Though Batman , Wonder Woman , and Superman would never admit it publicly , Harley Quinn is arguably one of the most important characters in DC ’s comics , picture show , andtelevision worldsbecause of the way she lends herself to a broad smorgasbord of reimaginations and deconstructions . More than that , though , Harley ’s always been a fascinating character who stop up draw your attention because of the chaotic , exciting vim she brings .
When I spoke with writer Mariko Tamaki and artist Steve Pugh , the originative squad behind DC Comics ’ upcoming young adult pictorial novel Harley Quinn : Breaking Glass , they explained how easy and natural it felt to create a new take on the character once they constitute a few baseline musical theme about which office of her original portrayal should be carry over .
Because once you nail down those core elements , everything else that ’s add together only ends up making you realise how dynamic the character ’s always been , and how much more potential there is to mine from her stories .
Harley Quinn going for a stroll in her new duds.Image: Steve Pugh (DC Comics)
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io9 : Who is this Harley Quinn ? you’re able to see so much of classic Harley in her , but there ’s also something that feel distinct about her — it ’s not just that she ’s young , she ’s got this interesting fresh background .
Mariko Tamaki : We really wanted to verify that this Harley Quinn was a stripling . Like most heroes , she ’s had a rasping go of life at the start . She lost her dad when she was younger and she has a single mom who ’s kind of scramble to get by at various points in her life . But really the fundamental element to this Harley is that she ’s got this incredibly resolute sense of proper and wrong , ultimately .
Ivy pointing out how Harley doesn’t experience the same kind of radicalized microaggressions she does.Image: Steve Pugh (DC Comics)
io9 : How so ?
Tamaki : If she see you doing something that she think is unfair , she ’s prostrate to react the manner Harley in Injustice would . She ’ll take anybody out that she thinks needs to be taken out at any leave moment and she does n’t see it as anything other than being fair . She sees it as if she ’s consider the scale , made a conclusion , and feels fundamentally good about the things she does . Even though she does n’t own many thing , she has what she necessitate to get by , and she figures thing out . She ’s never too bent out of shape about anything , and prefers to deal with things as they add up at her .
When we meet her here , she ’s been brought into this new surround where she ’s got to get herself started again , which is something she ’s done a lot . She ’s used to it , but we ’re meeting her at the beginning of one of the many kickoff of her life .
Harley getting her first inkling that the Joker might not be a good person.Image: Steve Pugh (DC Comics)
io9 : You really lean into the spacier side of Harley ’s personality and in the account book , but it ’s readable that she ’s talk genuinely , and in a really clean-cut - minded way that people just do n’t sympathize . Talk to me how you went about finding that voice for Harley .
Tamaki : I really like the idea of Harley being someone who process to the beat of her own drum , but I wanted to believe about what that means precisely for her . She enter thing out in a very Harley direction , and I fancy that she expend a circle of time by herself growing up and that led to her really ingest to develop her own own summary worldview in rescript to survive . It has all these composite role which are very confusing to other people , but she ’s not nettle by that , you know ? It was really fun to write a character who is so completely at ease with her own outlandishness , and not even see herself as being odd . She ’s just like “ Oh , this is how I see things . This is what I need and this is what I feel . And if you steal something from my mom , I ’m gon na come and get you because nobody else is gon na do it . ”
io9 : Even though that vibrance in Harley you ’re talking about puts so many people off , it ’s what makes Mama so willing to welcome her into his family , and what draws Ivy and theJokerto her as the news report come on , I think . Was your intent always to make Harley , kind of like an aroused lightning rod for the record book ’s other quality ?
Harley fashioning a new costume for herself.Image: Steve Pugh (DC Comics)
Tamaki : The idea was to create a form of triad of graphic symbol . Harley ’s in the middle because she ’s intensely empathetic to other the great unwashed and she bonds with and becomes loyal to multitude very quickly . If you ’re her acquaintance , she ’s your friend for life and she ’s just gon na look after you . Then you have Ivy , who is very socially witting and very residential area - minded person who ’s very connected to the bigger picture of things . And then you have the Joker , who ’s chaos . The three of them together kind of create , to me , like an interesting reflection on dissimilar kinds of justice .
io9 : Steve , there an undeniable effervescence to Harley ’s personality that you altogether entrance in your exemplification , but the book as a whole has this very acute almost noir vibe to it that really highlights how distinct Harley ’s way of moving through the world is . utter to me about how you settled on an aesthetic for this particular story .
Steve Pugh : Gotham became quite a big part of the ledger for that , for the looking of it . I ’ve never experience in America but evidently I ’ve been steeped in that civilization since I ’ve had a television . A mint of the area that this is set up in was very similar to the shoes where I mature up , in a small place in Birmingham . That ’s a flock of humble locally owned shops a mountain of characters who were just trying to get by , hustling , and keeping things move . People who had trouble with being force out of the metropolis because of their rent being prove .
In term of the graphic symbol themselves , I took a great deal of cues from Mariko ’s dialog almost only because she really paint a gross motion picture of a human being . You read the dialogue , and it ’s like a picture — you see the character , honestly .
io9 : It ’s interesting you say that because yeah , read the negotiation , these characters at once take as rendering of people that you bonk , but you ’ve also brought this wildly different style to everyone that sets them aside from their classical strip counterparts .
Pugh : emphatically . These key to reimagining characters , but making them “ read ” right is finding those distinct anchorperson , and Mariko emphasize a lot of them . Take the Joker . The purple suit was in the playscript and I think it ’s an important ocular anchor . I call back it ’s very authoritative — and we acquire from The Flintstones — that if you ’re go to call these people the same name , then you should receipt the source cloth so as to understand where the case ’s coming from . But that does n’t mean just replicating what we ’ve seen before . There ’s a sure shape to the Joker . There ’s a certain theatrical ego - obsession that sort of delineate his organic structure spoken language . But I also like bewilder some random stuff that feels very Joker - y , like he does just like the Nixon two - fingerbreadth head as he ’s making his expiration .
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io9 : You ’re turn his personality into animalism , then .
Pugh : The look of him was kind of specify by who he was in this story . Mariko described him as a animate being of medium . He ’s a conception who ’s put himself together . The plastic base is … it ’s sort of like the commercialism and corporate - ness and the cutouts for his eyes , which change every sentence you see him , are meant to be a ransom money annotation . His entire face is a ransom money note made from this montage of magazines .
io9 : And for Harley ?
Pugh : For Harley , I pictured her as a child just with lots of layers . She ’s wearing dozens of clothes because she was get into everything she was carrying with her . When you see her going to school for the first time , she had to behave all this material . And I thought “ Well , what kind of bag would she have ? ” She was kind of unprepared for the whole thing , move . So she had to gormandize everything into the pockets of her anorak , and every time she impress , you see these bighearted , expansive movements with rulers , and pencil , and pens to jutting out the parka . She ’s constantly leave a trail of junk . Those are the kinds of small details I think make you finger like these characters do n’t just exist on the open , but they go all the way back .
io9 : A hatful of fans cling very dearly to Harley ’s Hellenic origin story , but we ’re proceed through this interesting flow of storytellers rethinking her roots and decide to just go in a completely different , but still conversant guidance . What were the element of Harley ’s story that you wanted to elevate in break Glass to really set your spin on the fibre apart ?
Tamaki : The traditional champion ’s journey is about the obstacle that are placed in front of something . calculate out what aroused affair is standing in the mode of you becoming the kind of hero you want to be . But to me , that does n’t really seem like a adept fit for Harley . The question for Harley is more about which direction is she in the end going to go in . I wanted her news report to exist within the great context of other people ’s trouble . Harley ’s trouble are n’t the only problems that exist at any give full point of clip and Ivy helps her come to understand that — to give her that position . The Joker subsist to remind her that she can just destroy thing that are bothering her , of form . But Ivy ’s there to remind her that whatever Harley ’s going through picket in comparing to what someone else out there is likely going through because everything be within a larger , imbalanced power structure that hurts people .
io9 : Right , and Harley understand about that instability of power really makes it make more good sense to steer the character in a unlike direction than her classical portraying . What value do you think there is in reimagining these characters and developing fresh Incarnation of them ?
Tamaki : I mean I remember it ’s always worth question the write up we see as well as the figure of speech in them . It ’s worth looking at those stories and seeing who is n’t part of these stories or ca n’t be part of those account . A tidy sum of the kind of original stories reflect the values of the time , or the ideas of the time about various thing . I see these thing as expansive . How many Batmans are there at any given time ? We surely have no problem with multiple batman . Comics is one of the few billet where you could say “ Look , there ’s these four versions of these character who are existing at the same time , and they speak to different things . ” I do n’t think it ’s about wipe out other tale , but being capable to have a critical panorama of a character as a whole , which for me is interesting .
Harley Quinn : Breaking Glass is on sale now .
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BatmanDC ComicsDC EntertainmentHarley QuinnJokerThe Joker
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