Two Harley Quinns?

When this comic was first announced it was slathered with headlines about a nude Harley Quinn sex scene - usually with pictures of Maggot Robbie beside, like it was her non-existent ass we were gonna see in the pages. Pretty much pure click bait, not much in the way of actual content about the story which being about the Joker gone sane, stepping up against Batman to save Gotham City seemed interesting enough by itself.



So even though I was interested, the way it was promoted was a huge turn off and I decided to wait until this hype died down to see if it was any good. I had seen the Harley Quinn out of costume on the promotional cover but I don't think anyone knew what was being planned with Harley Quinn.





Seeing as how there are now two Harley Quinns... one more in line with the classic appearance and one with the ... movie/solo comic 'aesthetic'.
Is it canon? Is it elseworlds? Is it for real?
After all, doesn't DC now have at least three Jokers running around? So why not at least two Harley Quinns?

It makes sense to me - after all, the new Harley is nothing like her original appearance - costume, personality or even theme-wise. She's basically a whole new person.

It's not a new concept to fans and artists who often draw both (or more versions, if you expand to include the game universe.


Sometimes they even blatantly put both of them in the same comic or in competition with each other. I guess you could liken some of them to the whole multiple personalities thing DC keeps pushing for.


Some fans like both versions of Harley, others like either or and some people completely hate Harley Quinn either because of what they consider an annoying character from the start or they're tired of the over saturation of the character.

That's the good and bad thing about Harley Quinn now - is that there is literally a version of her for every fan....kind of like the Spice Girls I guess.

 Do you like clown based characters with personality and humour? Or do you
prefer a dead eyed pasty Joker clone... but with boobies? How about a Deadpool fourth wall breaking schizo? A cute yet powerful renegade working on Batman's side against an evil regime? A roller skating Lego sized cheerleader? A member of a somewhat covert ops team with about three different revamps? A war time pin-up riding bombs? A terrible parody of the BTAS cartoon? A OTT sex doll in a video game? An OTT dumbed down sex doll played by a live action T&A person who doesn't actually have much T&A available and is seemingly trying to ruin my child hood single-handedly?


So the notion of there actually being two Harley Quinn's in the White Knight universe is very interesting.

This second Harley - visually similar to the Suicide Squad movie and her current solo comic - albeit with more reasonable hair.

She speaks like a... okay, well our first line from her is 'Ahhh! Daddy's home!' before pressuring him for sex, crime and liberal applications of Joker make-up before she can take him seriously.

Actually no, she doesn't take him seriously. Jack tries to speak to her normally and she doesn't know what to do.





She (now revealed as Marian Drews - "merry Andrews" - because Gotham not only has an influx of appropriate villain names but also a lot of clowns) is literally a fan girl. She is someone who is attracted to the chaos Joker brings and wants to be a part of that.

It accounts for why her personality is so different to the Harley Quinn we grew up with, as well as her outfit. It's a groupie costume for an extreme fan. She doesn't hold the values that Harley Quinn does, her sexuality may not even be the same and her humour is not as good because she's just not...
Harley Quinn. And in being the Harley Quinn impersonator - she only wants the Joker, not the person underneath.

Now whatever issues fans of the 'new' Harley Quinn have with the classic - that's fine, you do you I guess. The issue I have is when people who like the new version constantly tell us how improved she is and how she's more self reliant and more in control. For one thing, I think the over sexualised, queer baiting, punch-my-problems-out version who is continually shown as going back to the Joker - particularly in the New52 or thinking about him, holding dolls of him or other memorabilia and still using the moniker she adopted to please him and in many cases, living with the skin condition she was treated to by him, is more than a bit regressive.

If all it took to make you like a character, was to completely change her, then why not just make a new character and be done with it? I don't know. One thing I do know though is that I like the idea of these two going head to head. DC has already given us at least three Jokers and three Batmen over the years so why not two Harley Quinns?