*A-a-a-hem!* Look alive, wage slaves! Preeeesenting – the Queen of Gotham City, Our Doll face- the One and Only – HARLEY QUINN! It’s been 26 years since the clown princess of crime’s debut, and she remains a favourite for large swathes of comic fandom. Originally conceived by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm for Batman: The Animated Series, as a one-off character but soon her bubbliness took over the DC comic world. There was a time when she was a mental-health professional, but she shredded her Hippocratic Oath and broke all the barriers for a mass-murdering, psychopathic patient and began a crime spree that would make Bonnie and Clyde wince. She is willing to do anything just to put a smile on her “puddin’s” face, no matter the cost to anyone else or even herself. Her animated personality is enough to make almost anyone drop their guard—a mistake that could easily cost them their life.
Joker has turned Harley into a perfect mirror of his idealized self. He opened the door to her soul in a way that she really believed that her beloved ‘Mistah J’ is the magical person who gave her this wonderful release that she must have been looking for at some point in her life.
Often hailed as a feminist icon, Harley is a survivor, a phenomenon who occasionally outsold, the publisher’s Golden Age trinity of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman to become the official fourth pillar of DC. She can go out, fail, get into trouble, and then persevere and turn the tables on a bigger adversary. Her character could be compared to Bugs Bunny, both have an attitude of stubborn optimism and determination and crack jokes along the way.
With the weapons choice of mallets, baseball bats and exploding cupcakes; she is quirky, colourful, and is dangerous. Though in the movie Quinn walks the fine line between dependent and independent. But she is constantly waiting for The Joker to break her out of captivity. Don’t we all want to see our dollface Harleen Quinzell getting her own solo movie?
