Official DC Book Club: Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour #1 & #2

General Discussion Comic Books
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We’re back this month with another instalment of the Official DC Book Club!

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Join us, starting TODAY, in reading Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour issues #1 and #2! Harley and Ivy receive an incredibly rude interruption to their spontaneous honeymoon across the DCU when a new villain reveals himself. Can the duo defeat this new villain AND escape from Commissioner Gordon in the process? Join us to find out!

Head over to DCUI and check out issues #1 and #2 of Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour for FREE (as long as you’re a registered user)! We will be posting discussion questions every Monday to prompt you to read further and discuss the storyline with your fellow DC fans.

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Here are some discussion questions to get things started:

Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour #1 Discussion Questions

  1. What do you think attracts Ivy and Harley to one another?

  2. How do you feel about Harley’s conversations with the doctor version of herself? Do you think this keeps her balanced?

  3. What do you think of the relationship dynamic between Harley and Ivy? Do you think they have a “healthy” partnership?

  4. What do you think Harley and Ivy want out of their relationship? Do you think their goals/hopes for the relationship are aligned?

  5. Who do you think “wears the pants” in the relationship between Ivy and Harley? Do you believe one of them is a “leader” in some way? If so, why? If not, why not?

Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour #2 Discussion Questions

  1. Why do you think Gordon was so struck by Harley and Ivy’s dialogue regarding Barb?

  2. Based on the dialogue Harley and Ivy have on page 9, how do you feel about their approach to relationships? Do you think they have different viewpoints on how to manage romantic partnerships?

  3. Why do you think Selina is willing to watch the Hyenas for Ivy, but not Harley?

  4. Do you think Gordon is taking the right approach to stopping Harley, Ivy, and Selina? If so, why? If not, why not?

  5. What’s your take on Ivy’s inner dialogue throughout this book? How do you think she feels about recent events in her life?

Of course, we also have some awesome bookmarks and wallpapers for your desktop and mobile devices that you can download for free:

Harley Quinn TAS - The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour Bookmarks
Harley Quinn TAS - The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour Desktop Wallpapers

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Harley Quinn TAS - The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour Mobile Wallpapers

Happy reading! <3

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Awesome™:+1: coincidentally just finished reading the whole things :sweat_smile:. So ready to discuss when questions are up.

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Happy DCUI anniversary @NYJt3! :tada: :tada: :tada:

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I do indeed. Dr. Quinzel has brought clarity to situations for Harls at times when she desperately needed it. I love this storytelling facet. :+1:

To date they’ve got a healthy ship 'cuz each one has the ability to get through to the other, especially when either one of the two find themselves out over their skis on an issue. We saw this in season one when Harl’s was making the mistake of determining her self worth based on whether or not she got the greenlight to join the LOD in HQAS season one. Ive was incredibly patient with her through the process and after Harls had the always important moment of clarity about the situation she was luckily able to make things right with Ive and move onto being her own greatest self. It’ll be interesting to see these tables turned in season 3 as it looks like Ive will be the one over her skis with the whole terraforming Gotham thing and Harls will probably have to talk her down off of that ledge. Wondering how Ive will respond.

Thank you for making these- they’re amaze and I’m gonna’ use 'em for my hardcopy comics! Yay! :smiley:

:00_harlivy: :cobb_squad: :harleybathqtas: :harleys_crew:

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Thanks :+1:

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Happy Anni, @NYJt3! Thanks for being a wonderful part of this community :batparrot:

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Thanks :+1:

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God, the Max Sarin art in this series is SO GOOD. They should have a gig lined up with DC for life.

If you loved the incredibly expressive art in this series as much as I did, check out Sarin’s Giant Days!

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Happy DCUIversaries @NYJt3 and @HubCityQuestion ! :partying_face:

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Happy DCversary @HubCityQuestion :slightly_smiling_face:

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Happy DCUIversary to you as well, @moro! :superman_hv_4:

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You too, Moro! Looks like this is just the day of the true OGs.

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Ayy happy anniversary! Thanks for ALL you do!

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Happy Anniversary @HubCityQuestion :tada:

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Thanks :+1:

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This is one of those questions where the answer is self-evident and simultaneously impossible to find. I think that part of it is that Harley kind of… I’m trying to say this as not sounding awful, but… I think that Harley needs to be, or at least feel like, a decision-maker in her relationship. The reason Harley fell in “love” with the Joker in the first place, I think, is that he represents the part of her that she’d been forced to hide all her life, so he was the ultimate “rebellious decision”. But ultimately, he turned out to be the ultimate controlling partner. With Ivy, Harley finally has someone with enough self-esteem that she doesn’t need to be in control all the time. Ironically, I think Harley is for Ivy what she needed the Joker to be for her, but, to put it mildly, he wasn’t. Harley is in reality what the Joker made her think he was, which is why she was so attracted to him. This is what Harley is in her relationship with Ivy: She defies all norms (and laws), and only sometimes does so for selfish personal gain. Harley is - once again, like what she thought the Joker was - a representation of everything about herself that Ivy’s had to suppress for her whole life of… 25 years? 100 years? It’s impossible to tell with plant goddesses. But like all great relationships, Harlivy are both each other’s opposites and duplicates. They share being… Outspoken, to say the least, and both try not to care about what others think, but deep down, crave validation just as much as the image-obsessed Joker.

It’s ironic that Harley’s psychotic hallucinations keep her sane (for lack of a better word), but yeah, it’s like that Arrow episode, “Three Ghosts”, where Oliver just needed to figure out what his hallucinations were trying to tell him. Since Harley is so fundamentally broken, her hallucinations will be her primary method of seeing reason for the forseeable future, even if she understands the individual messages.

I mean… Describe “healthy”. I think they’re both in better places emotionally then they were before they became a couple, so I guess that’ll be good enough for now.

I mean… Harley has been pretty clear about what she wants. She wants someone who loves her in spite of her flaws, not because of them like the Joker did. She wants someone to show her that she’s still capable of love after her relationship with the Joker. She wants someone who she won’t have to “fix”, but who’s emotionally… Wubbled-up… Enough that Harley’s insanity isn’t a turn-off. Ivy is, I think, less certain about why she loves Harley, she’s just relieved that she no longer has to pretend that she doesn’t. She basically gave the whole game away in the first episode, before they even became a couple: She loves her “in a very weird, hard-to-articulate kind of way”. I think once Ivy figures out what she wants, then we’ll see if their goals align.

Am I old enough to know what this means?

I mean, for now Harley’s obviously the leader, but we’ll see how it goes - Remember, in this comic, they’ve only been together for like, none… And of course, Ivy was the leader back when they were just friends, so the role reversal is ironic and fun, and we’ll see if it evens out in the end.

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Thanks, brother :pray:

I’ve never been called this before. But now that I have, and by @HubCityQuestion no less, I don’t know… I feel special!

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Woop woop!! :harleyquinn_hqas: :poisonivy_hqas:

HQTASTEBKT (did I do that right? :joy:) was one of the first comics I saved on DCUI. Love the writing and art for my fave pair!

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Unpopular opinion to follow. In reading group, I don’t know if we only have to praise stories, and if so, my apologies. But my honest opinion follows. The series begins with a a destroyed Gotham City, as if that was not only the story line, but also desirable. So I question how “mature” that actually is? I can understand the frustration and anger at anything that represents “authority,” but where does that anarchy actually lead? Or is normalizing destruction a socially non-mature viewpoint?

I have read a number of the Harley Quinn stories, to keep myself informed about the character. I have consistently looked for this character to change. Detective Comics 23.2 was so deeply troubling that I can understand why fans would not refer to this. But more recent comics show Harley and Poison Ivy in killing without consequences. In this series, Gordon is corrupted and becomes the villain for everything that is wrong in “authority.”

What worked with Spider-Man was a character who embraced the concept “with great power comes great responsibility,” and so even when police were wrongly and J.Jonah Jameson madly pursuing Spider-Man, he was out there saving people. His strongest message is right is might. This was the original concept behind Batman and many other costumed “heroes” and “heroines.” Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy may save some people but outside of Detroit, that is mostly by accident. It is a pro-criminal, pro-villain world.

Where do people of every gender, of every race, of identity group stand in a pro-villain world? Does a “eat, bang, kill” headline not send a message to abusers of every kind, that all that matters is might, and that only might is right?

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Issue #1

  1. I think that in their world, finding someone who can understand and appreciate who they are and what they do whom they also genuinely like is rare. They obviously check those boxes for each other.
  2. I personally think characters with dual natures having full conversations between their two personalities is overdone (and Two-face obviously has the market cornered on it in Gotham). Harley seems to be able to pretty easily ignore her personified better judgement, so I don’t think it does that much to help her. I think that’s what she needs Ivy for
  3. I want to think that they have a healthy relationship because I love them together :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:. However, they’re obviously very unwell people who have rather intense self-destructive (and just generally destructive) patterns. I don’t think that they live emotionally healthy lives, but maybe their relationship is the most “healthy” thing they each have going for them?
  4. Well that’s a very difficult and complicated question, especially considering where each character is at when this story begins. I think that they are both committed to the other for life. I couldn’t begin to guess at the specifics of that commitment and I suspect neither can they.
  5. I think it’s a fairly equal partnership with different roles. Spontaneous and impulsive Harley lays the plans, and mature and cautious Ivy determines whether they actually go through with them.
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