Imaginary Worlds - Sidekicks: Harley Quinn

Episode Date: May 29, 2019

In the conclusion of our mini-series on sidekicks, we look at how Harley Quinn began as a sidekick to a villain, and found her way to the heart of the DC canon and fandoms around the world. Nicole Herviou of ComicsVerse and journalist Lux Alptraum discuss how the relationship between Harley Quinn and The Joker mirrors abusive relationships in real life. And I talk with comic book creators Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner about how they separated Harley from her toxic boyfriend, and set the character on a new path. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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on the Peloton app. Call yourself a runner. Peloton All Access membership separate. Learn more at onepeloton.ca slash running. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky, and this is part three of our miniseries on sidekicks. Harley Quinn needs no introduction because Harley Quinn can introduce herself. Oh, hiya, B-man. Harley Quinn here.

Harley Quinn, nice to meet ya. Love your perfume. What is that, the scent of death? Harley Quinn, nice to meet ya. Say hello to your new, improved Harley Quinn. Harley Quinn is everywhere. At one point, she was in up to seven different DC comics, outselling many of the major heroes. And next year, she'll be starring in her own movie, Birds of Prey.

Actually, the full title of the movie is Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn. Margot Robbie will be playing Harley. And if you go to Comic-Con, any Comic-Con, anywhere, you will see more Harley cosplayers than any other character. And there are so many different costumes for Harley, from spandex to latex to leather. Tell me, how do you pronounce your last name? Herview. Herview. Yes, like a female's point of view.

Oh, I like that. Yes. That's good. Nicole Herview writes for ComicsVerse, and she hosts the podcast Nerd Jersey. I've cosplayed five different versions of Harley in my life, I think. But she's also so iconic and also not difficult. It's so much fun to dress up as Harley and run around behind makeup. And you can kind of disappear into her which is so much fun you put on the

accent you walk around and and you just have a blast i think too i feel like about the harley cosplays i think any body type works you know with harley in a way that's not necessarily true with male or female uh superheroes i love when i see a male dress as Harley. I think she would love it. Like, I obviously, I talk about her like she's a human being, but I think she would have so much fun with that. But it was never a sure thing that Harley Quinn would become an iconic character. She began as a sidekick and a sidekick to a villain, the Joker, who abused her and manipulated her. Much of her journey over the last 27 years has been trying to define herself within that relationship and eventually outside of it.

Another really interesting thing about Harley is that she's the most popular DC character that did not start in DC Comics. In the fall of 1992, she debuted on Batman the Animated Series. Now, I was in college at the time, and I used to literally run out of class and bolt all the way across campus to watch that show because I loved it so much. Although I was surprised at the time that they gave the Joker a girlfriend. Usually he's just purely evil with no other attachments. But after a while, it felt strange to see the Joker without Harley Quinn. She was created by the writer Paul Dini and the actress Arlene Sorkin. Harley's New York accent was based on a character that Sorkin had done on a soap opera. Bruce Timm designed the costume. It was a black and red Harlequin onesie with white face

paint and a black eye mask. She was only supposed to be in one episode, but she was such a hit that kept bringing her back. And Arlene Sorkin had great chemistry with Mark Hamill, who did the voice of the Joker. You were gonna come back for me, weren't you, Puddin'? Of course, pumpkin pie. It's just that, well, here you are, so I can save myself the trip. But what about all our friends, Ivy and Two-Face and Hat Guy and Lizard Man and Puppet Head and... What about them? In a lot of the episodes, Harley is very much the Joker's sidekick, helping him execute his evil schemes and attacking Batman, usually with a giant mallet. But the show also explored the Joker-Harley relationship with surprising sophistication. I mean, there are times when he slaps her or leaves her for dead, and she comes

close to a breaking point. Like in the episode we just heard, it ends with her about to shoot him with a gun, without realizing that it's one of the Joker's fake gag guns. Not in a million years, would you? Now, the character's real name is Harleen Quinzel, and she started out as the Joker's therapist at Arkham Asylum until she fell in love with him. It soon became clear to me that the Joker, so often described as a raving, homicidal madman, was actually a tortured soul crying out for love and acceptance. A lost, injured child trying to make the world laugh at his antics.

And there, as always, was the self-righteous Batman. Determined to make life miserable for my angel. Lux Alptron is a journalist who has written about abuse. She's also the survivor of an abusive relationship. And she always found the dynamic between Harley and the Joker to be strangely quite believable. Her origin story is being a person who helps people. quite believable. Her origin story is being a person who helps people. And I think like her being sucked into chaos is perversely through her wanting to help someone, which also really, I think, speaks to the abuse narrative, too, that like a lot of people get trapped in abusive relationships because they are natural caretakers and because they're like, oh, well, if I can just

put up with this, I will help this person. Like they're only doing this because they're like, oh, well, if I can just put up with this, I will help this person. Like they're only doing this because they're in pain. They're only doing this because this. And if I stick with them, I can help them become a better person. So, I mean, you know, she comes to it through this caretaking narrative and then it all gets kind of twisted and complicated. And she becomes a villain out of love and she becomes this kind of, I mean, she is kind of literally and figuratively cartoon character out of this desire to help this other, this person who is a villain. Batman the Animated Series was its own self-contained universe, separate from the official DC Comics canon.

But there was a lot of demand to bring Harley over to the comics. So in 1999, she starred in her own comic book series, but it was a rocky transition. In the cartoon, the Joker is the kind of evil that wouldn't disturb a kid who had turned on their TV in the middle of the afternoon. But in the comics, the Joker is clearly a psychopathic murderer. So Harley seemed either really dumb for being in love with him, or she had to be just as evil as him. Jimmy Palmiati and Amanda Connor have written Harley comics, and they were not crazy about those early adaptations of her. The way people wrote Harley was like this dark, mass-murdering, bloodthirsty animal.

There was a story where she did mass murder. I can't remember where it was, but it was like kids playing video games, whatever. And I just remember reading that and going, yeah, that's not that to Harley. It just didn't seem like true to the character. No. And especially kids, you know, because that's like nothing that we don't see that in the character at all. Nicole Herview says very often writers would take Harley in the opposite direction, where she was just over the top wacky. Whenever someone decides to just focus on her being a punchline or her doing just the craziest thing in the world or like, oh, she's talking in nursery rhymes. I'm like, what are you doing?

I don't think those people take the time to understand her on a deeper level because they just see what's surface level and that's it. After a few years, Harley faded from the comics. There was a live action TV show called Birds of Prey with Mia Sara playing Harley, but it didn't even last a single season. It seemed like the character would only be remembered for the animated series. And then in 2009, Batman made a big transition to video games, and he brought Harley with him. Now, I've talked about the Arkham video games before because they're really gritty and cinematic. They don't look anything like Batman the Animated Series, although they used many of the same voice actors. In case you ain't figured it out, today is the Joker's big homecoming,

and you're the guest of honor. You have one chance to surrender, Quinn. Tempting baths, but no dice. Now the inmates are running the asylum. In the game Arkham Asylum, Harley's costume got a big makeover that would forever change the character. She wasn't wearing the Harlequin onesie anymore.

Her costume was overtly sexual, with a lot of skin showing. Some fans complained that she'd been turned into a sex object. But this new costume also implied a more sexual dimension to her relationship with the Joker, making them seem more adult and less cartoonish. She was brought back to the comics in Suicide Squad, which is a series about

a band of villains who work for the government to take time off their sentences. And that version of Harley was so successful, it eventually led to the Suicide Squad movie, with Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. The movie was critically I should kill everyone and escape? Sorry. The voices. The movie was critically panned, but it made a lot of money, and Margot Robbie's version of Harley was a hit. In fact, I see cosplayers all the time wearing her fishnet-stocking punk rock costume alongside a male partner who's dressed as Jared Leto's version of the Joker. In fact, I asked Nicole her view. Do you think that people romanticize the Harley Joker

relationship? Yes. Yes, they do. I won't even finish the sentence. Tell me more. It's really upsetting. And I still, I have a hard time understanding it as someone who has experience in that kind of a relationship. And I see it constantly. I saw it in Suicide Squad. And I was like, when that movie came out, and like, there was still Instagram and Twitter and Facebook posts from, I mean, I'm generalizing saying it's mostly young women that that's what I saw. I think a lot of people do it. It's not just younger women, but I saw a lot of young women being like goals. And I'm like, guys, you can do so much better. And I just keep seeing them respond to Harley and the Joker

because there are those little baby moments when he's nice to her and she's so happy. Those little baby moments are what these people who romanticize it cling to. Now, as a kid, Nicole always liked Harley as a character, but she didn't really see herself in Harley until after Nicole got out of an abusive relationship. I'm an Italian Jersey girl. I consider myself very strong. I still do. If you give me crap, I'm going to give it right back. It doesn't matter how tough or strong I am. I still found myself in it and had no idea how the hell I got there. And that's because these people are manipulative and they prey upon you and they prey upon kind of your best intentions and they take

that and you find yourself in it. It doesn't matter how strong you are. You can suddenly be in it. I think that made me feel better and forgive myself a little bit more, even though there's nothing for me to forgive. You still feel like that. It's not like you're weak because you were in this. You could be the strongest person in the world and have also gone through this. They're not mutually exclusive. Lux Alptron had a similar experience in that it took her years to realize that she was in an abusive relationship because she didn't see herself as the stereotype of the weak or submissive woman, which is a stereotype that Harley Quinn defies. One of the things that people don't always realize is that abuse can actually feel exciting.

I think another work that really conveys this well is Eminem's collaboration with Rihanna, Love the Way You Lie, that a lot of times, and this also speaks to how romance is depicted in pop culture. A lot of times when you're in an abusive relationship, it's like you have a very intense fight. But when you have a very intense fight, that's followed by this makeup period, which is also very intense. You know, you feel like,

oh, I'm ride or die for this person. And like, we're going to do these like terrible things. And maybe even things I don't want to do, but like, I'm going to do them because this is what love is. I think that, you know, obviously there have been many different iterations of the Joker and Harley, but this idea of love means harming yourself for another person, that's the rationale that underpins a lot of abuse. And you certainly see, I mean, this is a story about a woman who gives up her entire career,

who mutilates herself in some ways for love and for this man. I mean, really, like when I think about so many of my friends who've survived abuse relationships, many of them have been like incredibly successful women or incredibly successful people who also seemingly incongruously in this very toxic romantic relationship. The word toxic is so interesting because, I mean, that is literally what happened. I mean, the Joker's creation stories, he falls in this vat of chemicals.

Right. And there's a scene in Suicide Squad where to prove her love to him, she has to fall into a literal toxic vat. Yes, exactly. Literal toxicity to become Harley. Right, right. I mean, which, yeah, exactly.

I mean, I think so much of her loyalty to him just feels so, it just feels really real to me. Just the way that you have this character feeling like such loyalty to someone who is like so clearly awful. Would you die for me? Yes. That's too easy. Would you live for me? Yes. That's too easy. Would you live for me? Hmm? Yes. With every layer that was added to Harley Quinn,

she became more human and less cartoonish, which allowed the character to finally break free. That's in a moment. protection. Wait, what's that? Mmm, vanilla and shea. That's Old Spice Total Body Deodorant. 24-7 freshness from pits to privates with daily use. It's so gentle. We've never smelled so good. Shop Old Spice Total Body Deodorant now. In 2013, DC Comics wanted to give Harley her own comic book again, and they chose a married couple to create the series, Jimmy Palmiati and Amanda Connor. And the first thing that they wanted to do was to get Harley away from the Joker, far away from the Joker. We decided to, OK, we're going to take her out of Gotham because if she's going to be in her own book, she shouldn't be stuck in the place where she's an eternal.

Secondary character in her own book. She shouldn't be stuck in the place where she's an eternal... Secondary character in her own book. Right. A B character. And because being a New Yorker, I said, well, why not Coney Island? In case you're wondering, New York City does exist in the DC universe, where exactly Gotham is located is anyone's guess. But Harley is supposed to be from Brooklyn. You know, people always say, write what you know. So, and Jimmy really knows Brooklyn. Yeah, I mean, Coney Island was like, you know, my park that I went to. That was your childhood. Yeah. The way that they conceived the series was asking, what would Harley do on her day off? And that sounds like it might be kind of

dull, but it was full of mayhem. Well, we were also, you know, taking her back to her roots, her were also, you know, taking her back to her roots, her animated roots. You know, she's goofy and fun and nutty. And, you know, sure, she's, you know, a psychotic killer, but she's a fun, lovable, psychotic killer. And that's I think that was the original intent for Harley when when Paul and Bruce created her. For us, if a comic successful for us, that means that there's some serious stuff and then there's some stuff, laugh out loud, silliness, because that's the life Amanda and I have.

Yeah, we're pretty silly. Yeah, we're pretty silly. Things can be tough. We have to go through things, but at the end of the day, we're giggling together, and I think it comes through in the writing. Although Jimmy and Amanda's take on Harley wasn't just fun and games, in fact, the work they did on the character was a complete game changer.

They worked on the series for four years, which is a long time for a single creative team to work on a character. And their issues have been collected into a six-volume series of books. By the way, the Harley Quinn comic book series is still going on, but with a different creative team. Now, when Jimmy and Amanda first began working on the series, the trickiest thing was deciding how much the Joker's presence would loom over Harley

when she was trying to establish a new life. We made it so that she thought about him a lot because sometimes you do, you know, think about your ex a lot. What are you saying, Amanda? What are you saying? Not everybody, but she was the kind of person that would sort of obsess over lost loves and stuff like that. So it sort of worked for us.

And then it was her climbing out of that, that, that, I miss you whole. The Joker kept playing mind games with her from afar until she finally confronted him and got the closure she needed in classic, bloody, Harley Joker style. We kind of talked out the scene because we wanted to make sure everything was right. Because, again, it's somebody with an ending an abusive relationship and we wanted to get the language right but we didn't think it was going to be we it was just part of the story and we didn't think it was going to be singled out or something that was like a big change or and then when the book came out it it went through the roof and we were like oh okay i guess we hit on something here you know yeah yeah we we had never

had anybody really like have a storyline hit home for them quite the way this one did that storyline really resonated with nicole you tear someone down like that they're gonna want to get back at you friend like we've all even if we're not violent people like i think we've all, even if we're not violent people, like I think we've all thought about it. And I've definitely thought about beating the living crap out of, I would never do it. But I thought about it and made me feel a lot better. Because you have all this anger and you don't really know how to get it out. So seeing her kind of have this moment of strength and bravery to even look him in the face and talk to him. That's strength because you you go in and you know, like, he's going to try to manipulate me, he's going to try to do something.

And if I open that door, he could barge right in again. So I definitely lived vicariously through Harley as she went in that door, looked him in the face and was like, basically, you do not own me. You never owned me. And this is 100% done. It was interesting to see what happened to Harley once she liberated herself from that toxic relationship. As writers, Jimmy and Amanda felt like the character had just taken on a life of her own. I gotta say, she's one of the easiest characters I've ever written. Yeah.

It's just so easy to write her because she's a wish fulfillment character. She is like, you know, somebody steps on her foot, she gives them a kick in the ass. You know, it's like she's such an easy character to write because she wears her emotions like right on her sleeve. She reacts instantly without thinking. And then she pauses and slows it down and then has integrity, you know, and it's interesting. Rarely. And it's interesting to write a character that in a matter of a page, she's going to change her point of view like three or four times. Yeah, I mean, when I used to drive around the tri-state area and somebody would cut me off, I always wish that I had a cannon mounted on my car so I could just

blow the car out from in front of me. And I'm like, you know, we live in a civilized society. We don't do that kind of thing. But Harley would, you know, she does all the things that you wish you could do. In fact, when the company would ask for solicits, which is a summary of future issues for comic book stores, they didn't know what to do because the stories were never turning out the way they planned. We used to say, he used to say, give me the solicits for the next four issues. And we'd make up something. And then we'd write the book and it was completely different. Very Harley of us. Yeah, very Harley of us. To use the terminology of D&D character alignments,

Harley had gone from chaotic evil to chaotic neutral, from a villain to an antihero. Now, there are a lot of female villains and heroes in comics, but there are very few female antiheroes. And Amanda really appreciates that about Harley, especially now that they're working on Wonder Woman comics. Like, I love Wonder Woman. I grew up with Wonder Woman. But Wonder Woman is flawless and, you know, she's so iconic and can do no wrong.

Whereas Harley does a lot of stuff wrong and makes a lot of mistakes and has, you know, a lot of different emotions and is very, she's so much more relatable because she reflects a lot of our own feelings. And that's, and I think that's one of the reasons for her popularity. Jimmy and Amanda also made another big change to Harley. They put her in a romantic relationship with Poison Ivy. Poison Ivy is also less of a villain these days because her motivation to save the earth from humans doesn't seem as crazy anymore, even if her methods are extreme. Now, a lot of people thought that Harley and Ivy had a gay-coded relationship going all the way back to the animated series. So fans like

Nicole were really thrilled to see that subtext brought out into the open. I think that's so important to show that as much as she's out of her mind and off the wall in a good way, she definitely has the capability to be in a functional relationship that doesn't need to have labels on it. And they're both very comfortable with that and very happy with that. Now, everyone seems to be writing her that way, and no one's kind of ignoring it anymore. In fact, Harley and Ivy got married in a different comic book series called Bombshells, which is not part of the official DC canon. It's kind of an alternate universe, but still, it was a big deal. Again, here's Lux Alptron.

Not only does she get to escape abuse and find love, but she gets to find love in a way that's on her own terms. It's not, oh, now she's a good person. Like, now she gets to be, like, one of the good guys. She gets to still be this antiherohero and she gets to find love with another anti-hero. And it's, you know, you can feel love and still be morally complicated. Given what a force of nature Harley's become, I asked Lux why she thinks it took so long for this character to break out on her own. And Lux thinks it's because there are more and more fans now that don't fit the mold of the typical fanboy. There was this idea that all of these female characters, if men liked marginalized populations who've been treated as just sidekicks or fringe uh stories that are well done those stories that are lovingly crafted that they will spend money on them and they will be fans and they will be

invested like number one we're finally realizing that um and number two i think we are finally getting to a point where where we realize that even white men who are supposedly the target audience for all this are capable of being interested in stories that are not just about white men. This miniseries on sidekicks has been looking at who gets to tell stories and who the writers assume the stories are for. Now, there's nothing wrong with being a sidekick. There can be something noble about helping somebody else advance their story. But in life, usually we make that choice. And I think it's a sign of progress that more and more storytellers are asking,

what motivates these sidekicks to play those roles? And the great thing about Harley Quinn is that even when her motivations were psychologically unhealthy, they always felt true to life, which is what allowed the character to finally take charge of her life. That is it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Lux Alptron, Nicole Hervue, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Amanda Connor. By the way, Amanda's drawings of Harley,

which looked more roller derby than Baroque S&M, were so popular they were turned into a series of action figures. I asked her what was the first thing she wanted to ditch about Harley's previous costumes. It was the neck ruffles. I don't like neck ruffles. Neck ruffles are the mullet of the 16th century, so I don't like them at all. I don't even like them on Queen Elizabeth. I'm like, get those off. If you want another recommendation of a great depiction of Harley Quinn, check out Sean Murphy's 2018 graphic novel, White Knight. It explores what would happen if the Joker were given medication that cured him of his psychosis. I won't give away anything more,

but Harley is the real star of that story and explores her evolution as a character in a really unique way. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. You can like the show on Facebook. I tweeted Emolinski and Imagine Worlds Pod. You can also now find the show on Instagram under Imaginary Worlds Podcast,

where I've put images of Harley throughout the years. And the show's website is imaginaryworldspodcast.org. Bye-bye, pets!