Waiting for the Trade
Batman: Mad Love and other stories.
by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm
collects The Batman Adventures: Mad Love, The Batman Adventures Annual #s 1 & 2, The Batman Adventures Holiday Special #1, Adventures in the DC Universe #3, Batman Black and White #1, The Batman Adventures: Dangerous Dames and Demons, The Batman Chronicles Gallery #1, Batgirl Adventures #1, and Batman Gotham Adventures #10.
Why I Bought This: Harley Quinn is my favorite thing about the 90s Batman Animated Series and this book recollects her famous, award-winning origin story so it was always on my list to buy and this past FCBD I picked it up during my local comic store’s sale.
The Plot: Mad Love is the origin of Harley Quinn by her creator Paul Dini (who wrote for the animated series). The “other stores” collected here represent all the other times Dini and Timm worked together on Batman comics—some are full length stories, while others are tiny little back up features from the annuals.
(Spoilers Below)
Chapter 1 – Joker and Harley Quinn attempt to kill Comm. Gordon at a dentist’s office when Batman makes the save; though the villains escape. Later at their hideout Harley attempts to seduce Joker but he isn’t interested as he is obsessing over how to kill Batman. Harley then flashes back to her origin:
She was a skilled gymnast who slept with her professors to get top grades at med school. She took an internship at Arkham with the hopes of writing a tell-all book on one of the super villains housed there so she could get rich quick. She soon meets Joker and he flirts with her through the glass in scenes reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs. After three months Harley is giving permission to treat Joker and he shares with her his own origin of being abused by an alcoholic father and how a fateful circus trip with dad created his obsession with clowns. Another few weeks of working together leads to Harley falling in love with Joker and confessing her feelings to him. Then Joker escapes and we see Harley worrying for him as the headlines cover his latest rampage until Batman recaptures Joker and brings him back to Arkham. We then get a masterful two-page spread of silent panels showing Harley’s reaction to Joker’s injuries, her rage at Batman and ultimately her donning a costume for the first time and breaking Joker free. This ends with her daydreaming of a future family life with Joker as we return to the present.
Harley decides she needs to take Batman out so Joker will settle down with her. She steals the plans for one of his deathtraps (it involves dropping Batman into a water tank filled with piranhas), then contacts the police via videotape claming Joker wants to poison the entire city and that she can’t go along with that. She agrees to turn over the plans for the poison plot to Batman if she is promised protection. Harley and Bats meet on the docks where they are interrupted by Joker on a boat with machine gun threatening to kill Harley for betraying him. Batman tosses a batarang beheading what turns out to be a Joker robot, which gives Harley a chance to inject Batman with a drug for the KO.
Batman awakes over the piranha tank to find Harley has stolen his utility belt, triple knotted his chains and left him too drugged to execute an escape. She explains it isn’t personal she is just doing this so she and Mr. J can settle down. This prompts Batman to laugh and he plays on her doubts by revealing the origin Joker told her in her own origin as a lie and claiming Joker won’t believe Batman is dead if he doesn’t see him die himself. This gets Harley to call Joker on the phone, buying Batman time. Joker is enraged to see Harley has captured Batman without him. When Joker arrives he beats Harley and throws her out a five-story window.
Joker is about to turn Batman free but then decides he may as well shoot him since he’s got him here. Batman frees himself and we get a seven page fight scene between the two. This ends with Joker falling off a train into a smokestack to his seeming demise. We then cut to a bandaged and bruised Harley being led from the hospital back to Arkham. She swears that she is over the Joker until she gets to her room to find a flower and get well card waiting for her from him.
Chapter 2 – We open on Batman capturing a new female super-villain: Roxy Rocket. Cut to two years later when she is paroled. Batman and Alfred watch on the news and discuss how none of his villains ever go straight.
This leads to a flashback of Ventriloquist getting a job on a children’s television show with a frog puppet. When the show gets cancelled the star brings him a replica of his Scarface puppet that makes him revert to his super villain persona so he will kill the TV producer who cancelled the show. Batman thwarts the assassination and we learn Ventriloquist’s frog puppet persona tipped off the cops. This leads to his puppets fighting and a car crash in which the frog puppet burns up, at which point we’re to assume he is hopelessly under Scarface’s thrall.
Next we see Harley Quinn get released from Arkham on a Monday. The story unfolds over four pages of silent art. She bids Poison Ivy and the doctor’s farewell and heads to an apartment for a normal life. But when Joker pulls up and smiles at her she’s back in costume. They fight Batman and Mr. J leaves her behind when he escapes so that by Tuesday morning Harley is back in Arkham.
Next we see Scarecrow attempt to go straight as an English professor in a college out of town, but when a female honor student is beaten by her boyfriend Crane becomes Scarecrow again to kidnap the boy and teach him a lesson in fear until Batman stops him and takes him back to prison.
Back in the present we see video footage of Roxy robbing an airfield safe. However, Batman discovers the thief is actually Catwoman dressed as Roxy. Catwoman wins a brief fight with Batman (albeit her goal is just to escape). Roxy arrives on the scene to clear her name and fights Catwoman but loses. By now Batman has recovered and Catwoman threatens to kill Roxy if he doesn’t let her escape. Roxy uses the distraction to fight back and accidentally knocks Catwoman from the roof but of course there is no body when they look down. Batman agrees not to turn Roxy in for breaking her parole by being in costume since she was just clearing her name. Roxy decides she wants to be a hero now and asks Batman to make her his partner but he disappears while she is talking.
Chapter 3 – We open with Joker falling from a blimp leading to a fun little story of what a villain does after those falls to their death that never take. Joker checks himself for injuries. Once he realizes he’s okay he starts laughing only for some dude to call out from his apartment window to keep the noise down. Joker firebombs the apartment and decides he’s hungry. He goes to a doughnut shop for jelly doughnuts. The teen server is extremely frightened of him so Joker calms him down, orders like a normal person but then pays him with poisoned money. Next, Joker comes across a news stand getting the delivery for tomorrow’s paper, which he decides he wants to buy. When the clerk asks him to wait while he unpacks the shipment he gets Joker Venomed. Next, Joker calls Harley for a ride home but she’s in police custody. A beat cop responds to the phone booth but Joker thwarts him with the jelly doughnut and makes his escape.
Chapter 4 – Bruce is on a charity cruise when Poison Ivy attacks with a dragon made of seaweed. He changes into Batman and, despite getting kissed by her, manages to capture her.
Chapter 5 – Harvey Bullock is playing mall Santa while Barbara Gordon is Xmas shopping. Just then several of the kids on line merge to reveal Clayface. Barbara turns to Batgirl and manages to save the cops, whose bullets were ineffective on Clayface. They return the favor by helping her short circuit a holiday display and the electrical discharge KOs Clayface.
Chapter 6 – Ra’s Ah Ghul comes to Gotham looking for a magic tablet. Batman tries to stop him but loses the fight and is left KO’d in the rubble. Since magic is outside of Batman’s wheelhouse, he goes to see Jason Blood. Blood relates a story of fighting Ra’s 200 years ago in South America where he had to transform into the Demon to prevent Ra’s from stealing the same magic Mayan tablet. The tablet was lost in an explosion back then but its magic prevented it from being destroyed. The tablet is meant to summon a plague demon. Story time is interrupted by Talia, who shoots both Batman and Blood. This results in Batman having a dream involving: a giant green undersea goddess, followed by sex with Talia—who then decomposes in his arms, followed by Ra’s rising up from hell and burning the world, before the green goddess rings a bell to awaken Batman. We learn for whatever reason Talia used a tranquilizer gun on the heroes, so once awake they race off in the Batmobile to the mystic ritual. Ra’s summons the plague demon and for the first time ever in fiction this actually works out and the summoned demon agrees to obey the summoner. The heroes arrive and pair off so Demon battles the plague demon while Batman battles Ra’s. The heroes win of course, though Batman’s feelings for Talia allow her to get away with her father in tow while the heroes banish the plague demon to its native plane. Demon then snaps the tablet in half, and Batman is left regretting Talia’s anger at him.
Chapter 7 – Two Face gets reconstructive surgery which cures him of his insanity. He then gets engaged to a socialite. When he meets her evil twin however his Big Bad Harve persona resurfaces and has an affair with the twin. Eventually Harvey chooses his fiancé but this prompts the twin to murder her sister and frame Two Face for it. Harvey burns his face again as he succumbs to being Two Face and then murders the evil twin.
Critical Thoughts: Mad Love is the single greatest Batman story I’ve ever read. It’s such a strong character piece for Harley: showing how her ambition blinds her to the dangers of the Joker, then showing in a very believable way why she falls in love with him, and then giving us a glimpse of both the highs and lows of her super villain career as it becomes an allegory for domestic violence. It’s amazing that Harley maintains a surface appeal as a light, bubbly fun character despite having a tragic origin with her defining relationship clearly tied to such a hot-button social issue. She maintains that balance because this story works as both tragedy and comedy while creating a core character status quo that the character was able to maintain for years afterwards; including carrying a solo title that ran about 40 issues in 2000 that has the same bubbly sense fun despite starting out with Joker attempting to murder her in the first issue.
I can’t say enough good things about the artwork in this story. The silent panels that show Harley’s origin are masterfully done—it is one of the best sequences I’ve ever seen in any comic book. Throughout the book the art is superb in the way it services the story; capturing the feel of the animated series while also conveying plot points just as strongly as the dialogue. The facial expressions in the final fight between Batman and Joker are also note perfect as a capper to Joker’s story arc in this tale. The final page’s art once again captures the comic tragedy of Harley’s personality, ending the tale the only way it could end. This is comic book storytelling at its very best!
Look you buy this book for “Mad Love” and everything else is more or less a DVD extra. The other stories could all be terrible and this would still be an A+. However, many of the secondary stories are quite good also. I liked chapter two’s story on why the villains cannot reform; particularly the Harley Quinn interlude. I thought the Chapter 3 Joker solo story was a lot of fun. Both of those stories are fitting follow-ups to the main tale.
I also thought the Batman/Demon team-up in chapter in chapter 6 was a good old-fashioned comic book story with some damn fine Kirby-esque tribute art. Considering Chapter 6 is another annual feature that is reprinted for this trade that’s a nice oversized stand alone story to be included as an extra.
The remaining stories are too short to be really good or bad with the Poison Ivy story a mere six pages and the Batgirl story 10 pages long. The only story I didn’t really care much for was the final Two Face story, which I found a little too hokey with the evil twin thing and the miracle cure to start it off comes off as trite. Still, it’s an 8-page story in an otherwise flawless 200-page collection of stories.
Grade A+. Overall this is a collection that offers a deeper looks at Batman’s rogues’ gallery in general, while the title story presents the definitive origin for a character that has become arguably the most popular female character in all of comics. It is a must read for fans of the medium.