It’s pretty wild that, of all the characters in the vast and sprawling DC multiverse, one of the most popular is a mentally damaged ex-psychologist who fell in love with a mass murdering clown-faced sociopath. But Harley Quinn didn’t come out of nowhere – the character has been around for nearly 30 years, and her path to stardom was a long and winding one. Let’s dip into the longboxes to see how Harley transformed from a plot device to the star of her own major motion picture.
The Birth Of A Villain
Harley Quinn made her first appearance in a 1992 episode of the classic Batman: The Animated Series. That show was already a cut above the standard fare for kids cartoons, written and designed with a more adult mindset. The success of Tim Burton’s two Batman films, which added psychosexual complexity to the vigilante, gave the showrunners the leeway they needed to push the envelope. BTAS had realistic guns, dark deco atmosphere, and style for miles.
“Joker’s Favor,” the 22nd episode of the show, follows a Gotham City accountant who runs into the Clown Prince of Crime and, in exchange for his life, offers the Joker an unspecified favor down the line. Two years later, the Joker takes him up on it and embroils him in a plan to assassinate Commissioner Gordon.
Although the Joker was typically accompanied by male henchmen, this episode introduced a new one: a pale-faced young woman dressed in a red and black jester’s costume. But Harley’s debut was one of necessity – the plotline involved somebody jumping out of a cake with a gun to take hostages, and writer Paul Dini thought it would be weird for the Joker or one of his normal goons to do it.
Inspiration came from a very weird place – a dream sequence from soap opera Days Of Our Lives, where actress Arleen Sorkin played the ditzy Calliope Jones. Dini remembered a bit where Sorkin, an old friend of his, danced around in a jester’s costume, and thought the look would be appropriate. He even brought Sorkin in to voice act the part.
By the end of the season, Harley was starring in her own episodes. Harley & Ivy introduced one of the character’s most durable relationships – her partnership with the plant-controlling seductress Poison Ivy. This episode established a common trope in her bond with the Joker, as he gets pissed when a plan goes awry and boots her from the gang, only to want her back after she finds success without him. That two-way codependency would inform most of her appearances for the next two decades. The second season even saw Harley’s Holiday, an episode that was entirely centered around Quinn.
Secret Origins
22 minutes of animation isn’t enough to delve deep into a character’s origin story, so Dini and Bruce Timm would collaborate on Batman: Mad Love in 1994. This one-shot comic established the basic beats of Quinn’s break bad. As psychologist Harleen Quinzel, she was assigned to the Joker’s case on one of his regular stints in Arkham. As crazy as the guy is, he’s also a keen judge of character and began manipulating his doctor with sad stories of his past to gain her sympathy and, eventually, love.
With the Joker still behind bars, Harley attempted to win his love by killing the Batman, not understanding that the sick bromance between those two is much more important than any other relationship. The Joker retaliated violently, but the Krazy Kat-esque ballet of hate, obsession, and devotion was now in place. Mad Love won a prestigious Eisner award and marked the first time a character created for the cartoon would hop over into the main DC universe, a place where she’d stay for a good long while.
Finding Her Footing
Harley would make a few other appearances in Batman titles over the course of the 90s before being given her own series in 2001. That book, which came at a relatively dire time for DC quality-wise, lasted a few years under a revolving cast of writers and artists. It was perfectly competent but didn’t set the world on fire, and was cancelled in 2003.
Quinn would pop up in Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee’s critically acclaimed 12-issue Hush storyline, and a few other times in the decade, but mostly in supporting roles. Dini would bring her in when he wrote issues in the Bat-universe, but otherwise few creators really knew what to do with her.
2009’s Gotham City Sirens was an ensemble book that reunited Harley with Poison Ivy and added Catwoman to the mix, as the trio of part-time villains ended up living together, dealing with both heroes and bad guys and really fleshing out their characters. Although it only lasted a few years, it was popular and reasonably influential.
Emancipation
There was only so much you could do with the character in her codependent state, though. Shackling Harley to the Joker pretty much doomed her to be a second banana, a sidekick. And if there’s one thing we know about her, it’s that she’s not interested in playing second fiddle. 2011 would see the entire DC universe seismically shift as the New 52 initiative offered fresh takes on iconic characters, and Harley would be one of the biggest recipients. Gone was the jester outfit, replaced by a pair of dyed ponytails and a lot more skin.
Things didn’t start off too great, as many New 52 books were characterized by the kind of over-the-top grimdarkness that we chide DC for so much. Harley ended up in the Suicide Squad, betrayed the team, stole the Joker’s skinned face from the Gotham City police and made Deadshot wear it. Yuck. Thankfully, it would only be a few years before the creative team best associated with her current vibe would come along.
Husband and wife team Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti had collaborated on comics before, but when they got to launch a new Harley Quinn book in 2013 all of their skills were fully deployed. Out of Gotham, Harley now managed an apartment building in Coney Island, went back to her private psychology practice and acted as much more of an antiheroine, with no Joker to be found. Her stories were a little surreal but also warm, emotionally rich and satisfying, and the couple helmed nearly a hundred issues of the book across several volumes.
That take would get a little tweaked after Rebirth, yet another line-wide universal reboot, but in general the Conner and Palmiotti run is the DNA of Margot Robbie’s “modern” Harley that you see in Birds of Prey and the DC Universe streaming cartoon.
Roll Film
David Ayer’s 2016 Suicide Squad was pretty polarizing, coming at a time when the DC cinematic universe was having a rough time finding its footing. It felt like it should have gone for an R rating, but the tale of a group of mismatched criminals forced by the government to perform black ops missions settled for PG-13, and numerous editors made a hatchet job of the film (as well as cutting out may of Jared Leto’s scenes as the Joker). It was critically savaged but performed OK at the box office, with most of the praise going to Margot Robbie’s performance as Harley Quinn.
A sequel was quickly fast-tracked with Robbie at the center, originally to be based on Gotham City Sirens. The script was switched up and Birds of Prey now synchs up with the character’s current status in the DC universe: split with the Joker once and for all and trying to make her own life, on her own terms. It’s pretty funny that Harley has taken such a 180 from her original conception, but it’s a rare happening in superhero comics, where characters are usually locked to a status quo. We have to give DC creative credit for sticking with her all these years and letting her grow into someone who can carry her own movie. Not too many characters get that chance.
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