Friend: T_T Everybody in internet says I’m sick because I ship JxHQ
me: Let me explain the mess : ) book by book >.<
what’s mainstream and continuity?
Part 1 about joker and harley in the animated world. If you want to read.
Friend: Why is people always talking about
Snyder’s Joker or Morrison’s, etc?
Me: DC made it sure that the sacred continuity of the mainstream was kept, each writer had to work based in what his predecessors wrote but writers had different interpretations of the character so the characterization was different.
So sometimes we have an absolutely violent Joker, sometimes He’s a smart guy who try to seem dumb or a man so crazy that couldn’t avoid the police.
Why Am I explaining this? because you have to understand that Joker in the time Harley was introduced in comic world was extremely violent and sadist. He spent the half of his time killing his own men. He wasn’t the character we knew in the tv show. Comic world is more raw, crude and bloody. Of course Harley changes her personality many times it depends on who wrote it.
Harley was written like Joker’s girlfriend in the series, now if you’re not familiar with batman comics that’s the most logic development but otherwise you understand that was a bold move cause Joker existed during 50 years before someone gave him a girlfriend but more even, he didn’t have a brother, a father, sons or a sidekick, nothing at all* and today someway we have big pictures of him kissing a girl and people pay for them LOL.
Harley was a new phase for Joker as a character cause she gives to him humanity what is good or bad, good if you want a more complete character, bad if you’re trying to use the cruelest, the grosser and the most important batman’s enemy to be creepy.
Batman - Harley Quinn (august, 1999. by Paul Dini): The canon origin for Harley in the mainstream (Mad love is from tv/adventures continuity). They didn’t use the thing of abuse, no, they had an idea to keep it weird and dysfunctional: He tries to kill her and they had a twisted reason, It’s cause he loves her alike but different entirely to abuse. This was the strategy of the comics and was reflected everywhere
Comic Harley Quinn (2000-2004), comic Batman adventures (Tv continuity), comic batman, etc at least until 2007 BUT we have a couple of exceptions.
This picture by Guillen March (many batman comics) is a good brief of that tendency: