Dr. Quinzel believes she’s found a cure for madness, and as she aims to heal the fractured minds and souls of Gotham, will become the one thing she never expected: one of them. Join us for her decent, and the rise of Harley Quinn.
We’ll take the first 2 weeks (or as much time as you need) to read (3/1–3/14), then discuss during weeks 3 & 4 (3/15–3/28).
Like it, love it, want more of it—don’t be shy! Share your thoughts below when you’re ready—drop a song HERE if you’re feeling inspired. See ya soon!
You can join or learn more about Harley’s Crew HERE.
@D4RK5TARZ is correct. It was supposed to be a trilogy, and Isley was/is to be one of the 3 by Sejic. I want it SO bad. Have you read this one yet @msgtv?
Gotta hit this one at a time. Book 1 is wonderful, beautiful, layered work. What I love so far is that Harleen is intelligent & beautiful, but the flaws that the Joker would exploit are there already. She doubts herself, she’s drawn in someway to danger or violence, and she’s got that ‘take no crap’ streak though its largely kept in check.
I guess, ideally (so we get it sooner rather than later), I’d be okay w/ a slight redesign on our current Harley/Joker combo (Robbie & Leto). I’d like to see what they’d do w/ a different director, more time, and a better version of Harley’s origin. You? Anyone?
Will start #2 tonight I think. But had a thought when I went for a walk today (it’s above 40 gotta get outside). I want to see this version of Harley on the screen. Margot Robbie has a production company, let her produce a show for HBOMax based largely on this series where we see just graduating med school Harley as she goes down this path. Completely stand alone not connected to the movies.
I stayed up last night reading the first two books and woke up this morning to read the 3rd book. I got the beautiful hardcover for Christmas and was looking for the perfect time to read it. I hope it is okay to start discussing this while it is still fresh in my head.
This was my first reaction as well. Then I remembered this was Sejic doing what Sejic does. Harleen is a well crafted romance story with a psychological origin story intertwined. This follows many of the queues and tropes that can be found in books like Young Romance. The good girl falls for the bad guy. Instead of the girl talking about her forbidden romance with her friends she witnesses Batman and supervillains battle it out as a means to show her own inner turmoil.
While this is a story about Harley, this is really a story about Gotham in the same way The Wire is a story about drug dealers but really about Baltimore. The city is as important to this story as Harleen’s growing love for Mr. Jay. We are briefly shown the inner workings of the police department and local politics. We hear about how the judges are scared of the prison due to a criminal’s fearsome behavior. Gotham becomes a living, breathing character.
As I was reading, I noticed a few callbacks to Sejic’s other work. Visually, there were pages that reminded me of some of the most beautiful splash pages of Witchblade. Meanwhile, some of the content reminded me of his Sunstone series for mature readers.
The last pages of the hardcover showed pages of things that could come and I am really hoping they happen. If they don’t, that is fine as Harleen stands on it’s own merits.
I went MIA on accident, but oohhh am I glad to have come back to this! I’ve been wanting to read Harleen for a while now so this is the perfect opportunity!