My appreciation of Harley Quinn, like many fans my age, dates back to her beginnings as a character, in the ‘90s as a henchwoman and romantic partner for the Joker in the brilliant Batman: The Animated Series. At the time she was mostly just a fun, brash villainous gal with an infectious accent swinging a mallet in a demented court jester outfit. The character, created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm, was given such life by voice actress Arleen Sorkin that she remains one of the most iconic aspects of Batman: TAS that it’s hard to believe she only appeared in nine episodes of the show’s run.

I can tell you precisely the episode that burned a love for Harley Quinn permanently into my brain. The 56th episode produced, 47th to be broadcast, airing January 18, 1993. The episode, “Harley and Ivy,” written by Dini, told a story of the Joker kicking Harley out of his gang, leading her to then crash at the home of Poison Ivy. The two team up on a crime spree that rouses the Joker’s jealousy enough that he eventually takes Harley back and she returns to his gang.

There are two things significant about this episode for me. The first is that it is my earliest memory of shipping characters. I hadn’t fully developed an understanding of queerness and what it was or what it meant but I remember very distinctly watching “Harley and Ivy” and strongly feeling like these two were more than just gals being pals. The second is that it marks for me the exact moment where two distinct streams of Harley Quinn fandom became defined. 

There’s the Harley Quinn who is half of a villainous “feels so bad it’s good” pair with the Joker, the kind of damaged romance that makes for good his-and-her t-shirts on the racks of a Hot Topic, and there’s the queer, chaotic neutral antihero Harley Quinn who is defined not by her relationship with the Joker but her own explosive forays into her comic universe. A path that can be traced back to that depiction in “Harley and Ivy,” cut loose from the Joker for the first time. A Harley that has tried to heal, to atone, and at times can even be somewhat heroic. 

It is likely extremely obvious that I prefer the latter. As a queer lady myself, and one who has had her fair share of painful bad relationships in the past, there is something incredibly vicarious in the swagger of a Harley walking away as she burns the world down behind her, swinging her baseball bat into the kneecaps of those who cross her path. This version of Harley, the one most often seen in comics now, the one from DC’s Bombshells, the Harley Quinn animated series, and two out of the three Margot Robbie film portrayals, is the Harley that I cling to and love.

I struggle a lot with the other Harley. Much of this has to do with the fact that over the years, in order to depict the Joker as the broken madman that he is, he’s often horrifically abusive to her. He’s assaulted her on multiple occasions. He’s shot her and left her for dead. He’s dressed other women up as her and discarded them. He’s handed her off to his henchmen as if she was just his property. Just to name a few. So for me, whenever Harley is still depicted as her old, Joker-loving self, it hurts. It matters to be able to identify with a character like Harley who can rise above her history, and it’s frustrating and even painful to see her thrust back into a romanticized depiction of the abuse she’s been through.

I find it important now to state that I do not believe that most people who fall into the “Harley and the Joker” camp are just super duper fans of abuse. Being a fan of fiction about villains does not mean explicit endorsement of the things those characters do. I also believe that when handled differently, the Joker and Harley stories likely have the same appeal of a Byronic romance, of that burning, tormented angst-filled kind of passion that can be a bit steamy in the pages but you wouldn’t want to come home to it for reals. From this perspective, I can understand why the appeal of this classic pair has been sustained, even if my own reasons make it repulsive to me.

It seems as though the core sources of Harley Quinn media have moved on from the Joker. The animated series and her self-titled comic have both depicted her in a healthier relationship with Ivy, and the breakup with the Joker was the inciting incident for Harley’s arc in the Birds of Prey movie. Even Dini penned a limited series, Harley Loves Joker in 2017, which depicts Harley’s own inner turmoil about the relationship and leans into the idea that the more modern costuming and character reflect her independence from the Joker. 

Comic book fandom is unusual from a lot of other media in that characters and stories often feel a lot more transitive and temporary. New writers take over books and undo changes from previous eras. New adaptations take different interpretations of events that may have been canon in the main comic line. New voice actors, new art design, and new media directions are all things that can make you feel like the things you most love in certain stories may not be forever. Despite being a print media, comics can often feel as fleeting as theater. Unfortunately too, often when comic book content is being presented to a broader audience, characters and their stories get reset back to the place where the vast majority of consumers will remember them being. For Harley, this has the added cruelty of often placing her back with her abuser.

Within the last year, a clothing company whose stuff I’m a big fan of decided to release a line of Harley Quinn-themed clothes, and made sure to include cutesy references to her pet name for the Joker, Puddin’, all over the marketing, thus ensuring I wouldn’t buy any of them. Just this January, Spotify released an exclusive podcast series in partnership with Warner Bros., Harley Quinn and the Joker: Sound Mind revisiting the origins of the character, when Dr. Harleen Quinzel first began her journey into the Joker’s broken psyche. And the 2024 sequel to the Joker film, Joker: Folie à Deux has been strongly hinted to star Lady Gaga as Harley. Though the details of the film’s plot have not been announced, it seems likely to also revisit some familiar territory. Once again diving into the earliest parts of her story and not the place she exists the most now. Also deep in the back of my head, there’s always the nagging suspicion that the Joker romance is given priority over her one with Ivy because of its heteronormativity.

There is some hope, however. For now, I still have the Harley Quinn animated series to cling to. Also, the film version of the DC comics universe is on the verge of another reset, and one of the people involved is James Gunn who directed Robbie’s last Harley outing, The Suicide Squad. And it has been stated that Folie à Deux will fall under the new “Elseworlds” banner, meaning its story will firmly sit outside that canon. Projects such as the newly announced Batman film The Brave and the Bold signal that this new DC era will more willingly pull from stories that may be newer and more current to their comic book counterparts. No news has come out yet as to what Harley’s future will be in this new era, but there’s as much reason to have hope as there is anxiety.

This minefield of expectations is nothing new for a Harley fan. Will the next time she crosses my path be the Harley I adore, or will I once again have to swallow another depiction as the Joker’s doormat. In the end, maybe my experience of loving Harley Quinn may not be all that different than her own original love of the Joker, knowing that there’s a real chance that I’ll get hurt again, but always coming back anyway, hoping I won’t.

© 2023 Riley Silverman