Lately I’ve been feeling like just… giving up on Harley. On this stupid fight to see her returned to at least some version of her pre 52 self. I had hopes (for some reason) for Rebirth, but why? They’re keeping Jimmy and Amanda on her with no chance of release in the foreseeable future. The tease for her first issue is her literally breaking the fourth wall. Classic Harley is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Old news. I had hoped that maybe, just maybe they’d at least give us a mini that was completely detached from the solo or SS Line. Put someone like Amy Chu on it (or oh my god Paul Dini) and give her her old look.
But things like Harley’s Little Black Book, the Gang of Harleys and that god awful Road Trip Special just show that DC doesn’t want to entertain the notion of a non-deadpool-esque Harley Quinn. Mindless violence for no reason! Fucking terrible catchphrases! Teamups that never would have made sense before and barely do now! Innuendo on top of innuendo for the sake of innuendo! Lol so randum cheezemoose!
We’ve got Injustice and Bombshells, and even then those are a stretch. The tiniest compromise.
I love Harley. I will always love Harley Quinn and who she was and what her character was. I’m just so fucking tired. I want to be able to look for Harley things and see the childlike jester, the cunning gangster’s moll that could stand on her own and show the boys what-for. But I guess I just realized I’ve been trying to give CPR to a rotting corpse for two and a half years now.
Yeah yeah I’m being melodramatic. Sue me. I miss the Harley I was raised on and spent my life learning about and obsessing over. :P
If anything, their insistence on this path for Harley shows that they aren’t even going to try to make things right if they won’t even bother to change anything about her current portrayal. And they’re not even willing to start over and fix what they’ve done.
In the end, it’s not the fans that are speaking up about it who’s voices they’re hearing; they’re listening to the ones who are buying it. And sadly, this crap depiction sells. The people who buy it don’t care that it’s blatant pandering. As long as Harley and Ivy are girlfriends in the ideal relationship, she’s away from the Joker no matter how OOC it’s portrayed, and she’s her own character separate from him, the rest doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to them that the current writers aren’t even bothering to respect the history of the character.
And it’s clear that the current writers can’t even be bothered to write a good Harley story. It may be a good story for an separate character, but not a good one for Harley Quinn. They might as well just abandon the name “Harley Quinn” altogether since clearly they’re not trying to write her. They’re only trying to write what some close-minded for lack of a better term fans think Harley should be because they think Harley is nothing more than an abuse victim in the Joker’s presence. They don’t know it, but those fans are simplifying a character they claim to be over simplified for her love of the Joker. They’re just doing it for the abuse she suffers at the hands of the Joker.
I’m also rambling here, but this is the sad reality. I’m still not giving up hope for the day that we finally get a semblance of what Harley used to be in official canon, but it gets harder and harder everyday.