Batman and Harley Quinn issues 1- 4

Alright, remember that Batman and Harley Quinn animated movie that came out? Then the prequel comics that came out? Then these ones that came out at pretty much the same time? Yeah.. it's a bit confusing. Even I get the whole Batman and Harley Quinn or Harley Quinn and Batman titles mixed up a lot. 

Geez, even DC is getting confused because they're selling the 5 issue prequel and the 7 issue sequel as 'Batman and Harley Quinn' and advertising it solely AS said sequel in a collected graphic novel. 

Let's have a look. 

So already we can see that the art style is basically the same - as in Batman the Animated Series but just bad enough so we don't get sued by WB. 

This issue opens with the suspicious note of '6 days since Harley lit the match' and the title of this issue is 'Busted' which ties into the Solit for the series which was :

Batman's been back in Gotham for almost a week, and that means someone is about to get "Busted"!
Wow! Is it Harley!? Nope. she ain't even in this issue. That's why I'm doing two posts on this run so I can breeze through the majority of it. The chump getting busted is Blockbuster. So.. is that a pun or what? Not sure.

Top 10 Weirdest Harley Quinn Ships Pt 2

Hey - remember that video I just covered on Harley Quinn ships?
Remember how I mentioned some big names that I thought would have been in there for sure?
Remember how I mentioned these videos would be scraping the barrel?

Yeaaaaah.... about that. There's a part 2.

Soo.... this one is the same channel but has a different presenter and she objects to the term weird ships. But see.. these are weird ships. Half of them are people just saying "Well, person A and person B BOTH exist in this video game universe/unrelated movie franchises/comic books as a whole - LET'S SHIP THEM!!"

I understand her aversion to people crapping on fanships.. but the whole idea of fanships, surely.. is that there is SOMETHING there, some kind of sign, a look, a compatibility that then sparks the flames of a romance.. or at least something similar in the hearts and hopes of fans.

For example - Taiora from Digimon Adventure.

This one is my own weakness, I'll admit. While I appreciated the friendship these two had, my little heart thought they could be so much more. They understood each other, they trusted each other, they genuinely cared for each other, they were cute together and they both knew what needed to be done even though they had different ways of going about it.

So when Digimon Adventure 2 snuck in a romance between Sora and Matt (Sorato) I was horrified. These two barely had much to do with each other in the first season apart from being physically attacked by depression then getting over it fast. Matt was constantly too cool for school, had the crest of friendship but was always either snarking at or physically attacking his 'friends' and hey, remember that time the abandoned his really young brother in the Digiworld? I sure as heck do! He did it again later as well. Sora never seemed the type to moon over a "rockstar/astronaut" wannabe (that was so stupid) and I especially don't see her (who is generally the 'mom' of the group) putting up with someone who doesn't care about his own family. It was just weird, especially when they pumped out some clone children with the exact same Digimon as their parents. Umm.

Then we got Digimon Tri where they're always putting Sora in the middle of a Tai/Matt situation and forgetting she's a person too, who may or may not have her own life/hobbies. Maybe.

After all - Sora's relationship woes were just getting in the way of the biggest ship in Tri.

credit

I may have gotten off topic there but what I was trying to say was people either saw points for both Taiora and Sorato, or both. However, there was reasoning behind it and there were definite, deliberate parallels between Tai and Matt. People weren't just shipping Sora with say, Ken or Gennai just because they "happen" to inhabit the same universe.

Although there probably is a ship for that now. Thanks, internet!

Top 10 Weirdest Harley Quinn Ships

So this one shipping ship I saw at the biggest quay in Austral--- oh wait, wrong ship.

*record scratch*

Talking about this video  from Top 10 Nerd. Didn't look as clickbait-y as the other videos I've seen on the topic (a few just went in depth with Nightwing, others focused on how many Harley had shagged... y'know...) so I thought I'd give it a go and see if I agreed.

Now they mention at the start that they've left out Joker and Poison Ivy as the two most popular and canon ships. OP states that the Joker is toxic, but does not mention the literally toxic Poison Ivy.
I've explained my feelings about these two being similarly toxic suitors for Harley before, as well as my opinion that Harley and Joker were in a mutually abusive relationship and it was not one sided.

Still, I agree with leaving the main two candidates out as much as I am concerned that we will be scraping the barrel for possible love interests without them.

Retro Review: Harley Quinn #19

June 2002
"Going out with a bang!"

I gotta say it, this is one of my favourite covers ever. Even my non-comic reading extended family loved it. It is an absolute classic, like something you'd see in a Looney Tunes comic.

Now, when we last left off, Harley was 'helping' her buddy Bizarro find the perfect mate, until things got a little too.... involved. With an onomatopoeia parody of Rice Bubbles, Harley is zapped from behind with the Bizarro ray by the Dr. Chance. Meanwhile, Bizarro has a tantrum but calms down enough to be told that the Doctor needs Harley in the target area again. Harley on the other hand, thinks it's high time she skedaddled.

Of course, not before she ticks that one thing of her Metropolis tourist hit list...

Yep, officially meeting the Big Blue in the Red Underoos. Although most folks don't get to do it up, up in the air. ................Okay, I'll behave.

I like how NICE Superman is. Batman would have straight up Batarang-clothesline'd her. Harley takes to the skies to try to evade him and thinks she succeeded... but..

Injustice 2 - Issue 72

"Goodbye"
Aug 2018

Side note - this issue would have been tucked in with the rest of the shitepost of Injustice 2 however.... I got ahead of myself and didn't realise this series ended with this issue. Oops.

This one opens up on Alfred making a hard decision so early on we see him talking to the Kents via telephone. It's good to know that the Fortress of Solitude has cell reception. Alfred is the coolest butler ever... he's wrangled all the Robins/Batgirls, one of the few that can put Batman in his place, politely but firmly kick Superman's ass, knows all the superheroes and supervillains AND he buttles.

Usually pretty good, but he's been struggling a bit since his rebirth. Oh, snap, a DC pun.
Anyway, I like how the Kents and Alfred are so civil and all despite what their 'offspring' are up to.

Meanwhile, Grodd is taking back the town with a heaping of violence and mental manipulation. 

Grodd successfully tells Deadshot not to shoot.. and without this core element of his nature, Deadshot crumbles apart like so many Marvel characters in Infinity War. Well, no, not really but he's pretty upset about not being able to shoot things. 

There are worse things though.. at least he didn't get his head blown up like Man-bat. Or his son threatened like Solivar. 

DC Comics Red White & Black Harley Quinn Statue (John Timms vs Frank Cho)

Normally when I review a Harley Quinn volume 3 solo comic, I will place the standard and the variant cover beside each other and critique them. If you haven't guessed by the title of this post, I'm gonna do the same with some statues based on their artwork.

But wait, doesn't Guillem March do the covers now? Yeah, but I've already reviewed HIS statue and it's way out of these guys' league. So, we're stuck with John Timm (interior art) and Frank Cho (variant covers).

Already there's a huge difference between these statues.

YEAH, prepare to get butt hurt because  I'm talking about Harley's size!
 
I have mentioned that I'm not a fan of Timm's elongated, skinny ass butt-less wonder serial killer before.

This is not to be mean to women on the skinner side, but Harley - pretty much until the New 52 where she lost a lot of weight/boobs/muscles and started living in her lingerie - had always been drawn on the more slightly voluptuous side, but not like Cho's cheesecakey nostalgia art.

There's no happy medium.


Personally, I liked that she had a normal, not over-sexualised figure in her original form. It really helped lay down that Harley was - despite being a pro-athlete - basically a regular person who just fell into the criminal clown lifestyle. Like, Catwoman - you go around calling yourself a feline, you better be lithe and flexible! Poison Ivy based a large part of her schemes around attracting and duping men, so you better believe she's a bombshell. Harley was different. As long as she could flip around and be clown like, it didn't really matter what size she was.

The problem I had with Timm's interior art was that everything seemed to lose scale. Harley was always drawn like freakin' Plastic Man and her splash panels were always so, so stretched out (and crammed to the brim with exposition-ey speech bubbles) while she literally TOWERED over her colleagues like a slightly more colourful Slender Man and then there was her face.

I get that the art's not there to please me personally - I mean, it would be nice - but honestly Timm struggles with drawing faces. As in, the angles someone's head is turning, as in the crowd Harley is standing in has the exact same faces as everyone else, it's hard to tell what is hair and what's not plus Harley's nose is always red. This bothers me. Is it a cocaine habit? Is it cold? New found cat allergies? Is it too hard to find her nose on her pasty face otherwise? What?!

I think it was a carry on from Amanda Conner's stupid redesign - but I mean look how many years we've had of Harley doing white face and not having a ruby red sniffer? Even the New 52 didn't screw that up which is saying something! 

Cho meanwhile - is probably the nearest we've had to the Dodson's art from the original Harley solo run since Adam Hughes. Now they could do faces! Bodies! Humour!!! Oh, please come back to Harley Quinn -- Dodson team!

Heroes in Crisis #4

Surprised this one wasn't "look ma, no hand!"

The punnage! The Dad Joke level of it all!

Wow.... murder is never the most glamorous of things - despite the whole noir/detective/spy gigs that keep popping up but good gravy does Harley look freaky here!
I turn the page and see Aquaman crying out in pain, grasping the mangled remains of his arm with his good hand and think 'aahhh, that's better.' Then I feel bad. But no tooo bad, because I'm pretty sure lil ol' Arthur got a gold hand to sob into afterwards.




Alright, first off - I love this scene. The mural, Donna casually carrying her drunk from mourning team mate, the graffiti credits, the lighting... it's just great.

We haven't really seen much of the Titans apart from... well... Wally. We do get to see Donna's confessional. Also... new outfit? I kinda like it... but I do miss the star cluster outfit with go go boots. 

She starts talking about the Troy that Helen and a few others made famous. 

At first you're like, okay, not everyone wants to talk about themselves, that's cool. But then you're like - she is. She's Donna TROY. She is still sore about DC screwing up her timeline and for the most part, her life. Clever way of saying so. Flash has a way with words too. 

Well... four letter words. 

Birds of Prey trailer released

You know why it's called a trailer? Because they're often linked to vehicles. As in.. my fears are becoming founded.. and Maggot Hurley is just erasing the entire awesome of Birds of Prey in favour of a Harley Quinn fame train because.. because she has Hollywood clout.. and likes herself too much I guess? I'm not linking it, if you wanna waste half a minute of your life then you can search for it.

The actual title of this movie is
Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

Well...... when a 34 second clip of a DC comics title Harley Quinn has literally nothing to do with shows about 25 seconds of Maggot Hurley swanning around acting drunk and trying to do the seductive lollipop thing but failing miserably... aaaand the ACTUAL Birds of Prey get squished into a couple of seconds with a hideous amount of quick shots - so quick you can barely tell what's going on and who anyone is. Plus, the titular Birds have to share this time with what's supposed to be the villains, I guess and then the whole 'fade to black/see you soon' thing.


So... that's really disappointing. Not gonna lie.

Besides, you can't just whip out a fantabulous word like you're a knock off Willy Wonka!
Girl, you're not even a second rate drag queen!

"Guess who went dumpster bin op-shopping again! .....MEEEE!!!!"

I remember reading something she said back when Suicide Squad was about to come out - something about how she read a couple of comics and just didn't 'get' the character. Man, this is becoming clearer and clearer each day. I mean, I GET wanting to make a 'new' version of a character for the big screen, I do. Lord knows everyone else freakin' has their own version of Harley Quinn. At the same time, if you're not going to even be true to a tiny bit of the character's origins... why bother?

Next it'll be an unfunny Joker, a Batman that shoots people and a Superman that doesn't care.
OH WAIT.