Straight from your screens to an all new comic, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy jumping into an all new series that picks up right where Season 2 of Harley’s show ended: in a getaway car driving far away from Ivy’s wedding, their complicated past, the worst of Gotham’s criminals and most pressingly, Jim Gordon and the cops. Harley and Ivy may have finally admitted their love for each other – but it looks like they’re still in for a bumpy ride. Harley Quinn: The Animated Series- Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour #1 Written by Tee Franklin, drawn by Max Sarin, colored by Marissa Louise, and lettered by Taylor Esposito.
Armaan Babu: I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time! Partly ‘cause Harley Quinn Season 3 is taking such a long time to get here, but also because while I’ve been reading this series digitally and you have just caught up with the physical release, so I’m dying to know your thoughts, Cassie! Before we begin, though, I feel it’s worth asking – how much of a fan are you of the animated series this book springs from?
Cassie Tongue: I have a not-uncomplicated relationship with the animated series. I think sometimes in its attempt to be audaciously funny, it’s casually offensive in ways that could be easily avoided with care while still making people laugh. But I also think it often does a great job in balancing its over-the-top violence and love for humanity with a genuine love for its characters, and its commitment to developing the bond between Harley and Ivy is genuinely great, not as exploitative or titillating as one might expect from the outside: their love for each other is critical to the story’s narrative and its overall plot structure. So of course I wanted to read more about this version of these two women: ones who have found their way to each other despite obstacles that are both deeply relatable (trauma throwing up roadblocks) and ridiculous (what’s up, Kite Man?) Now that we both have the comic, though – what do you think?
Armaan: So I have a special relationship with the show – it’s one of the first shows I ever covered professionally, and I had the privilege of getting access to the series about a month before the rest of the world did. I will never forget the email that came from the showrunners to “please, please, please, spoil whatever the **** you want” – they just wanted the show to be loved, and love it I do. I feel this comic is a pretty great transition from that show, too, and between that and the Max Sarin art, which I’ve loved for years in the pages of Giant Days, this series is a lot like coming home to me. There’s a lot to talk about here, let’s dive right in!
They Kiss Under a Constellation of Hearts
Armaan: So this picks up the moment – the very moment – that Season 2 ends, and does a decent job of recapping a very long, and complicated two seasons for those who haven’t seen the show. Harley and Ivy are speeding away from the cops after Ivy left Kite-Man at the altar, a disastrous wedding made worse by James Gordon crashing it to arrest the supervillains there and convince the President to help restore a Gotham Harley’s partially responsible for destroying.
Whew. Actually gaining a new appreciation for recaps there.
How did you enjoy the opening car chase, Cassie?
Cassie: I am not a ‘car-chase action-sequence adrenalin-junkie’ comics reader, necessarily (I’m more of a ‘but will they kiss after the car chase?’ reader), but there’s a lovely continuation from television to the page here, and what better way to ease you over into a new medium than on Harley’s loopy rollercoaster of a highway? It immediately links a recognizable piece of infrastructure from the TV show’s continuity to the action on the page, with all the additional symbolism of us still being on the same journey, in the same story. We’re immediately dropped into the story with our hearts thumping and an appropriate sense of urgency, and there’s such a great, almost breathless propulsion to the panel layouts and the way our gaze is tugged constantly forward. Plus, Sarin’s art is playfully high-octane: all told, this car chase gets us where we need to go, which is — frankly — right to the good stuff. The good stuff being the emotional reality of ditching a wedding to run away with your best friend. Your famously (infamously?) complicated best friend.
Armaan: There’s only one thing better than a high-octane car chase, and that’s a high-octane car chase with a lot of joyful flirting, and joy is exactly what’s found in this first half. What I love about Sarin’s art is just how much detail is put into these over-the-top expressions, how much variety, how much range. Look at the smiles alone – there’s gleeful evil, there are seductive grins charged with adrenaline, casual smirks of impending violence and pure starry eyed heart exploding love.
The show made fans of Harlivy wait a long time for these two to get together, and I’m pleased at how much payoff we get here. There are complications, yes, but these two are just so happy to be here. And it’s not just car-chase flirtation we get – we’re treated to a lot of well drawn intimacy between the two as well, which I think manages to capture the two characters well. Ivy’s always been a seductress, she brings that confidence into the scene, but enhanced with the love of a melting heart every time she looks at Harley. Harley herself is over the moon – literally leaping into bed, unable to contain herself with joy. You can’t help but love these two together.
Cassie: I want to really take a moment here to look at how these newfound levels of intimacy between Harley and Ivy are discovered, explored and drawn. So often in Big Two comics – and certainly so often in the history of comics starring both Harley and Ivy – there’s a greasy, titillation-first sheen to their physical connection; two women putting on a show for a perceived male gaze. It’s off-putting and often degrading, not just to the characters themselves but by extension to the queer women reading these stories and seeing, essentially, reflections of themselves reduced to fetishisation.
Enter the good, solid work of the animated series, Sarin’s clear love for the love on panel, and Tee Franklin’s closely-observed, finely-wrought progression of these first 24 hours in the life of a new couple. Like you say, Armaan, it’s flirty and it’s hot, but there’s room made for complexity too: having your wedding fall apart, no matter the reason, takes a toll. Generous space is made for Ivy’s response, from her guilt at hurting people to the pain that comes with loving one Harley Quinn, and the immediately preceding events are correctly identified on-panel as traumatic. But the hope and yes, joy, of their mutual love keeps calling Ivy back to the moment, to be present. Harley reaches out to Ivy constantly through the issue, trying her best to be supportive, and even when Ivy can’t quite open up about her feelings, they still manage to connect.
When they do finally make their way into bed, it’s the detail, not the act itself, that generates the most heat: the precise way Harley’s finger makes contact with Ivy’s skin; the way Ivy holds the back of Harley’s head. They kiss underneath a constellation of hearts. It’s deeply romantic, and that romance feels like a gift for the characters, yes, but also for the readers, those who pour their vulnerable hearts into stories in hopes that something in them will be seen and understood and made glorious on page.
Armaan: “They kiss under a constellation of hearts” is beautiful phrasing there, that’s going to stick with me. However, as you pointed out, it’s not all bliss and flying hearts between these two. Part of the delay in these two getting together saw Ivy in a pretty long and surprisingly genuine relationship with Kite-Man, who she’s just broken up with in one of the most disastrous break-ups in Gotham history. As these two start their road trip, let’s take a closer look at the bumpy road this book’s setting up.
Troubles in Paradise
Cassie: Yes – how do you make a relationship rise from the ashes of disaster into something that’s really going to work? It’s not a secret in the animated series that Harley and Ivy both bring specific, and significant, personal issues to the table. One of the great things about the show, which will no doubt feed into the comic, is that these obstacles are not fixed; characters can actually heal and evolve, and their changes are followed pretty consistently through the overall storyline. Harley and Ivy have always had a strong connection, but it hasn’t always been easy for them to live and work together. For every slight or betrayal or irritation, there’s a sincere effort to compromise and find harmony.
But there are still a lot of complications. Prior to the events in the comics, Ivy has told Harley pretty explicitly that she loves her and trusts her with her life, but not her heart; Harley is still recovering from her abusive relationship with Joker; both women have had difficult lives and a surfeit of struggles. How do you create something healthy from that? How do you trust your most private self to someone else, even your favorite person, and build something healthy? Kite Man, Joker – they all cast a long shadow. But you can also sense a hunger in the comic to dive into that muck and clear it out.
But I swear it’s still a super fun read.
Armaan: These are women who love each other, but haven’t yet learned to fully trust each other – they’re two people at the start of a relationship. The thing is, given how long they’ve known each other, and the circumstances under which they’ve been brought together, there is a lot of pressure put on the relationship in the first place.
It’s easy to see from Ivy’s point of view that Harley’s not taking things seriously enough. Harley’s over the moon, and while Harley clearly sees that something’s bothering Ivy, Ivy is not being given a lot of space to process. Part of that, of course, is that they’re both being chased by an overzealous police force (we’ll get back to that later), but the other part is that Harley’s always been someone who rushes headfirst into the most fun thing she can think of with no thought to the destruction she leaves behind. With little foresight, or afterthought, Ivy’s suddenly got a lot of responsibility being placed on her shoulders, while still dealing with her own stuff – stuff she’s not yet ready to open up to Harley about.
What I love about how this comes out is the inelegance of Ivy’s grief. Once again, the Sarin art shines through here – whether it’s Ivy’s enraged eyes at the television report of her failed marriage, or the bright blue cartoon tears wrecking her make-up before she curls up on the bathroom floor, the cool, composed Ivy is in over her head and hasn’t gotten a moment to breathe, and that tension keeps coming up, over and over again.
Catwoman, Cops and Chaos
Cassie: Time to process is a hell of a luxury under regular circumstances. But when you’re on the run from the GCPD? It’s all but an impossibility.
That’s the last element at play here: while we spend much of our time this issue with Harley and Ivy while they crash for the night, these women are on the run. Even when they’re alone and feeling romantic, news coverage and Tawny alerts keep that fugitive status top of mind. We even cut away from the women to see Commissioner Gordon swear he’ll hunt Harley down.
He’s on a real tear here – he wants to lock up every villain in Gotham, and he made some real headway by arresting guests at Ivy and Kite Man’s wedding – but in a nice piece of narrative work, this also points the way forward for Harley and Ivy’s escape. All their villain pals are in Arkham, so why not road trip to their safe houses and lie low? Call it a couple’s getaway? At least it’s not boring?
Armaan: Ha! Boring it ain’t. Their first visit is to fellow supervillain and Gotham City Siren, Catwoman herself, as an impromptu petsitter. It should be fairly obvious that Selina Kyle is not a dog person – or hyena for that matter – but that’s just one of those things that Harley doesn’t really consider until the last moment.
Props to the show for this, I love this world’s take on Catwoman as the ultra-stylish, utterly in charge woman who effortlessly puts people in awe of her. Who can silence hyenas with a glare, who has a sneer which could inspire fear in the gods themselves…all while wearing comfy cat pyjamas in her gorgeously decorated apartment.
This book does such a great job of expanding an already fascinating setting. I love the Gotham we get in the show as seen from Harley’s eyes, and not Batman’s. A cruel and crime-ridden place still, but one where the police are terrifying, the villains have charm, and wacky amounts of chaos lurk around every corner.
Jim Gordon is certainly terrifying here. He’s been slowly losing his mind all through Season 2, but at this point he’s completely unhinged, and it quickly turns from over-the-top comedy to something terrifying as it shows how little he cares for the innocents he hurts just to fulfill the President’s last order to him, and get Harley Quinn. Even Batman turns up to stand in Gordon’s way, in a truly spectacular fight scene with the GCPD.
Cassie: There is a lot to be said for the way the show – and the comic by extension – positions Harley’s humanity while leaning into the horror of the systems that chase her. Personal vendettas fuel the law; a comrade’s code demands a certain level of civility in the underworld that’s not seen in the GCPD. None of this breaks new storytelling ground, but the clarity here is notable. People have a soul; institutions do not. That this comic, with all its profanity and its violence and frank depiction of sex, still holds tight to its soul, is a much rarer thing.
Miscellaneous
- Ivy isn’t a fan of Harley’s mattress pun, but I have to say… it gets a thumbs up from me.
- From me too! Readers, have fun guessing which of us is which.
- The wonderful, malleable expressions the characters wear on their faces dial up the emotions – goofy grins, heart-shaped sighs, rage looks deranged. And yet, it’s all balanced. How can you look at this and not smile?
- On the flip side, I love what it does for the action scenes. Beats land less for the fluidity of the motion, and more for the drama of the moment shining through through raw expressiveness, a brilliant way to do things.
- There is a wealth of detail crammed into every panel, and a number of callbacks to the show – there’s even a tiny appearance of Bernie, Harley’s stuffed beaver.
- Editor Matt here. Liked this review? Remember, Armaan reviews the regular DCU-set Harley Quinn ongoing every month, like this year’s Annual.
Armaan is obsessed with the way stories are told. From video games to theater, TTRPGs to comics, he has written for, and about, them all. He will not stop, actually; believe us, we've tried.
Cassie is an arts and culture writer living on Gadigal land in Australia. For 10 years she’s been working as a professional theatre critic, and is delighted to finally be writing about her other love: comics, baby.
