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.



Here's a quick run down on the reasons given for the others, along with my helpful opinions.

Cable is a personality less, gun toting parody of a nineties hyper masculine tough guy with a stupid backstory.

Bane is overused, either too smart or too dumbed down or defeated too many times to be a threat like he was when he broke Batman's back.

Lobo was a murderous/funny nineties guy that was reduced to a goth boy stereotype by the New 52 and ret-conned just as fast.

Wonder Woman - a fantastic character was also reduced to a brainless stereotype by the New 52 - either an emotionless killing machine or just Superman's girlfriend. The biggest drama she had was not whether or not she had to destroy a monster or promote world peace in an uncaring world... no, it was whether or not she deserved to wear pants.

Superman became less the awesome hero and more the moody, depressing bland guy of the New 52.
He even stole Superboy's entire outfit which is annoying because Superboy stole that outfit idea from the GOOD Superman!

Batman - over used, DC's stand by success method. I like Batman but DC over produces Batman in favour of other members on the roster and that's not how you run a comic company.

Starfire - New 52's sex robot needs no explanation but her new series.. also by Amanda Connor has been slagged for lazy T&A. As the author points out, no male aliens in the Dc universe don't wear clothes because they 'don't understand human customs' just the hot female ones. Entirely forgetting her past and the fact that every flashback to her traumatic childhood we've ever seen has her and her people clothed. Very lazy writing - pretty much doing what they did with Harley Quinn - removing her from any other heroes or villains and focusing more on getting somewhere to live, giving her new clothes to wear and working out who she going to date now blah blah blah.

A different reviewer wrote about this series commenting that:

It just makes me miss the Starfire from earlier comics (eighties and nineties?). Back then, she was in touch with all her emotions, even the "negative" ones. Sometimes to the point that the strength of her emotion was frightening. This title's Starfire feels overly safe, which may be why she is so easily sexualised. She begins to feel like another (albeit slightly better written) side to the coin presented in New52's RHATO: rather than a beautiful woman who is an emotionless sex object (who therefore can't be used, can't care if she's treated badly), she is a clueless/easygoing sex object (who won't, or doesn't know enough, to be insulted by men blatantly leering over her). Either way, she reads like a male fantasy, and a dull one, at that. 

Gwenpool.... I'm torn here. I agree that she's a knock off of Deadpool and current Harley Quinn but I don't mind her comics because she is funny, she's fully aware she's in a comic book and she's not drawn like Harley Quinn - she's just drawn in all her goofy glory. That said, I don't know too much about her character as I've only read the first ten issues.

Deadpool - also torn. Deadpool has been a bit over-used and is damned by association because DC then made their own, but with hot pants but I like Deadpool. Marvel has so many serious superheroes that it's fantastic that we have Deadpool to take the mickey out of it all. Sometimes you just want to read a comic where that happens.

Then there's #1 -

(Please note I have corrected the Americanised spelling because if I don't I twitch all day and writhe all night in agony.)

This is the big one. This is the character that, at this moment, I dislike more than any other. Harley frigging Quinn.

All the worst parts of Deadpool and Starfire combined. She is a lol-so-random character who relies on juvenile humour and cheap fourth-wall breaking and she is portrayed as a sex-puppet whose ass is constantly hanging out for the lustful enjoyment of teenage boys. To add to it, she frequently behaves like a little girl, so you have her acting like a prepubescent while having her ass hanging out. What a winning combination.

Now, I do understand that she is an empowering figure to some people. She comes from an abusive relationship with the Joker, and she escaped. You don’t really have any other characters like that in comic books except Jessica Jones with the Purple Man and Carol Danvers with Marcus Immortus (the latter is a really weird and skin-crawling one, and I discuss it in the Captain Marvel entry of my Top 10 Marvel Heroes list if you want to know about it).

I get that Harley can fill the role of the empowered survivor for some people, and I’m not saying that it’s bad to like her. As I’ve said before, if you like any character on this list, that’s fine. You do you.

However, it’s hard for me to see Harley as an empowered character. The hyper-sexualisation is off-putting, because I know it’s being done for male audience members, as that is generally the first thing on every marketing department’s mind. Her personality since she has become popular and received her own comic is nakedly mimicking Deadpool. Don’t get me wrong, Marvel and DC rip each other off all of the time, but, frankly, Deadpool sucks. He’s not an interesting character, and Harley could have been a very interesting and compelling character had they split her off from the Joker in a more interesting manner. Instead, DC saw the baffling popularity of Deadpool and said, “We want one.”

To add a little salt to the wound, Harley has never really left the Joker behind, despite the abuse he put her through and the multiple times he has tried to kill her. She is frequently depicted holding some sort of Joker memento, like that doll on the cover of Suicide Squad: Rebirth #1 which she cradles. This is compounded by the fact that she still uses the identity and clothes which he gave her.

I am going to say something here to the people who idolize the Joker and Harley Quinn dynamic as some pinnacle of “weirdo” love. Get your head out of your ass. This is not a healthy relationship. This is a horrifically abusive one. It doesn’t go “both ways” and it’s not okay that she’s “into it.” Frankly, if you try to justify it with that latter excuse you can really shut the hell up because you do not know what you’re talking about. This is not a good thing. This is not something to which you should aspire. This isn’t a BDSM dominant-submissive dynamic. This is a monstrous and murderous man who, for a long time, had a mentally unstable woman wrapped around his thumb, and he took advantage of her, brainwashed her, beat her, and frequently tried to kill her. It is no one’s ideal relationship.

I know the Suicide Squad film tried to retcon it [cover DC’s ass] by making it so Harleen willingly followed the Joker, and he didn’t actually treat her that badly in the film, relatively speaking. I didn’t see the film, but I do see where some of those elements could still be problematic. However, I’m not talking about that film here. I’m talking about the insufferable comics.

I do want to make an aside here and say that I’ve never been in an abusive relationship. I’m not an expert on the psychology of it. I have been told by some advocates of Harley Quinn that some of her personality traits are common in women who have recently escaped abusive relationships. I’m not saying that behaviour is wrong in a person.

That being said, I want you to understand the importance of context and artistic intent in this case. I truly believe that DC did not consider any of the behavioural commonalities of a domestic abuse survivor when crafting Harley Quinn. DC is a big corporate conglomerate under the corporate mega-giant known as Warner Brothers. Despite the fact that I have dedicated this website to the critique of DC and Marvel’s output, I never forget that they are massive companies with bottom lines and investors who are subsidiaries to the likes of Disney and Warner Brothers. When I see something that is so obviously, so blatantly trying to hop on a trend, in this case the popularity of Deadpool, I’m going to go with my gut instinct and believe that it is riding a trend.

Her frivolously murderous and ultra violent tendencies do little to endear her to me either, and it does add to the Deadpool similarities. I think I would be willing to give her more of the benefit of the doubt if she didn’t frequently beat the tar of a random passerby with a baseball bat. It adds to the unlikability because it is a hateful act without reason or intent. She’s not the Joker or Bullseye, who are genuinely malicious people with murderous instincts. She’s not Red Skull or Lex Luthor - with plans made ten steps ahead. She and Deadpool are often painted as being “not so bad” despite these murderous tendencies. It’s incongruous. It’s disingenuous. It makes both of them far more hateable.

All of this being said, I find Harley Quinn leaving the Joker’s shadow to be an interesting prospect. I used to like her. There was potential for a really great character here. However, when faced with this opportunity, DC behaved in a very marketing-minded manner. They left artistic expression by the wayside. This is a very “what do the charts say” character. They saw that Deadpool was and still is very popular. They know that T&A always sells. They saw that a portion of the reader base, myself included, were craving more diverse characters. They made a perfect character to fill in those criteria. She behaves like Deadpool. She wears skimpy costumes. She’s a woman just out of an abusive relationship.

I have, do, and will likely continue to say that I hate Harley Quinn. But, upon writing this, I do see that it’s not entirely true. It’s not that I hate Harley Quinn. I mean, I do, but that’s not the crux of the matter. The truth here is that I hate all of the worst, money-hungry, business-minded instincts of the two big comic book companies. Harley Quinn is the epitome of those instincts, and the sad thing is, it worked. Her comics sell gangbusters, and she’s everywhere. The only thing that could have made it worse is if she was born out of a massive Marvel comics crossover event.

I just wished they tried a little harder. She could have still been funny. She still could have been sexy in a manner that wasn’t blatant and pandering to the baser instincts.

So that’s the list. These are my ten most hated characters from Marvel and DC comic books. These are the ten that will likely drive me away from a comic the quickest, and they have had the most negative impact on comic book storytelling and artistic trends.

It says a lot about the state of the comics world that a company can change an entire character from what endeared her to many fans - change her because they needed a figure to mould into what they thought the demographics wanted, what was selling at Marvel and what could get them more money. 
It absolutely kills me that she's seemingly more popular now, for all these changes. 

These changes that made her into a juvenile, murdering, bad accented, knock-off, fourth wall breaking, badly written, over-exposed over-sexualised lipstick lesbian with no clear, definable and not ret-conned every other story history. At any given time, there are at least four different Harley Quinns running around in comics. There's at least two game wise. There's even a live action walking bag of puke masquerading as this mish-mash hot pot of jestery-ness. 

DC is going to run Harley Quinn into the ground and it's not because they believe in her as a character, but because she's a colour by numbers cash cow.