy, late 60’s TV show which was so bad it was really, really good) was my favorite Joker. His ‘joker laugh’ was pure gold. On another note entirely, you wanna live in a state where marijuana is legal to really appreciate the genius of this show. Just sayin.’*
So anyway, Harleen Quinzel, psychiatrist, goes to do the whole psychiatrist thing on the Joker…apparently in a series of intimate, one-on-one interviews with no like, supervision or anything.
…
Hey, it’s a Comic Book plot- gimme a break.
And really, this ground was covered by the whole Hannibal Lector/Clarice Starling relationship, and where was the adult supervision there?
Naturally, the Joker seduces her, and what was supposed to be a one-shot, walk-off role for the good doctor became a regular thing. I’m not sure what happened, but apparently the character was a hit from jump. I’ve seen that mentioned every time Harley’s creators are asked about how she came to be.
Since then, Harley has made an appearance in, well, every friggin’ thing DC can shoehorn her into. I understand why they’d do this, cuz monies, but in the process we might have lost an actual cool character.
Cartoon Harley fell in love with the Joker, despite knowing how bad his crazy ass was, and snapped when Batman beat the crap outta him. She got her revenge by assisting the Joker in escaping Akham Asylum. She got him outta there a couple of times, actually. Cuz, y’know, ya can’t keep the Joker locked down fer long. Gotham would just be so boring, otherwise…
Joker thanked her for her devotion by physically and mentally abusing her, eventually driving her insane and then driving her away.
She continues to love this fool, however. A very sad but true reality of many real-life situations Harley’s relationship with the Joker reflects. This…is a story for a grown-up Comic, yet it first appeared on a TV show fer kids.
Go figure.
Harley’s backstory made sense. Naive young lady falls fer criminal mastermind type, who ultimately abuses her. It made her character relatable and human. She didn’t need to be exposed to Gamma Radiation or whatever. While we can kinda shrug off a lotta what the Joker has gotten up to, Harley remains a very visible reminder of exactly how evil he is.
Sure, we’ll always be pissed off about the Barbara Gordon thing, but Harley is just…such a mess…
*Seriously- how many Comic Book super villains do you see doing this?*
Harley cries, and we get mad at the Joker.
That motherf*cker.
Love makes Hoomans do the craziest things, and Harley Quinn is simply an example of that. On some level we all understand Harley a lil,’ cuz we’ve all had our hearts broken. We’ve all been treated like crap by someone we only wanted to impress.
At the end of the day, a Comic Book ‘Super’ gaining their powers through having their heart broken and suffering at the hands of an abuser is ever-so-slightly-more-believable than ‘got bit by radioactive spider.’
It also opens the door for a dialog about these subjects, which are touchy but need to be discussed. Abuse is a real thing, and Harley Quinn was the product of an abusive relationship.
So we were happy fer Harley when she found a friend in Poison Ivy, and they tore up the town together.
Poison Ivy hooked Harley up with some sorta sooper-secret-serum-thingy, and Harley becomes an actual ‘Super.’
Boom. Super Harley.
*She really is dangerous :)*
Harley made the leap from the lil’ animated TV show to the official DC Universe, and her character continued to grow in popularity. I was psyched when she showed up in the first Batman videogame, Arkham Asylum. That was a real good game.
That was the first time I ever saw Harley look like this:
*Ok, so…still a clown, sorta*
To be one hundred percent perfectly clear, here:
I VERY MUCH LIKE SCANTILY CLAD WOMEN.
VERY, VERY MUCH.
Very.
Much.
Yer talkin’ to a Xeno who spent the entire afternoon today clicking on a GIF my friend posted on Facebook of a very well endowed young lady bouncy-bouncing around in her underwear.
So fer me to say these things aloud is…disturbing.
And un-natural.
Hmph.
…
If you’ll excuse me, I need to reaffirm my love of scantily clad women.
*Thank you, Powers-That-Be*
In truth, we’ve got plenty of scantily clad female, and male, Comic Book characters. Lot’s of ’em. And that’s all fine and good.
We’ve only got one Harley Quinn.
While it’s completely normal for Comic Book characters to get screwed up over time, when they’ve been rewritten by a dozen authors and rebooted half a dozen times, this has gotta be the first time I’ve seen a character go from being a somebody to just being a bimbo…
*Seriously, leave that kinda thing to other characters. Psylocke has been doing this since the 70’s. She defines eye-candy in a way few other comic book characters do :)*
Harley actually had a history going from Batman: the Animated Series to the DC Universe. She was a complete character.
So color me surprised when I learned that they changed Harley’s origin story when she was…sigh…rebooted in the massive fail bomb that was DC’s New 52.
I mean, we all know how well ‘tinkering’ tends to go over with Comic Book characters and their fans, amirite?
Hire a new artist to deliver a new visual style. A new writer to bring a fresh perspective.
Don’t go changing stuffs just fer the sake of changing stuffs.
DC Comics ended every one of their monthlies, and pretty much everything, in one fell swoop. In one single month, everything DC ended, and over the course of the next year or so, DC rebooted all of their major franchises. New things were introduced, but some things never returned.
If ya ask me, it seemed like a knee-jerk response to Marvel-Induced Panic and some sorta focus group-think Ultimate Solution.
Just So. Friggin’. Drastic.
*I don’t hate this. I actually like this, in fact. Musclebound dude Thor had a good run. Let’s let the lady hit things with a hammer for a hot minute. Could it be any less silly? This is Marvel, though, so instead of just ending Thor’s run for no good reason, there was a story behind this transition*
I laughed pretty hard at the New 52 when it arrived, but I did feel bad for DC fans. Rebooting every one of their monthlies for no good reason other than a publicity stunt is quite a slap to long-time readers.
Naturally, DC used it as an excuse to ‘modernize’ their Universe. So maybe characters that were white were now Asian, black or Latino, or maybe LGBT characters were introduced where there were none before, and similar nonsense. Cuz that kinda thing never feels forced or awkward. At all.
Combine that with DC killing off a lot of long-running stories that never got wrapped up and now never will, and what happened with the New 52 is entirely predictable:
A buncha people who never read comics in their life were enticed into buying a couple comics, cuz hey- Political Correctness an’ whatnot. Super Heroes in wheelchairs, whoo-hoo!
DC Comics was #1 for a few months.
…And then it went away, and Marvel was back on top before the year was out, even. The entire New 52 imprint was ultimately cancelled. Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say.
The New 52 did bring some changes I approved of, however. Like the ‘new’ Catwoman, by way of a fer instance.
*Errr…Excuse me, miss. I’ll just be leaving 0_o*
I absolutely think the new 52 gave a buncha characters with cool potential a fresh chance to shine. Maybe if the friggin’ Catwoman movie wasn’t a disaster Catwoman woulda finally woulda gotten the kinda treatment she’s deserved since the days when Julie Newmar did justice to the outfit.
*I’m tellin’ ya, this was an awesome show. For so many reasons. Eli Wallach showed up to play Mr. Freeze, Vincent Price played Egghead, and Burgess Merideth regularly hammed it up as Penguin. It was all gloriously awful and everyone involved in the production had to be on drugs. Ah, so damn good*
There’s lots to read out there about the New 52 and how it failed, but you woulda thunk that female heroes would’ve come out ok. That’s not what happened.
Catwoman is a sexy character, so I had absolutely no issues with sexy Catwoman.
Oh, the Comic is a lil’ moar ‘adult.’
*shrug*
The vast majority of the world hated it. It seems that, in their rush to make many of the New 52 characters ‘edgier,’ many of the female characters received a bit of sexing up. Catwoman was one.
Harley Quinn was another.
When Harley came back in a new Suicide Squad, she had almost fully adopted the look of the videogame Harley somehow. Cuz I dunno, maybe skintight bodysuits aren’t sexy enough…or sumpthin.’
…
Seriously, I dunno. I’m genuinely at a loss here…
*Really, this was cool. This look worked really well fer Harley*
Ok, so whatever. I’ll grant you that maybe that particular Harley seems a lil’ friendly, but she might very well be seconds from shooting some poor fool in the face. She does stuffs like that, and that is what makes the character a freak.
She’s the cutest lil’ killer ever.
Splash a lil’ blood on her, have her do an ‘underlit, downturned face shot’ with her eye makeup running down her face and she looks stoopid psychotic…and that’s the Harley I dig.
But ok, Maybe a lotta other people prefer Batman Arkham Asylum Harley, which seems to be the prevailing look for Harley nowadays…prolly cuz the videogames sold in the millions, and propelled Harley into the spot she occupies now- the most popular female character in Comics, well on her way to becoming a legend.
But the New 52 couldn’t leave well enough alone, and decided to ‘tinker.’
Would new readers not buy the whole ‘scorned lover’ aspect of Harley’s origin? Would that make her seem ‘weaker’ in the eyes of the modern Comic Book audience? Is that not enough?
Nope.
Let’s drop her in a vat of toxic chemicals, cuz reasons.
*I was amazed at how much her initial reaction mirrored my own*
So now Harley’s origin story is every bit as stoopid as every other character in the DC Universe.
Yay.
-_-
So, screw it. Tart her up and use her to sell videogames. Fine, whatever.
Y’know, I realize that the Joker abusing a woman in every creepy, horrible friggin’ way possible, and turning her into this…thing, is kinda a twisted subject to broach in Comics. But goddammit it felt way more real than, ‘Oh lemme drop you in a vat of chemicals. Hold on, lemme type “Vat of Chemicals” into Google Maps here. Okay got it. We’re only a few blocks away…’
Fer real, the more you think about Harley’s original backstory, the worse it gets, cuz we’re not sure exactly what Joker did. There have been a lot of very dark references scattered throughout the comics. But it’s safe to assume the worst, this time. It really is.
The Doctor Harleen Quinzel suffered horrible abuses at the hands of the Joker, and it drove her insane.
…Jeez, that is one messed up origin story.
Maybe a lil’ too messed up? Maybe DC didn’t wanna go there?
I dunno, but this is one of those rare times where I am disappoint by a female character getting less and less clad…
*Eventually it goes full circle, and the Batman Animated Series folks hafta make the characters ‘darker’*
Because it wasn’t enough to just make her scantily clad, they had to dumb her down as well. A complex persona with an actual story arc got reduced to…
…a Comic Book character.
Damn.
Until next time, folks- Exit with Catchphrase!
- SinSynn
The post I Heart Harley Quinn appeared first on House of Paincakes.