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Submitted: October 30, 2011
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Harley Quinn Reboot "animated"by *MatthewRHumphreys

Cartoons & Comics / Digital Media / Cartoons / Drawings

Harley is someone that doesn't require a huge amount of tweaking to make her work. So the only real change being that she's a student instead of a Doctor and that she like Barb will idealize a way of life rather than a person(joker)

Harleen Quinzel attends high school with Barbara in this retelling. She's Barb's mirror image. Rivals in gymnastics, she was the salutatorian to Barbara's valedictorian. But where Barb's focus was in law enforcement for her future, Harleen saw things otherwise.

During a college visit to determine where she'll attend after senior year, she snuck away from her tour group and tagged along with a group of Psychology students visiting Arkham Asylum. There she had her first glimpse of a personality that would shape her future.

She met a man who was clinically insane by all medical standards, but she saw him differently. She saw someone who was methodical, brilliant and only those who were fools couldn't see the social experiment he was conducting. He was showing them what true freedom was. Being second to no one because there was no structure to climb in his mind. He simply WAS.

Harleen had been bitter at always being ALMOST great in everything she did. ALMOST the best in school, sports and social climates. But what she took away from her stow away trip was a sense of freedom. A sense of self where she would no longer use society's rules for anything be it law, conformity or love. What she wanted she took, and what she wanted to do, she did.

Like Barb, she doesn't look at her symbolic icon (Joker) with an esteem or infatuation per se. More that she fell in love with his mentality. The idea of freedom he represented and from there she'll grow into her own villain using her own comparable skills to butt heads with Batgirl.

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*AquaSeashells91 5 days ago

that outfit!

~WindyWolf95 Apr 5, 2013 Student Artist

wow that is amazing

love it :3

~Alex-Ghost Mar 23, 2013 Student Traditional Artist

Awesome!!!

~astrocitizen Mar 17, 2013

I've been thinking of redesigns of numerous comic book villains and heroes, and it ccured to me to use the Golden Age Daredevil by Lev Gleason as a basis for Harley. Same checkerboard costume, but she's mute, either observing a "don't speak unless spoken to" rule that underlines her abusive relationship with the Joker, or perhaps due to some physical damage caused by a "prank" that her "puddin'" had played upon her. Making her mute also made me think of such classic Bond henchmen like Oddjob and Jaws; that and the occasional display of her as a karate champin addition a gymast made me think of making her the Joker's muscle, sort of like Mercy and Lex Luthor.

*MatthewRHumphreys Mar 17, 2013 Professional

I can see what you're getting at there. For me though, silencing Harley would be like a deadpan joker. She's unnerving because she's fun and bombastic which for a moment makes you forget she's homocidal. Her tragedy in my mind is that she's like the bad kid who's actually bad because he did something bad, but can't turn it off and the only way to cope is to never slow down so he doesn't think about it. Like whenever Harley slows down and actually talks with Batman her good side sometimes eeks out, and then she'll lash out because if she has time to think about it, it makes her feel really bad about being evil. It's a weird dichotomy but I like it better that way personally.

~astrocitizen Mar 18, 2013

Your analysis of Harley is dead on, and one that should probably be required of _anyone_ writing for her. That being said, often she's there to provide a mote of comic relief for the Joker, particularly in TAS and likewise canons. While not a standard Batman fan, I've seen enough to know that the Joker's complete monster, and as such I often do little things that infer that Harley's basically caught in a bad relationship whenver I do little redesigns of her in my head.

BTW, her silence, willingly or not, I mentioned is also influenced -- I realized later -- by Robin's transmogrification into "J.J." during the flashbacks of BATMAN BEYOND: RETURN OF THE JOKER, where he could only giggle creepily.