When I heard the plot for Harley Quinn #25, I was really really excited to see Harley beat the bejeezus out of Joker. But after I read it, I could not have been more unsatisfied with how it played out. It didn’t feel like Joker and Harley facing off, it felt like this strange fanfiction written by a 14 year old who just started reading comics. Joker in Harley Quinn #25 was so OOC and here’s why.
Joker is undeniably a shitty person, but there’s a pattern to his shittiness. For the sake of giving Harley this grand opportunity to redeem herself, they changed Joker’s abuse from sly, cunning manipulation, to him just yelling every obscenity you could think of off the top of your mind and just attempting to beat the shit out of Harley without really having a reason. Instead of clever one liners, he just straight up calls her a bimbo. Rather than being provoked into violence (which is what has always happened in the past), he just slams her head first into a wall after she says they should talk.
An in-character Joker would have used that opportunity to lure her back in with false kindness, not just start beating the shit out of her. They traded in the realistic abuse cycle (kindness after violence) in favor of packing in as much abuse as possible in 3 pages. Just one awful insult after the next, like an insult machine gun. They made him spout these weird sketchy lines like “We both know what you want” before forcibly kissing her, turning him into some kind of sexual predator out of no where. Along with odd lines like “I disgust you where it counts, baby.” It’s like they’ve never heard him talk before. In addition, he calls her “Quinzel” which I don’t think I’ve ever seen him call her after their first meeting. Honest to God, it’s like a bad fanfiction.
I get it. They want Joker to be as horrible as possible so that Harley comes out looking even better in the end. But while trying to make THE JOKER of all people MORE evil, they just made him like any other random thug. Joker is scary because, while unpredictable, he’s still manipulative and pragmatic. Not just some guy who slams women into walls randomly and starts coming on to them sexually. Yes, I wanted Harley to face the Joker. But I wanted it to be JOKER not..whoever this is.
Originally posted by moviesandquotes
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
This is exactly how I feel! The Joker is nothing like what was portrayed and while he is an abusive piece of crap, he’s at least a charismatic abusive piece of crap and that’s why Harley fell in love with him. With this unnecessary stress of making Harley an “empowered” character as if she wasn’t already, you destroy years of work that made the relationship so beloved in the first place.
Yes, he was a terrible person! Yes, Harley could have done so much better! And yes, it was a dysfunctional and destructive relationship! But Joker does show kindness to her (even if it was superficial in nature) and he would be smart enough to know that acting like a jerk when she’s angry isn’t a good move to get her back on his side. The disgusting moron that was portrayed in that comic was not the Joker at all!
And as for the sexual predator angle, that is the most infuriating part of all this for me! When she has asked him for sex, more often than not, he rejects it! He doesn’t care about sex! He’s more concerned with causing mayhem and chaos! If he hardly ever wants to have consensual sex with her most of the time, what makes these writers believe that he would try to force her like that?
I’ll tell you all what: the misguided belief in making Harley “empowered” by separating her from the Joker. And if you don’t like the way I worded that, I apologize, but I’m too angry to care right now. And what they fail to see is that it was with the Joker that she felt the most empowered! She broke out of the mold of a boring, run-of-the-mill Arkham psychiatrist and brought her into a life of adventure and excitement and freedom to do whatever she desired and not care about what other people thought about it. Sure, she was abused, but for the first time in her life, she didn’t have to do what society deemed right at the expense of having fun in her life. Yes, he did abuse her, but at the end of the day, she still loved him even when she would swear up, down, left, right, and center that she didn’t.
She can be strong on her own, but she would never even be Harley Quinn if not for the Joker. And I don’t mean the “thrown in a vat of acid” way; I mean in the “choosing to be at his side” way. And I think that the writers need to realize that.
All in all, the scene was atrociously written and I have never been more infuriated at DC Comics for this depiction than I am right now. I’m usually laid back about these screw ups that they’ve been pumping out and more or less apathetic to the depictions since they started. The most I have felt about the writing of her and her feelings towards the Joker up to this point was just resigned disappointment or casual annoyance at how wrong they got everything, but this is the first thing that has made me feel the rage that so many people have felt about it for years. I agreed with the anger, but I never really felt it myself.
Thank you, DC, for proving to me that I still have emotions. And SCREW YOU for even allowing this new Harley comic absolute garbage to ever be published!
And to @missharleenfquinzel, I apologize for doing this on your post if you have any issues with it.