Not all the heroes and villains of the comics are born on paper: some started being secondary characters, mere comparsas, in other media such as television. What is not so common is that, little by little, your popularity explodes until you have your own collections, Lead movies o Video games and, completing the circle, starring its own series on the small screen … and even an animated iseka in Japan. It is not the most normal, it is recorded, but it is that the concept of normality itself is the opposite of Harley Quinn. That's why he likes it so much.
Among the great DC Comics icons we can say that Harley Quinn is a relatively recent character. Was originally created to Batman: The Animated Series In 1992, within the Modern Age of the American Comic, and although its presence and purpose were to make the Joker look, his charisma and that extra point of madness catapulted his popularity until he made it legitimately, in one of the most beloved and complex figures of all DC universes. Including The Snyderverso! But, of course, how do you create someone like that?
A girl capable of following the rhythm of the Joker
The story told in short is that the Harley Quinn base is the actress Arleen's finger who, precisely, has originally given him voice. The screenwriter Paul Dini, friend of the actress, borrowed his personality or his accent; although part of its design and the first general ideas were based on a strange episode of the series The days of our life (Days of Our Lives) in which another character played by Sorkin had a dream and dressed as a jester. From there, the visual style and the vision of Bruce Timm He did the rest. But, of course, this is only half the story.
The raison d'être of Harley Quinn was to take advantage of his madness, his ability to humor and that intrinsic vulnerability to give life to new nuances to the Joker. Your ability to hug chaos. Sometimes directly and sometimes reflecting in it, as a criminal partner, those elements that would take the entire range of emotions, from the genuine laugh to exasperation, of the clown prince of the crime. Something that Paul Dini knew how to take advantage of mastery.
He was doing an episode of Joker, the first one he had written, and wanted the Joker to have a band, and wanted a girl in the band. And at first I was thinking about what kind of girl should it be. Should it be like a hard girl and only fulfill orders saying “yes, boss” or should it be more aggressive and have a special something?
I was attracted to someone who could give him the replica and follow the rhythm to the Joker. And not only that, but I could also laugh at something he said while Joker himself was not laughing, and that enraged him. And even so, I could have a type of dynamics to the Punch and Judy (the puppies of Cachiporra) that achieved that the villain be, in my opinion, more complete.
Does that mean that Harley Quinn exists by and for the Joker? Partly yes. At least in its origin. There are its own and inherited elements of actress Arleen Sorkin, as well as brushstrokes of those profiles of villains so of the 60s of the Batman series of Adam West, including that Gracieta of her name, which, although it is understood- is a word game in reference to the harlequins. All very consistent with that series and era so psychedelic.
Being fair, Dini soon realized that Harley Quinn was a sensational character that allowed him to complete his vision of the Joker. In part for the game he gave in situations and dialogues, but also to be able to capture in his series the less human villain of all who has faced Batman. And they are a few.
After all, the complexity of the Joker is that it is a type of villain that is the least human of all Batman adversaries. It does not come from a sympathetic environment, such as two sides, or Poison Ivy, or the crazy hat, or some of the others. So you have to look at other ways to express your personality and we think, well, it would be good if I had someone to give us that game. So Harley came, he was a unique type of character, people liked.
Naturally, Warner and DC could not let such a character, so charismatic and capable of giving so much game, lost or forgotten when the series stopped being broadcast.
Harley Quinn … A star was born!
Given the good reception of the character, Paul Dini and Bruce Tim began to give more and more court to that girl dressed as a jester. Where had it come from? What was your real relationship with the Joker? Because Harley Quinn was not created to have a main or co-starring role as Robin, but as an almost improvised villain and to give nuances to the Joker of the animated series.
And then its creators realized something: it would have been a pity that it only appeared in a single episode. It was no longer another mata of the Joker's band, but there was a time when Dr. Harleen Quinzel was. And before they realized they already began to create a background to that high school that, little by little, was being ascended to something more than recurrent character.
I liked it, so I put it in other stories. Bruce [Tim] I would say, “What? Harley again? Are we going to put the girl again?” And I would say: “Yes, she is quite nice.” And the other directors liked it, and then Bruce and I sat down to eat one day and think of a story of origin, and we did it as a comic book, and that gave both the character and where she fit in the Batman universe.
Since then, Harley has evolved barbarity. His first appearance on paper came a year later in the Batman -based comic series: The Animated Series and before closing the decade, the century and the millennium the character will transfer the tube screens and officially debut in the comics and the Great Canon of the DC universe.
Gradually conquering an increasing number of comics fans in general and of it in particular. Not as the lethal complicit of the prince clown of the crime, but as Harley Quinn, an antiheroine that does not depend on anyone, capable of despairing heroes and villains equally and, in the process, giving his own fans a rich, crazy and unbridled legacy. Because Harley Quinn was born was born from a series of carambolas, but today it is synonymous with chaos. Of that type of chaos that it likes.
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