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!

Woe at the Comic Store

So today I went into a comic store with my husband and it was very surreal.

For one thing, he bought several comics... I only got two. Usually I have the most, and he gets one or two. So what happened? Well.....Nothing else appealed to me in that store. What the hell, right?

I did see a couple of annoying things though.

A while ago, Gotham City Sirens was re-released with new covers. That's fine, a lot of series do that. However, I saw an omnibus today and this is what it looked like.

Harley Quinn and the Gotham City Sirens. 

Yeah, I shit you not. If that's not the most blatant cash grab combined with complete lack of understanding of the comic... I don't know what is.

I mean, she's on all of the covers anyway... was it not clear who this trio was comprised of??

How gracious of Harley Quinn - the clear leader of this trio - to allow some 'minor villains of lesser fame' to join her on her adventures! Or rather, use her name to boost sales. Bloody hell, is this how sad we're getting, DC? Just slap Harley's name on anything and it's good to go, right? Especially with Maggot Robbie running around trying to ruin that series AND Birds of Prey at the same time!

I thought Gotham City Sirens did a great job of making sure each character had enough screen time and had everybody play to their strengths and even their character flaws. Hell, Selina being the 'main' ish character and the one who brought them all together.. you'd think she'd be the one in focus but no, everything was equal.

Well, that's what I thought anyway, but apparently I just read another 'Harley Quinn and her bitches' book entirely wrong.

Nerdy Investigations: New 52 Harley Quinn

Earlier in a New52 Suicide Squad post, I asked myself what made writer Adam Glass change Harley Quinn so much when I remember him saying he was such a fan. In comic terms, this revamp may as well have been a few decades ago instead of back in 2011 but hey.

I decided to do some digging to try and find the interview I was recalling. 

We're not just going to focus on the outfit but mind you.. you have to point out what an extreme change she went through with her duds alone,  never mind her personality. 

For one thing, she went from a harlequinn to someone whose only visual cue that they were linked to clowns at one time was the ruffle collar and her kind of two toned theme with some diamonds sprinkled around. And even those are pushing it. For someone unfamiliar with the premise of Harley Quinn, she could be a renaissance era hooker or something. It's like someone asked Jim Lee to draw a Harley Quinn revamp and he only heard the word 'harlot'. 

Alright, sex worker jokes and slut shaming is not the way I want to go about this. So, let's compare two other revamps to how Harley Quinn was re-imagined.

So there was this one time when someone thought this was an awesome idea for Superman.

Everyone hated it, and he was soon back to fighting evil in his underoos which is more iconic and makes more money for DC.

With the Harley costume hate, DC decided it was better to keep it and ride the gravy train of publicity.









The other one I want to bring up is Catman. I was only introduced to Catman in Gail Simone's fantabulous Secret Six series. Originally created way back in 1963, he was a cat themed villain (duh) much like Catwoman and often got into scrapes with her as well as the Bat.

Eventually, he became a bit of a joke - that he was nothing like his old self but rather out of shape, dying his hair to make him look more bad-ass, all that jazz. This was in 2003 in a Green Arrow comic.

Then Gail Simone stepped in in 2005.

Harley Quinn takes over Batman Day??!?!!

Okay so it's Harley Quinn's 25th anniversary this year and DC is going to celebrate by giving her several covers for other issues (they haven't done THAT in a while, right?) as well as giving her Batman's annual celebration... wait, what? 

Yes, the fourth year Batman had a celebration after reaching a 75 year milestone... and he gets kicked off for a character who's only at the 25 year mark? Huh?

As much as I like Harley Quinn... it pains me that we have yet to have a Wonder Woman or Superman celebration.. or you know.. a day for any other good character that will never see the light of day as long as the Quinn is making money. It's also painful that they're celebrating Harley Quinn's 25th year after pretty much destroying what made her popular in the first place and replacing it with a.. look there's no other word for it. OBNOXIOUS ASSHOLE. 

Seriously, check out this panel and tell me it's not obnoxious. Go on, I'll wait for you while you read it, roll your eyes a few times, skull several neat whiskey's and then drag yourself back to this page. 

The other thing that pisses me off is that we also had International Talk like a Pirate day this month and it got less attention than this crap.

Harley Quinn in Top Ten Characters list

Just so you know, this is going to be a re-post of someone else's blog. It is not mine, and if you want to check out the author's original post, there is the link below.

Please check it out, because they're a lot more well written than I am most times and they're really good at articulating their thoughts.

The reason I'm going to re-port the entire part about Harley Quinn is because of how close to home it hits and it's something I want to put more out there - and save it so I can go back to it and remember I'm not alone in my despair over Hardly Quinn.

Please don't forget, when we talk about Harley Quinn being a shitty character, I mean the new Harley Quinn as portrayed in her monthly comic, not the classic one, the animated one or any of her game versions etc. Heck, even the one depicted in the Suicide Squad comics are the lesser of two evils. How did that happen???

The Top Ten Worst Marvel and DC Characters List by B List Defender.

The entire list is comprised of (highest to low) Cable, Bane, New 52 Lobo, New 52 Wonder Woman, New 52 Superman, Batman, New 52 Starfire, Gwenpool, Deadpool and Harley Quinn.

REBIRTH HARLEY QUINN #20 - Blast from the Future

Usual cover not too bad actually, despite pimping out various incarnations of Harley Quinn to attract fans from all areas while the variant.. I don't know.. that face.. she looks politely puzzled as if she's saying "Why do I have all these cats? Why am I here? Where's my makeup? Why am I sitting calmly in this no-where place?"
Sadly, no one knows. Just like this comic, that cover will be swallowed in a sink hole of unanswered questions and misguided attempts at humour.

Speaking of misguided - we open on anorexia poster child Hardly pretending to shed a tear for all the homeless folks.

This, I don't buy. For one thing, she's never really be shown to give a shit about anyone but herself and secondly, is she stupid? Some of these homeless people are probably so far under the radar that they wouldn't be able to be identified easily even if they weren't all mushed together with everyone else's skeletons. Also, what day is this? What sort of friggin' turn around on DNA tests was she expecting? Wasn't she supposed to be smart? 

Also also, what sort of jerk wears cleavage baring tops and low slung pants to a gosh darned memorial? I suppose we should be grateful that she's occasionally allowed to wear pants, even if she does look like a starved killer whale. 

REBIRTH HARLEY QUINN #19 - Red Meat - Sucking the Marrow out of the Party

Alright, props for the variant cover for at least giving me a laugh. That actual cover seems like it should have been used as a cover for the start of the whole Red Meat saga of doom instead of where it is.

Anyway, here we have Hardly waking up in a pile of bones and talking about Holeee Something or oleees TM. 




She imagines a skull that could be Skipper but probably isn't has a fuller and more interesting life than she does while she callously breaks it's teeth to help herself out.

Then, not only does she pick a lock in two seconds, but she finds hair ties and a cache of weapons, because of course.

Of course she does.

Red Tool does his best/worst Deadpool impersonation and manages to screw himself up, and kill some random dude on the way down, but it's okay because he was misogynistic for the two seconds we saw of him and the woman saved from him thinks it's cool and not a matter of 'how am I going to explain this to the boss and the cops while not looking like a main suspect?'




The hobo stealers have been told to leave town but they're all like, no way man, you're not my supervisor! Not sure why there has been a big deal made over this because it's in their best interest and seems like the plot could have used some incentive like, oh, a time frame or something to make it a bit more compelling.

Hardly busts out and she's ready to wail on everyone, because that's what she does now in her Social Justice Warrior persona.

REBIRTH HARLEY QUINN #18 - Red Meat Abduction Reduction

It's a strange state of affairs when I find myself more preferential to the Rebirth Hardly Cover instead of the variant showing Classic Harley gazing adoringly at a Suicide Squad Hardly outfit.
Pee-yeew that's so on the nose,  it honestly stinks.

Anyway, in the last shitty instalment of this comic, Hardly was abducted after posing as a wannabe homeless person and now people are trying to eat her.

I for one, welcome our new cannibalising overlords.

But first, here's some random crap thrown in as part of the plot. It's Gotham in 2167!

Good lord, who would want to see the cesspit of Gotham now let alone the future? Anyway, some random girl named Catie... ugh. I see the future didn't fix any spelling issues with kids names.

Anyway, she's being sent on some time jump mission to take down Hardly Quinn in present day. But she's not in Gotham? Oh well.

I for one, welcome our new Terminator overlords.

They clearly have their priorities straight and the art in these few pages is already better than the current comic by a mile. Did they add this in to kick themselves when they were down?

I for one, support this.

Even more ugly Harley Quinn merchandise!

Stupid Harley Quinn merchandise Pt 3!

 First up in this trilogy we have the iconic tango image made popular by Harley Quinn's first main stream introduction to DC comics.

Nothing really new here.. except it's lifted right out of Suicide Squad.

So we have the classy 'damaged' tattoo, some grills, Harley's gloves missing as well as her face paint (was she not dumped in a vat of goo by this stage?) and Harley herself looking like she really needs to use the ladies.














You know the image.

Wait, don't we already have a statue of this?

Yeah... actually there are several.

There are action figures or actual collectables like the one on the right here.

And this was such a major scene in the movie too! /sarcasm

Harley's Little Black Book #6

Sometimes you can read a book by it's cover. Unfortunately for this title, it's either "ugh, fan pandering" or "ugh, 90's overload!"

Frag 'em Lobo! Don't just stand there!

Bite me, Fanboy? 

I've never been a fan of this spin of series. To me, it's just shame less overkill. Hardly Quinn teams up with enough characters and parodies to basically be an unfunny, less awesome Deadpool. By having her have her own spin off dedicated to just that - pairing her up with other characters and basically destroy their lives and souls with her patented red and black and pinky and bluey trademarks and pathetic fourth wall breaking 'humour.'

They also feature a number of artists. So, for example on this issue we have the usual schlock from Connor/Palmiotti (yaaaay..... ARE THESE GUYS THE ONLY FULL TIME STAFF DC HIRES?!) 

but then some absolute primary school artwork by some random who, like David Ayer, took "Harley wears hotpants now" as a light suggestion. 

This thing reads about the same as a shitty tie in for a kids cartoon show too.

A thought about Suicide Squad...

A thought about Suicide Squad...

So today I was trying to find a certain BTAS Harley Quinn reaction gif but you know who turned up to the party? Margot Robbie, and sometimes the Harley Quinn from the games.
This ticked me off because a) it made me trawl through several gifs of her 'acting' and b) she's a shitty, second rate imitation of a Harley Quinn knock off who fell in a sewer.

Look, movies have a lot of issues with portraying women - I... fail to see why because ARE WE NOT PEOPLE?! If you cut us, do we not bleed? If we take liberties with characters, do they not instantly put on hot pants and stop being hilarious?

Then I realised one movie in particular where I had seen this all before but didn't connect until now.

Mother Funking Space Jam

More Ugly Harley Quinn Merchandise!!

More Ugly Harley Quinn Merchandise!!

That's right folks, it's round two of what were they thinking in marketing!

First up at the bat is this bobble head Harley Quinn from Suicide Squad: The what were they thinking of movie creation. This thing actually moving would probably give me nightmares. Look at it's gross spindly legs, the vacant, dead eyes and weird puppet hands. Heck, the thing looks like she's bruised around one eye and her pasty skins blends into her blonde hair.

Ugliest Harley Quinn Merchandise

The museum quality Harley Quinn statue originally bought criticism because her face wasn't pretty enough.
This is kind of true, it's not her usual beautiful look. That said -  I love this statue. She doesn't always have to be categorically beautiful. She's clearly come from a fight with Batman or some kind of scuffle, so she's wearing a sort of snarl. I personally feel it works well with her pose. It makes for a unique, dramatic statue.

Is it the ugliest Harley Quinn (statue) ever though? No, I don't think so. Here are some of my contenders for that top (?) spot!

Harley Quinn's sexuality

Harley Quinn - BISEXUAL?

I'll be honest - at first I thought the Volume 2 Harley Series would be great. I didn't mind the first few issues - but I wasn't as keen on them as her original Volume 1 run. I quickly lost interest though.
The art was sporadic, Harley wasn't actually funny OR interesting enough to be the main character, she has ten tonnes of adoring followers in this series - but they're all pretty much two bit stereotypes, Harley's over the top accent is actually not the epitome of humour that the writer seems to think it is, they changed canon by making Harley officially bisexual and inserted a really weird 2D Poison Ivy into their cast..

Stop making making out creepy DC. 

I mean, yeah I know a lot of fans were mad on making them a thing which I always thought was stupid. Now people get shirty if you talk about it - that if you're anti bisexual Harley and Ivy, then you must be a homophobic jerk.
WELL ACTUALLY - some people just don't think that Harley has to be in a relationship non-stop. What Harley and Ivy had in their original forms was a realistic big-sister sort of relationship, they were friends. How many super villains actually have friends? It was unique and loveable.

Which is amazing because Poison Ivy shuns almost all human contact and has little patience for the human traits Harley has - like falling in love and other complications that come from caring for people. Harley - I do think she really could be bisexual because she's the kind of loving person that would fall for anyone regardless of gender. We've already seen Ivy in mainstream comics as bisexual.. but a bit on the plant kink side..

That being said - Poison Ivy is not an ideal candidate. As much as people want to romanticise their relationship the fact is that she is up there with the Joker on people you really shouldn't woo.
She's a seductress, and she kills people. Men, women... she'll chuck them all in her plant petri dish to get off. She doesn't care. She seduces to get to her goal. More than that.. she doesn't like people.

As well as that, pretty much any version of Harley Quinn you find will still be hanging around stronger, more dominant personalities and fan-girling around them. This happened a lot in Volume 2 where she just harasses and stalks Power Girl, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Zatanna... you name it.

Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad - The Costume

****HARLEY QUINN IN SUICIDE SQUAD - THE COSTUME****

Oh yes, it's another click-bait opinion piece on Harley's revised model in the Suicide Squad!

Wait, if I get money out of it, then that's great but this is just going to be my opinion. 

I've been pretty patient with not blasting this crappy outfit to smithereens verbally, but now, it's time. 

Alright - so why so serious?

This is Harley Quinn. She's a former psychiatrist turned felon when she fell for the Joker. Notice how she's dressed like a harlequin? She's also got a red/black theme with diamonds... does it remind you of a playing card or a Joker's Wild casino?

Now, it's common place these days for Miss. Quinn to have a new costume for every new gig she has. I remember reading an interview with Jim Lee who was talking about how coooool it'd be if she had a new costume in every issue and I was sitting there like... do you even read comics? She already does!

Comparison chart of costume changes. 

Anyway, the reason I brought up the diamond playing card thing is that someone saw this character (or her game counterparts/or her new fifty-poo mutation/or her solo comic shitstorm/or ... whatever) and thought "how can I bring this character into, like, the now?" The answer? A baseball diamond. 

Yeah... a baseball diamond. Of course. Sports jacket, Adidas heels, carrying a bat and always chewing gum? What else is she meant to be? 

Hero-clix Harley the Stripper, straight from LA....

My fellow collector called me up and said hey, there's a new Hero Clix Harley Quinn but she's in her new outfit. I said, what the hey, I'll have a look at it. So I looked at it. Turned away. Looked back. Nope, no mistaking it. They made her the lamest joint statue ever. Let's take a look.

This is the Harley Quinn Championship token thing. It looks like she's about to give some slob a lapdance. Here's what some of the previous team up tokens look like. 

New Suicide Squad #4

Writer: Sean Ryan

Artist: Jeremy Roberts

Publisher: DC Comics

Release Date: November 12, 2014

Cover Price: $2.99

Outgunned and out of time, this could be the end for Harley, Deadshot and The Jokers Daughter as they struggle to survive in Russia against Deathstroke!

Another month, another hour of this long ass mission for the Suicide Squad. To be honest, I only put that synopsis up above because I don't even remember what happened in the last issue unless that was the one with the really awkward fight scene between the two token catfighters I mean, two villainesses in the group. 

Anyway, Deadshot's having verbal fun with Deathstroke, probably about death or shooting one imagines. Black Manta and Harley Quinn leap to his aid - leap being the operative word here. 

If you're reading this now, you've probably got a fair idea of what I think about the art work in these books. 

Harley Quinn: Jim Lee Bust Review

So today I received my pre-ordered Harley Quinn New 52 Jim Lee Bust.

.........That's a stupidly long stupid name. Let's call it, the 52HQ.

Anyway, a few things jumped out at me. Such as, even though this is Jim Lee's own stupid design for the character formerly known as Harley Quinn, it's still a different design from the original New 52 sketch or even the comics. I really don't grasp why they can't just stick with one design. So here we are with the annoying blue and red colour scheme...and what is that?

The base is half red half blue, makes sense, given her colour scheme here... but half is smooth and half looks like a useless kid's finger painting exercise? Machine error, physical representation of Harley's state of mind, who knows?

This is the generic picture for the bust

New Suicide Squad: Future's End

Or should that be, future's bleak?
Well kids, I can confirm that my jaw dropped when I read this comic. I don't know why. It's not really a medical thing, it definitely shouldn't be from DC doing ridiculous things all the time because I take drugs for that now.

At the very least, when the cover shows me this:

Why go all the way to the Oval Office and *not* use the presidential chair?

and the solit tells me this:

Amanda Waller’s covert war against the United States reaches the boiling point as the Suicide Squad takes the White House!
I sort of expect this:

See, some nice drapes really makes it a whole new room!

Which left me thinking, did I buy the wrong comic or what? I've often bemoaned the fact that in the New 52 more than ever, the covers do not match the interior story. Basically, if you don't want any spoilers you can toddle off right about now, pip pip!

Batman Detective Comics 23.2 - The Wrath of the Hardly Quinn

Stop me if you've heard this before... oh wait, it's not a joke it's just another hideous cover featuring HQ. I know people have been clamouring to buy all the tacky gimmick covers for this year's event but this cover sent me running away before I even knew what was IN this issue.

Put bluntly, this issue has issues. This cover, has issues. This comic needs pre-52 Harley Quinn to psycho-analyse the crap out of it.

I won't go into too much detail about how horrible it is, it can certainly speak for itself. I have named it the molten-turd cave of Holy Weird Crotch Angle, Batman! And as I do my best to avoid looking at that or Hardly Quinn's ... well, whatever she is I can't help but notice that Batman has the same bat shaped knee covers that Batgirl copped flack for.