Even even even more ugly ass Harley Quinn merchandise..

You thought you were getting another year WITHOUT ugly Harley Quinn cash ins? Well, you thought wrong.

First off the bat... oh, that's a semi adequate pun... is this 12" action figure from Suicide Squad.

Now, don't be hatin' on me just because I think the Suicide Squad Harley is a load of turd anyway, this right here is a fabulous example of what some people just shouldn't be made into action figures.
Well, this load of turd shouldn't be an action figure ANYWAY but check this out.

Even Mattel couldn't save this neck bigger than her head, box vagina, red hand of death monstrosity.


The DC Injustice HQ Vinimate Vinyl figure broke my heart. The DC Injustice HQ is one of the best damn HQ's around... so it hurts when I can't love weird... semi-Lego-like .... constructs?

She reminds me of The Face from Mulligrubs.

Yeah, this is what I grew up with during my childhood so nothing really scares me anymore but you know, it's not what I'd look for in a toy.



Hey kids! Do you remember when I told you the Foundmi 2.0 Bluetooth tracker New52 Suicide Squad was stupid looking?

Turns out it looks even stupider in her Rebirth/DCyou setting.

Actually, this has some pretty cool features like an eight month battery life, the ability to call your phone if you lose it, a camera function and so on. But I'd rather buy a Foundmi figure of something else.

Harley Quinn in Birds of Prey movie?

So apparently this is a thing now, instead of a Harley solo movie or that stupid Joker/Harley spin off concept. Is it a good idea? Probably not.

As we all know, DC has skipped all the solo movies and jumped straight into the team ups with Suicide Squad, Batman vs Superman and more recently Justice League. These movies have not been very well received critically.

Maybe they're desperately trying to avoid Marvel comparisons but when Marvel is doing nearly everything right and DC is giving us dumpster fires like Suicide Squad under the misguided notion that 'it's what the fans want!' it's hard NOT to compare the two.

Oh DC. Why can't you make your cinematic universe work? Why are you so insistent on cramming a tarted up imitation of Harley Quinn down our throats instead of working on actual scripts and plot lines? Sure, sex sells I guess but could you not use another DC bombshell instead of destroying Harley's entire character?

Suicide Squad? More like Harley Quinn and some other characters that sometimes do things.

I mean, Katana has a lot more history with the Birds of Prey than Harley does, if anyone should be forced into there from Suicide Squad, it should be her! 

To make things worse, this constant focus on group movies means that it WILL be Suicide Squad all over again, with no time for anyone but Maggot Robbie's flat ass. Let's be honest. It's not going to be a Birds of Prey movie.. it's going to be a Harley Quinn vehicle with some minor parts for what should be major freakin' characters like Oracle, Black Canary and Huntress. She's going to bend over again and again in her stupid hot pants and shit all over more characters I love, while quipping non funny lines in a stupid "I'm trying to be Harley Quinn!" voice.

Hands up who wants to ruin another movie!

We also get people going oh well, it's a huge step forward because it's going to have an indie female director and Maggot has a huge say in the script and etc etc.. Marvel has yet to do that!

Now that's a conflict and a half because YAY for progress but I'm apprehensive about Maggot basically having so much sway over this movie. Come on, has anyone looked at Will Smith's career? He started off good and slowly began having movies change to SUIT HIM instead of the other way around. AND he went on to be a terrible, TERRIBLE Deadshot.

I'll admit, I don't know too much about being a producer in the movie business. Maybe it's like getting a writing credit on on of Beyonce's songs, where you just have to walk past the door to get your name on the list. Maybe she won't have that much power. I don't know.

Retro Review: Harley Quinn #18

The Bride of Bizarro!

May 2002

Dont'cha just love the cover here? It's random and hilarious but still tied into the main plot. I like how the cardboard character Harley's standing in is reminiscent of Joker's classic tuxedo from the cover of Batman: Harley Quinn, and by her standing in as the male instead of being in the bridal costume shows off her sense of humour and subverts how we see her. Kinda reminds me of her character in a nutshell - she was supposed to be a one note one episode villain but turned that on it's head.

Possibly reading too much into that but eh whatever.

Where we last left off, Jimmy Olsen had just appeared at Holly Chance's apartment to see if she was alright after the whole hostage thing, but in the time that passed between those two instances Harley Quinn had managed to bring a Bizzaro buddy back to meet Poison Ivy and captive Thorn.

The unique way the issue chooses to tell us that Jimmy has stumbled onto Holly/Harley's secret is via Inner Harley interviewing Jimmy Olsen's brain. Yep, you read that right.

Classic.

Turns out Harley had left her 'work' costume sticking out of some trees so Jimmy would find it, then chooses an appropriate time to re-imagine her 'Mad Love' nightie scene, but in a more terrifying way.

I love the reflection in the glass.. small, but nice touch

Jimmy - realising who he was playing with - decided to make a run for it via the kitchen window, even though they were at penthouse level. Harley surprises him by appearing on the other side of the glass, and Jimmy runs for the proverbial hills but ends up running into the remains of Auntie Chance.

And then... Poison Ivy...

DC Universe Harley Quinn 41

It's been a while since I checked out the recent Hardly Quinn. I've been so disappointed with DC comics lately that I just haven't been able to muster the strength to crack open a comic.
Especially since someone saw my classic Harley Quinn mug at work and asked me who it was.
I said this is Harley Quinn and they said oh, like Maggot Robbie?

No. Not like her. This one was funny and talented, not a useless, unfunny, looking like something the cat dragged out of Blondie's reject wardrobe, drugged out gangster ho, the butt-less wonder.
I could go on. The only compliment I can give Maggot Robbie is that her agent gets her juuust enough gigs that she doesn't have to rely on T&A.. which is good, seeing as she hasn't got any but gets her kit off regardless. Sigh.

Remember Harley Quinn? The character DC forgot how to write and just turned her into whatever the Tumblr generation thinks is cool at the moment?

Which brings me to this review. I've had a stressful week, and I want to take it out on something so here's my review on this month's crappy Hardly Quinn.


As usual, the Frank Cho cover greatly outshines the generic thug who eats pizza in weird outfits cover.
I shouldn't have to explain why I think this but good gravy the basic cover has Hardly so... POINTY.


How does she cross her legs without giving herself discount surgery?

 Discount bargain basement Barbie barbarian.





Oh, and this is the first advert they show.

Team Wisdom? That suits her about as much as 'Entropy' suits Batman. Geeez.

From Polygon:

And since he knows their enemy best, Braniac’s in charge of all the team rosters.

That’s a narrative hook that allows Justice League: No Justice’s creative team to indulge in some serious comic book “moneyball,” as Snyder calls it. There’s team Mystery, consisting of Superman, the Martian Manhunter, Starfire, and major villains Starro and Sinestro; team Entropy, including billionaires Batman and Lex Luthor, the assassin Deathstroke, the alien bruiser Lobo and the Teen Titans’ Beast Boy; team Magic, consisting of the mystical heroes Wonder Woman, Doctor Fate, Zatanna, Raven and Etrigan the Demon; and finally, team Wisdom, made up of the Flash, Damian Wayne (Robin), the Atom, Cyborg and, implausibly, Harley Quinn.

Truth be told, I found Dark Knights: Metal kinda lame and basically just skimmed it so sure, maybe Hardly Quinn is on team Wisdom because it's a plant eating entity and not because she's (or this Hardly at least) is anywhere near the smarts of Cyborg, Flash, Robin and Atom. 

Which is annoying because she could be, but she's not there for the empowerment, she's there because she fits the quota of 'at least one girl per team' and she's the resident cash cow. Yuck. 

So, probably won't be checking this out any time soon. The art looks nice, but the colour schemes stink of that time they decided to make literally everyone a lantern of some kind.

Superman/Batman #19 - The New Adventures of Supergirl, the Girl of Steel

Here is a comic, well, a trade paperback that I purchased back in the day, purely for the Harley Quinn cameo. This is what people like me had to do back in the day just to catch a glimpse of my domino-ed sweetheart. Sigh. This morning I rolled out of my Harley Quinn themed bed sheets while wearing my Harley Quinn pyjamas and underpants, took a dump on my red and blue toilet paper, ate my Harley-O's while reading the newspaper about Maggot Robbie's flat butt doing something inane and pointless (like her tiny tits HA).

Then I put my hair up in alternately coloured pigtails and checked my emails, which was full of comic and collectables stores asking me to buy more Harley Quinn statues so they don't starve this month. Afterwards, I tried to go shopping but there were too many ironic tweenagers wearing Suicide Squad gear for me to get past the pop culture stores and their Harley Quinn themed face punches.

Yep, it's definitely a different time today alright.
And now that I've finished ranting like an old fogey, I'm going to go sit out on my porch and yell at people to cut their damn hair.

Oh, you're still here. Well fine, you damn dirty hippie, let's get this show on the road.

One thing - I did not mind this book at all. It was actually pretty interesting, funny, had some genuine threats and it was a good opener to a new Supergirl. There was a few blah moments like the angsty teenage girl stuff and the evil twin cliche.. but I didn't hate on that. Supergirl felt like a real person and that sort of characterisation sells the book for me.

What I didn't like... was the art. It's actually visually great but MY GOSH the elongated torso on Supergirl.. the endless abdominal 'V', her terrifyingly tapered feet... that kind of ruined the book for me. That and every other issue in the trade involved some dramatic punch that somehow looked great but ruined the dramatic punch thing because it was usually an entire splash page and you knew to expect it. Also the artist loves capes. They make them look great but sometimes I feel like I'm looking at cape-porn

That sounded weird. But if you've read the book, you'll know what I mean.

Birds of Prey episode 4: Three birds and a baby

This episode opens up with a screaming yet obviously fake baby in it's mother's arms, she is also screaming and running from a bad guy on one of those classically American fire escapes.
Those things never look safe to me. Anyway, in protecting her child from some weirdo thug - is this guy really going to change dem nappies? I don't think so! - they drop the child over the edge.

Fortunately, Huntress is there and catches it, rather like a football.. actually but no matter. I'm sure this baby doll's fragile body is fine with that and being shaken around while Huntress fights off more conveniently hidden until now goons.

Hang in there, baby. 

It goes slow-mo for a bit which just makes the whole fake baby thing even more painfully obvious.. I mean, they could at least pretend to give it some neck support and change the repetitive crying track but no. I mean, shit, Huntress does like three or four flips. Is this child okay??

Anyway, she wins and then for some reason goes to hold out the child to the mother (even though she's like, how many stories up?) and sees she's been stabbed. Ungrateful baby continues crying but that's fair enough considering she's now an orphan and probably has some sort of neck injury.

Back at the clocktower, there's a scene of the girls looking for too long into the diaper to check the sex of the baby so they don't have to keep calling it... IT.
Dinah wants to name him but Helena decides she's happy with calling it 'Boy' and then prods him with a pencil. She gives Barbara severe stink eye when she's told not to poke the baby.
Like, what else do you do with infants, right?

Fortunately, Dinah was a pro-level babysitter back in the day. She names the baby 'Guy' and shows proper carrying techniques which means this child may even survive the episode if they can keep him away from Helena.

Helena's like 'what? you guys want to look after this thing? ugh!' like it's completely unreasonable even though she has literally just come from a murder scene where at least ONE parent has been killed and there was obviously no one else to leave Guy with. Plus, as they're not even sure why the mother was killed, this baby could be next in line.

Sadly, after jinxing everyone with a casual 'how hard can this be?', Barbara makes the call of throwing the baby at Helena once he starts crying. Showing her competitiveness, Helena starts yelling about the baby crying. Now, I'm no expert on the childrens but I'm fairly confident that this is the best way to calm them down.

This somehow works because the baby seems to like Helena? Now I know all that shaking and flipping shook something loose!

Aha! So the mother wasn't the mother at all! Turns out she was a lab assistant who broke in and stole the child, hence her being killed by the other.. assistants? On call ninjas? I don't know.
I'm kinda confused though.. is this supposed to be an IVF thing, have they straight up taken some child and added things to their DNA or have they literally grown/cloned this thing?
The kids like, at least a year old! (I don't know babies but he's not a new born!)

Harleen wanted this child because she fancies her green eyes and the Joker's amazing green hair in a child. I would have figured this differently because green isn't his natural hair colour (plus Harley's eyes are meant to be blue) but apparently the Mr. J in this universe wanted kids.
Jury is still out on whether or not he wanted kids like Batman has proteges a'la Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker but there you go.

Either way, Harley gets out of doing the deed herself!

Batman: Harley and Ivy #3

Aug 2004
"Hooray for Harleywood"

This is by far my favourite cover of the series. The pure joy in Harley's face as she peers into a film strip of Ivy punching Batman is just so in character and it's a great way to set up the comic's premise.

This comic gets around a bit. First issue was mostly set in Arkham/Gotham City, while the second one was in a Costa Rican jungle mainly. This one has come back to a US based location.

Hollywood! Geddit? It's gonna be Harleywood.

So the comic opens with Harley kicking her "Puddin'"'s face with the reveal being it's actually an actor. And a pun on Mark Hamill being the Joker's voice actor, and also being an actor in Star Wars. Not subtle, but passable.

Obviously these two have snuck onto a set and there are no security guards to worry about. Now, the comic is not long enough to go into great background about this but I wanted to mention it because the most recent Harely and Ivy series.. as in "Harley and Ivy meet Betty and Veronica"...
the girls were struggling to get past a butler with a spring of some random plant Ivy was carrying.

This was to go to a high schooler's costume party, no where near on the level of sneaking into a normally security focused work place. Just a bit of perspective.

Okay - here we get a bit of flashback alright and it's mostly focused on the character differences between Harley and Ivy.

This one page expresses what I will always consider the base relationship between these two. It also gives the artist another excuse to cram in some more underwear based scenes.. Look, I'm not gonna lie. I think it's unfortunate. I have no issue if this was a genuine lounging around in comfort-wear situation but when we have Ivy doing her scientist thing who just happens to be playing around with lab equipment and possibly corrosive chemicals in her lacy bra and an unbuttoned shirt, I kinda call bullshit.

True, Ivy probably can't be hurt by the chemicals but like the other two issues where we had a nude shower scene and then a prison shower fight scene where our very first shot is of Ivy's crotch with her legs spread... it just seems like half naked scenes just *because* there are female leads and they saw the chance.
Harley isn't sexualised as much, hell, that looks like me every friggin' morning with my bowl of cereal over my unfortunately stained carpet (wow, that sounded wrong!) watching cartoons.


The exasperation Ivy shows at Harley in regards to her lack of help in this masterplan to me will always be their relationship. Ivy is the straight person, the brains, while Harley is the comic and while smart, is not known for masterminding schemes. This also ties into why I think these two would make a shitty couple, but are good as a duo or friends.