So at what moment was Harley Quinn ruined?
Was it when she started getting focus in spinoff comics like Birds of Prey?
Was it when she appeared in Arkham Asylum and made every girl want to cosplay as her?
Was it when she got her extreme makeover based on Margot Robbie?
Was it pushing her away from Joker and more towards Ivy?
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when she stopped being Joker's cum dumpster
Basically. Anything that isn't using her as the Joker's sidekick/girlfriend was likely a mistake, especially if it's trying to make her an antiheroine, even more so when she's dragging Poison Ivy down with her and neither are villains anymore.
I agree, the only way to really progress her story is to have her retire completely and get some psychiatric help.
The whole villain thing clearly isn't working out, she can't be pushed as a lead due to how heavily dependent she is with others.
So she's just kind of here in a limbo, her story can't really end or go anywhere, trapped in comic book purgatory.
The New 52 ruind her.
Only moronic casuals say this. Some of the best early Harley appearances are separate from Joker.
Yup. This run was the blueprint for the Suicide Squad movie and from there it was all downhill
Harley was always shit. She only worked as the Jokers moll
Was there anything the New52 didn't ruin?
Aquaman, surprisingly enough.
Dial H for Hero, probably helps that it's pretty much self-contained.
She was never The Joker's b***h. She was one of his hired goons, but she THOUGHT she was his "sidekick", i.e. the Robin to his Batman. The moment they tried to make her anything more than an obsessed delusional lackey was when she stopped being interesting.
>She was never The Joker's b***h. She was one of his hired goons, but she THOUGHT she was his "sidekick"
I'm surprised at just how many people STILL fail to realize this. She was literally just some annoying goon who got too attached.
TAS ended with harley hoping to be rehab, then TNBA happens and every character development goes to hell and Bruce becomes Batman 24/7 After freeze almost kills alfred
How to spot the DCAU casual shitter who never learned ANYTHING about harley and though that Timm the cuck had the WoG.
he created Harley, you dingus
This has to be bait, there's no way you're real
Ignore them they have no life outside of (You)s
The time she killed kids via exploding DS'
This is actually what it was.
Part of the appeal in BTAS is that she was Joker's patsy, but didn't personally do anything too heinous. Whenever she was away from him, all she did was the usual petty crime theft sprees instead of Joker's ridiculous crazy plans. She was the Curly being led around by Moe, and while she certainly was never blameless for aiding in Joker's schemes, it did leave the door open for her to be reformed without his influence, which the series consistently pointed towards.
But when she was doing crazy psychopathic shit on her own of her own volition? That's when she flipped over into being irredeemable and why all subsequent attempts at making her an anti-hero, let alone full blown hero, flop hard.
Unironically, this is what left to her to drop crime and feel guilt for that, since murdering children was one way ticket to hell.
That the writers felt the need to have her feel guilt only after personally murdering children is a major part of them not knowing shit from frick when it comes to her character or writing in general.
Wasn't it Arkham unironically? I remember back then people b***hing about losing her classic outfit and her voice. This in turn started to ruin her in other places later down the line
Arkham is what got her mainstream sadly. Even though in Arkham she wasn’t the problem her look led her to fame and it was all downhill from that.
wait, like the original arkham asylum game?
i mean the voice was still there in that one, but not the look, considering the villains made their costumes outta prison scrap
>i mean the voice was still there in that one, but not the look, considering the villains made their costumes outta prison scrap
Problem is that lowrent look turned the character from something you'd need to sew an outfit to make to something you could make out of Hot Topic shit.
Harley Cosplayers before 2009 were an impressive sight because the classic costume takes a lot of effort to make. Afterwords it was jeut a corset, a nurse costume, and facepaint/ hair dye.
When she stopped being a villain. I’m fine with her having her own series and being separate from the Joker, but she’s not girl Deadpool.
Yeah, this. If she was a less prominent character and just used wacky Joker-like equipment to help other heroes she would've been more bearable. But of course, being the quintessential modern female power fantasy, she has to be the center of attention.
>Was it when she appeared in Arkham Asylum and made every girl want to cosplay as her?
It's this. This is what got the ball rolling.
Arkham didn't cause that. It was suicide squad where everyone started to dress like her
Arkham def did start it
I don't want to date myself or anything, but I remember a time when DC hated Harley Quinn and wanted her forgotten.
I also remember when Marvel did that with Deadpool.
The moment they started using her as a stand-in for moronic women who get into abusive relationships with obvious psychopaths.
When they tried to make her a feminist icon even though she is a deranged murderous psychopath and a cautionary tale about how too much empathy can actually be harmful.
When she stopped thinking she was Joker's girlfriend, because that was the joke.
She has no other joke.
If they held on to that joke, she would be less of the edgefest that she is today. But she isn't really slapstick funny anymore, and everything she does comes off like she was written by a 30-something year old try-hard attempting to fit in with the underaged cool kids.
Harley was always one of the worst characters ever.
NPContrarian spotted
the moment she stopped looking like a harlequin and started looking like a college bawd during halloween
She's basically just an easy cosplay for lazy college bawds to get geek girl cred by pretending to be one of them.
Yup
We lost what could've been geek girl Harley and gained the Onlyfans version of Harley.
No wonder comic fans are degrading into a bunch of cooming normies. Her backstory is easy to digest for a lot of low iq women who've made regrettable choices.
God I hate new harley so fricking much
Arkham is arguable because that's when they started really changing her design
But New 52 was definitely it
It's a slippery slope.
Mad Love was great, but it started recontextualizing the relationship as Joker's manipulation, rather than Harley being a stalker who can't take no for an answer.
Arkham Asylum game was great, but it introduced Harley in a skimpy costume instead of her classic look. And then later games when Arleen Sorkin wasn't voicing her anymore was a futher step down.
Then came nu52, which was awful and gave her an awful awful costume.
Then came the Suicide Squad movie, which while pretty good, was the final nail in the coffin. That was when she fully irrevocably changed from classic Harley to nuHarley. Pic related - that's when the normies fully got her in their grip and they ain't letting go.
One little note of hope - Ruby's costume store, in their annual huge banner of popular costumes, had classic Harley featured instead of Daddy's Little Monster. For a lot of people, even normies, that's still the Harley they grew up with. But the poor zoomer generation will be stuck growing up with the inferior verison
>Mad Love was great, but it started recontextualizing the relationship as Joker's manipulation, rather than Harley being a stalker who can't take no for an answer.
Reconextualizing? There was nothing to recontextualize before Mad Love.
Most B:tAS had Harley following Joker around while the Joker was constantly trying to pry her off of him, tell her to leave, or outright kill her. But she wouldn't relent. It was part of the comedy, the most dangerous and unpredictable killer in the show had a fangirl he just couldn't succeed in killing and just had to put up with.
Can't find a longer version of this image, but he shoves her off the desk immediately after. Harley wants to bonk, Joker wants to work on plotting crimes and messing with Batman.
>homie what the frick is
>>Ruby's costume store
Sorry, Rubies. It's big here in NYC, dunno about your part of the world. They also manufacture costumes other stores buy and sell.
https://www.rubies.com/
>Can't find a longer version of this image, but he shoves her off the desk immediately after. Harley wants to bonk, Joker wants to work on plotting crimes and messing with Batman.
That's literally from Mad Love though.
Which is exactly why Mad Love doesn't work.
Here's another famous example of the Joker rejecting Harley. (All though it's also from one of the rare episodes where the Joker also shows some possessiveness over Harley - but just because the Creeper is stalking her while being a general threat to him.)
Maybe I'm confusing things but didn't White Knight have classic Harley and nuHarley as two separate characters?
Telltale Batman had Harley corrupting the Joker instead of the other way around and it was a good dynamic.
Yes, there are two Harleys, OG Harley and nuHarley and nuHarley hates OG Harley because she had the happy ending but not her and Ivy until the recent comic.
And OG Harley wasn't a prostitute like Tmm wanted her be later on and retconned into it making mcduffie and dini mad, she studied and had a proper Doctorate before the joker fell into the chermical vat.
I remember all that, but I don't remember
>the joker being sane before meeting her
Maybe that was in a later part of the series.
He started to snap some time after they started dating, and discovered that he suffered from genetic mental disease.
The acid vat dip accelerated the process.
Harley saved him that day, but he became the joker after it.
Thanks for explaining!
Because it shows you one thing while telling you another.
>Which is exactly why Mad Love doesn't work.
Why?
White knight AT LEAST deconstructed this as the joker being sane before meeting her and Batman wanting to help both to leave the crime life since the Joker had Genetical Schizophrenia and Bipolarity.
And Harley having to work on the mob strip clubs because of her college degree and gotham being corrupt as frick.
shit that universe as you please, but the deconstruction was fine.
Saw this when I was scrolling and loled Ty for the chuckles
What a great costume, much less overdone than Harley.
homie what the frick is
>Ruby's costume store
We only have spirit Halloween and party city also zoomers didn’t grow up with the new Harley Quinn most grew up, watching Batman and brave and the bold. and or the Batman where she had that modified classic design with that fricked up joker with dreadlocks
Move to anti hero. Taking advantage of her spotlight is to be expected. But the roundabout of making her this goody on all the big teams and on par with the big 3 is shit.
A combination of New 52 and Tara Strong taking over as her voice in animation and video games. Strong is a great VA, but her Harley voice is fricking grating.
at least loud mouth cuoco voicing her is better, and Kari nailed the sokin impersonation well in Gotham Knights.
Plus this shitshow of a suicide squad game was her last acting role as harley
when they took her charm, she was supposed to act like an Animaniacs character
>Was it when she started getting focus in spinoff comics like Birds of Prey?
If getting more focus is all it takes to ruin a character, they weren't a good character. They were a joke or an oddity that didn't have legs to stand on.
>Was it when she appeared in Arkham Asylum and made every girl want to cosplay as her?
You can't exist in capeshit without people wanting to dress up like you. All AA did was make her costume trivial to assemble with stuff off the rack or out of the closet instead of needing to find a perfectly matching full body one piece and the perfect doily.
>Was it when she got her extreme makeover based on Margot Robbie?
This was just symptomatic of the real problem.
>Was it pushing her away from Joker and more towards Ivy?
Every sidekick gets pushed away from the hero and into a different ensemble cast eventually. Like the first point, if that ruins you, you weren't a good character to begin with.
The real problem is simple and subtle: over time, she's been less clowny. The baseball bat is the biggest emblem of her progression into a generic bad b***h. No amount of funny words carved into it makes it any less unfunny.
>Was it when she appeared in Arkham Asylum and made every girl want to cosplay as her?
No, it was Suicide Squad movie, the daddy's little monster and booty shorts movie version
>So at what moment was Harley Quinn ruined?
new52, 2011
>Was it when she started getting focus in spinoff comics like Birds of Prey?
mate that was 2020, she was already "broken and dead" in 2012
>Was it when she appeared in Arkham Asylum and made every girl want to cosplay as her?
2011
>Was it when she got her extreme makeover based on Margot Robbie?
2011
>Was it pushing her away from Joker and more towards Ivy?
that was uber lesbian and ivy league 2014
Harley became less interesting by the 2010s. Making her more of a rebel instead of a clown girl was what led to the decrease in popularity. Once Suicide Squad came out every other Harley followed the same philosophy design-wise (Red and Blue instead of Red and Black) and the approach to make her an antiheroine. WB Animation/Games kept using Tara Strong since the Arkham games and it’s getting to the point where fans are getting tired of hearing Bubbles as a New Yorker. If anything, they should use Hynden Watch or even Kari Wahlgren in more DC projects. They’re underrated VAs that sound more genuine than Strong’s portrayal.
>decrease in popularity.
Harley is the most popular she's ever been.
the fact that the TV show mocked Strong's harley was a good shit for once https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxWHQKPi34I
And kaley imitating her grating voice trying to copy Arleen Sokin
Harley became the third pillar of DC replacing WW somehow
At this point I’m just waiting for her to join the Justice league
Because DC HATES Wonder Woman TV Show where she was Wonder Woman and Diana Prince the Lawyer and JAG
Unironically the only thing that treated WW right and as a hero.
Every WW story focus only on Her being the Amazon, and not the Woman living her life Fighting Evil and Helping the innocent.
Even She-Hulk as a lawyer honored this and DC removed it.
before someone asks She Hulk tv show, i am talking about he old comic runs where jen had to deal with being a hero and a civilian lawyer, and no, it isnt the shitty aaron run that ruined her.
Can’t wait for the NEXT Harley Quinn craze to start up later this year
B:TAS
Harley and Ivy
Her third appearance
It basically made it clear that Harley is better than Joker
The whole episode completely killed her original character
How exactly did it do that?
That episode was fine it was just two villains teaming up and having fun
The moment they turned her bisexual and pair her with fricking poison ivy, they ruined 2 character at the same time
>Was it when she appeared in Arkham Asylum and made every girl want to cosplay as her?
It was this.