to me harley quinn is one of the most overrated characters in dc
comics but after reading this spook
WOOF WOOF! Hey guys, it's me Marcus aka the Maddogg and we're back with another video!
I'm filming this on one of the hottest days of the year so if i look a bit sweaty or drained or if i
lose my trainer thought then that's the reason why but to get myself in the mood for the new suicide
squad movie i thought i'd review harleen which is a three book mini series that was published
between november 2019 and february 2020 under the dc black label so it's intended for a more mature
audience but somehow i ended up reading it and it was written and illustrated by this guy right here
i have tried so many times to pronounce his name and i'm not even sure if i'm getting it correctly
so i don't want to do a disrespect and harleen quinzel is a young psychiatrist who is desperate
to prove herself in a gotham city that refuses to let her escape from her past she finds herself
interviewing criminals at arkham asylum eager to prove her own theories correct and solidify
herself as one of the top psychiatrists in the country to get that on a dose you have to crack
through the one super villain that no one's ever succeeded with before the joker determined to not
fall for any of the traps that so many have fallen victim to before harley will realize
that she is the ultimate prey but has the joker truly changed or is this just the next in a long
line of tricks to escape arkham asylum so moving into the spoiler-free section of the review now
and i found myself going back and forth on the art there's clearly so much potential here with
this guy whose name i'm still not going to try and pronounce but it just felt like there was limited
opportunity where he could really showcase his abilities but i found this design for killer croc
really interesting to look at as well and i found myself wishing that he would do an ongoing batman
title it's just for the first two books it's very reliant on conversation and it's mainly driven by
the dialogue rather than the art but it's only by about book three that i felt like it really
warmed up and it was beginning to really showcase what he had in his plethora of talents but by that
point the book was coming to an end anyway so it's one of those situations where i felt like
because he was writing it i wish he would have put more scenes in that he could have gone bat
crazy no pun intended but at the same time i found myself really enjoying those scenes of
conversation and dialogue so would i trade some of them just so that we could see a bit more action
and see exactly how he illustrates that i'm not really sure but it did feel like he left a lot in
the tank and that we could have seen a bit more of his range because there are real standout moments
especially in the way that panels are laid out i just think it was so unique and interesting i
liked as well the way that dreams and flashbacks were illustrated and i felt like that just gave
this book its own sense of identity but i just have to say what an intriguing book this was i'd
slept on this book for a while i wasn't really too interested in it because i thought that i
knew the origin story of harley quinn because i was a bit concerned that this might have towed
the line of just feeling like fan fiction but got hold of myself and no not in the way that's
gonna get me demonetised and i told myself that pretty much every comic that you read
is fanfiction because this is one of those unique books where you can't really tell if it's part of
continuity or outside of it if it didn't have the black label nobody would think any differently and
it slots itself nicely into the batman universe that we've already got established if you're a
complete first time into comics you can pick this up and really enjoy it but if you've been reading
comics for years and years on end and maybe you feel like you know absolutely everything
about harley quinn that you could know there's still something in this book for you it allowed
you to see completely different perspective on these characters and that's something that i'm
going to delve a bit more into when we get into the spoiler section but what this book did best
was take you on a journey with harley you didn't feel like you were just a spectator or a reader
there were parts of this book where i really found myself resonating with it if anything i think the
thing this book succeeds at best is reinventing who this character is for a character that hasn't
been around for that long in the grand scheme of things she's already had quite a lot of do-overs
but with this one i'm pretty happy saying yeah this is the quintessential harley quinn story
that we need but it seemed like as he was writing this he knew the questions that we
as an audience would have and he actually had harley addressed that i love when a book manages
to do that especially in a situation like his where it's one of those ways very easy to say oh
why didn't you do this oh how did you fall for that the book's very aware of that so it feels
more real and at the end of the day you realize that we as people are always making mistakes
and for a book like that it really managed to change your perspective on things so when the
joker was doing something you actually found yourself asking if it was a trick or if it was
some kind of genuine emotion that he was showing or maybe that was just me and you're thinking i'm
some kind of complete idiot as well now these aren't standard sized issues they are about 50
or so pages and i think it really balances its pace well because that's the problem that i've
normally had with the harley quinn origin story it feels like she pretty much turns up one day and
just decides to throw a life away because of the fact that the joker winked at it but throughout
the course of this book and because it takes that time to really explore what she is going through
and what exactly she's seen from her perspective you understand what's happening a bit more she
isn't just the joker's girlfriend she is harley and quinzel who ends up on the wrong path and
it takes its time to show us every part of that journey it starts with the nightmares that then
become dreams that then become sexy dreams kind of like you know the ones that you've had about
that log cabin and they're members of boys to men all being there surrounding you and just
keeping you company on a lovely romantic weekend come on it can't be just me who's had that dream
another thing that i really loved about this book is that harley and the joker wasn't the
only storyline that was going on there's other characters or the villains that are getting their
origins at the same time and it just felt like a gotham city that was constantly on the move
batman does featuring and i love the scenes where he appeared but at the same time it never really
loses its focus i love they managed to balance all those plots without it ever feeling like the stuff
in the background wasn't continuing even though we weren't focusing on it or was taking all the focus
away from harley i feel like this book did a much better job at what it was intending to do from the
beginning unlike something like joker which i reviewed last year but as you all know i am a
dumb reader i do like to read things as quickly as i can so that i can just fit more books into
my schedule but the weird moments where i felt like this book was being weirdy just for the sake
of it i also felt like it was trying to replicate the dialogue style that brian michael bendy's had
in his early years of his career and i don't think that any of it was ever bad i just felt like the
weir parts that could have been shortened or maybe cut from the boot completely all this stuff with
the joker even the little moments between the two that was vital i would keep that in but some of
the other stuff that was going on in harley's life like here trying to raise money so that she can
prove her theory correct i just wasn't really too bothered about that there's also a prison guard
that is quite an important character but i felt like he was featuring in it quite a bit as well
where some of those sequences could have been shortened so that the pace could be maintained
a bit better but like i said overall there isn't an issue with the pace it's just in some of the
smaller moments i wish it would have sped up a bit kind of like how you guys are probably
feeling as you're watching this video right now but now for the main question does he do
a better job than mad love i shall remember that featured in my where to start dc comics so i've
always held that book in quite high regard i haven't read that book for a couple of years
and i feel like no matter what this book brings to the table madolov still deserves respect because
that was a starting point for this character but honestly without reading it again i would have
to say that harleen is the better harley quinn origin story but the only thing that i would say
is that it is pretty much just an origin story that is all that you get with this book before i
went into it and when i heard dates book one book two and book three i thought it was going to be
about different parts for our life so i thought book one was going to be solely about her ending
up becoming harley quinn and teaming up with the joker i thought book 2 was going to be about their
relationship and then book 3 was going to be about her going on her own way but it's solely focused
on the beginning and i think that is something that people should be aware of before they get
into this book but even though i didn't get what i was expecting and it was a little bit more drawn
out than i probably would have liked it's still a very enjoyable book and i can understand now why
people were raving about this so moving into the spoilers section now so if you don't want anything
about this book ruined for you that i haven't already done in the spoiler free section i'd
recommend skipping to the final verdict timestamp down below if you're leaving this video now thank
you for tuning in make sure you give this video a thumbs up and subscribe if you're new here and if
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as you like but jumping straight into it i think harley having to kill brunson as her first kill
was just a really heavy moment but when she was narrating and she said that a couple years from
now she'd be at midway i thought it was going to be somebody that the joker would use as a test you
never know it might still be the case that that's exactly what did happen but it felt very natural
it felt like this was something that did have to happen and had it been someone that harley wasn't
really familiar with it wouldn't have been as impactful of a moment because of the circumstances
he put her in this perfect rock and a hard place situation that i thought the boot really needed
because after this moment there was no turning back for harley she was in this world where
she felt like nobody really acknowledged it or knew who she was but brunson and the joker were
pretty much the two characters that paid the most attention so the fact that she had to kill one to
save the other was a great climax for this book and i can't really see it being done any better
and i just touched on it but the narration was a really interesting choice because of the fact
that you could have done this without that but i found myself asking a few questions because of it
because i didn't know whether she was narrating from a point where she was still with the joker
or not if she was still with him some of the doubts that she was reflecting on didn't really
make too much sense but if it was set after she split up with him then it still felt like
she had this connection to him i don't know maybe it's just me thinking a little bit too much about
it because either way that could actually work for the book because if it's set julian then it
shows that she is able to reflect on some of the negative aspects of that relationship but it's set
after then it shows that the joker still has an impact on her which i think might actually have
a stronger effect or the third option is that i was looking into this way too much and just didn't
understand what was happening yeah it's probably the third one but the two-faced part of the book
and i'm not doing this for some kind of awful pun but i was split on this because as soon as i
saw that it was introduced as harvey i thought to myself oh great here we go yet another two-faced
origin story but this did handle it better and i felt like it did play into the themes that you
had throughout the book i don't know maybe it's just me but i feel like i've seen harvey become
two-faced more than have seen the waynes die it could have been interesting to see him just
play out with harvey yeah you wouldn't have had that moment at the end where she rubs off
half the names and it just says haha but what would it have been like if we had to see dent
react to the breakout from arkham yeah you would have had to have tweaked the plot a bit because
he was the one that instigated it but still even though it was handled well i am just a bit tired
of this origin story however all of the other bat versus inclusions were handled really well in this
my favorite pedal was the one where she was doing an interview with the ridlet and she had
something on a sheet that said like the amount of times that he's tried to force riddle into a pun
and she was just keeping tally of it i love little things like that where people in this universe are
tied to these cliches and as well at one point the joker said mad dog so i'm gonna take that as a win
even though it wasn't spelt in the same way one of the inclusions that i liked the most in this was
jim gordon i felt like we got the same character that we saw in gotham central and i just loved
the way that he acted when he wasn't in front of batman it was one of those things where you
could tell that he always had so much on his plate but at the same time he did want to try and help
harley as best as he could he was short-tempered you could tell that he just had enough and i
liked that bit where he kind of just dismissed it completely when they were on the rooftop
and him and batman just had a conversation off on their own because like i said this was a book
that was really about perspectives speaking of which i think they nailed the dark knight in this
because it's true if you take away the scenes in the batcave and the batmobile or when he's
speaking to the other members of the bat family on comms he would come across as a bit of a dick
which was the impression that i got throughout this story it made you understand why someone like
harley would be sympathetic to the joker for once you've got to see that other side of the beatings
and he was pretty dismissive of what harley was trying to do because one of the standout scenes
in this book was in the first issue when you saw batman hunting down the joker which did lead him
to arkham asylum but also you had that first interaction between harley and the joker all
of these moments were great and it also rushed by in a way they would do if you were bystander
on the streets but batman was this intimidating figure for once you didn't get to listen to what
he was thinking instead you just got someone reacting to it and just had to stand by
helplessly and watch and the word these great moments that were scattered throughout the book
but i also think there were some elements that were just completely abandoned by the end i get
that for a relatively short book it is difficult to close off every storyline that you've started
but one thing was the stuff with hugo strange i thought it would have been really interesting if
during the breakout of arkham harley had some kind of confrontation with him he was just the right
boss during this storyline and i'm always a bit skeptical in situations like this because it's
like should you use a character that's known maybe just in a bit part or should you go with somebody
that you don't know yet i don't know i'm kind of undecided as a whole but i feel like for this book
it just would have been nice to maybe have a page or two where we got to see how he reacted to it
also she had a friend that just disappeared i'm not sure if i missed the explanation of this i
was reading this in the morning when i was still quite tired actually i don't know i'm kidding i
am always tired and you did get the sense that they weren't genuine friends it was just
more that harley didn't really have anyone and because of the fact that she was putting herself
in that isolation she was sinking deeper into this romantic feeling that she had for the joker it did
make sense that she abandoned everybody around it and i think there was some passing mention and
again i'm split because it did help towards the overall effect that the boot was trying to go for
but for this individual storyline it didn't really mean anything i think i touched on this in my
spoiler-free section but admittedly my camera was that warm that i had to abandon filming but like
that the book seemed to know what i was thinking when it was overly romanticized harley noted
that and she explained why exactly she was in that state of mind when it seemed obvious that the joke
was setting up a trap that somebody that has a doctorate in psychology shouldn't be able to fall
for harley pointed that out and there was moments where she was trying to play into that game where
she was like okay i'll take the bait on this to see how he reacts to it those were the moments
that were great for this book and it wouldn't have worked if it didn't have that narration
so i think overall setting this as harley looking back on her own origin story was probably the best
movie could have done but by the end of the book i realized that this was just a story about a young
woman that was so desperate for validation and attention that she would fall for the
first person who bothered to pronounce her name correctly but i looked at this book as just being
another harley quinn origin story but more than anything it's a tragedy it's not an origin because
she's looking back on it and reflecting on all the mistakes that she made and in her quest to try and
find out if these super villains are capable of any kind of empathy she realized that they were
because of the fact that after she's done all these awful things she does have this feeling
of being guilty about it you can sense it in the way that she talks about bronson or when she's
reflecting on the way that both her and two-face will become killers and that's one of the main
things that i took away from this boot and the question in the batcave that was asked at the end
on whether or not this was just the next plot for the joker so that he could escape arkham asylum
or whether or not he's actually developed feelings for harley i haven't read absolutely every story
that this couple's featured in but i think the answer is somewhere in the middle he does have
some kind of genuine feelings for harley but i think at the same time he's so narcissistic
that that isn't important as his own desires there were these moments where you saw a different side
to the joker and you didn't just see harley as somebody that was weak so for me if i'm somebody
that's coming at this with the perspective that harley quinn was an overrated character then
this really did change my point of view so that's after this guy i hope that we get to see more of
his work in the future and i'd even love to see him doing some kind of poison ivy origin story
this is the last thing that i was going to say i was planning on wrapping it up there and going
into the final verdicts but i loved the bits with ivy they were few and far between and they left me
wanting more so i hope that they give me what i want and that's a story that i think we need to
see next this is my final verdict and holly's belief was that everyone was capable of change
but throughout her journey in these three issues the only change that she discovered was in herself
and for the worse and harleen does a fantastic job of providing an extra level of depth to
a character that we thought was pretty much established and done a character that often felt
one-dimensional and was typecast as a stockholm syndrome crazy girlfriend of the joker her journey
was to see if these super villains were capable of empathy but instead we ended up being empathetic
towards a super villain we saw that at her core harley was just somebody that wanted to be
accepted and noticed whether she truly managed to find that in the joker or just had that exploited
as something that will probably be debated in the body read that i'm gonna do with my good friend
comic bound so make sure that you subscribe to his channel because we're planning on doing that in
the future but for a relatively short story that really manages to change your perspective and add
a dimension to a character that i personally felt was overused before started reading this book then
holiness an enjoyable read that will leave you thinking and is worth checking out if you get the
time i don't think this is one of those books that's so good that you should drop whatever
you're reading at the minute and jump to this book but you should be tried by anyone who's a
fan of gotham city so for me it's gonna get a very respectable score of 75 percent woof so that's my
review and i'm hoping that you've enjoyed it if you've read harleen make sure you join us over on
a reddit page or slashmad.comic community we're gonna have a discussion over on there and don't
worry i am still reading why the last man but for now why not check out some of your previous
batman reviews but until next time whenever that may be just make sure that you stay safe
stay reading the best books that you can find and stay mad all you dogs woof roof see the next video