Harley Quinn is one of the most iconic stars of today, thanks partly to movies, animated television shows, and longstanding comics series. Now, character embarks on a shiny new era as she officially joins the Dawn of DC era, with writer Tini Howard and artist Sweeney Boo now at the helm. And we won’t have to wait long, as the pair officially take over the series with today’s release of Harley Quinn #28.
The new direction for the character sees as Harley getting into all sorts of hijinks, including a community service job you won’t see coming and plucking cartoon fish out of thin air. It’s an extra-sized issue that I was lucky enough to read early, and it’s a spectacular example of creators working well together and moving a legacy character forward in new and interesting ways.
To get to the bottom of what’s in store for Harley Quinn, I sat down with Howard and Boo to discuss their new approach, their collaboration, why they love the character, and so much more.
Courtesy of DC Comics.
AIPT: What got you into Harley Quinn as a character?
Sweeney Boo: Harley is this great character and I feel like that a lot of people can relate to. She deals with a lot. She deals with mental illness and she used to be a villain and now, now she’s this more subtle life. Like a lot of us, we also handle a lot the way she does. So we can relate to her that way. For me, she’s always been cool visually to play with. This Dawn of DC era that we’re doing, I feel like I get to play with her apartment, her life, and just the way she looks. It’s been incredibly fun.
Tini Howard: Her apartment is so great. I love how you [Boo] draw her apartment and all the little neon signs and stuff, it’s so cute.
I grew up watching the Batman Animated series, like every little goth kid my age. I mostly had a crush on her cuz she was such, you know, such a cutie. She was really kind of a sexy hench girl. But I still adored that because I was a young girl. And so whenever I saw a new exciting girl character, that was an exciting opportunity because there weren’t a lot of girls in the things that I liked. I mean, there was usually one or two, like I played a lot of Street Fighter, and I was always Chun-Li <laugh>.
AIPT: Those kicks were the best.
TH: They were, and she was the cutest. When she first came to comics with, I think it was the Karl Kissel run, I picked up off of like a spin rack at a Borders books because I was like, “No way she’s from the TV show.” I wasn’t a big comic reader at the time. It was yet another example of how putting comics where kids can find them is a way to get them into ’em. I think we have a great gift if you’re a Harley fan, especially if you’re like of the age of Sweeney and I, and you grew up watching the show, and you’ve really watched her grow. She started as a sexy hench girl, and now she’s a fully realized character.
She’s a queer woman who is coping with being mentally ill. She has a girlfriend. She also has been through a lot of heroic things that have changed her. She also has pets that she has to take care of. She’s got an enormous amount of normalcy in her life for someone who started out as kind of an evil accessory, so to speak. And that’s a lot of where we’re going, how did I go from sexy hench girl to one of the most important people in the multiverse?
Courtesy of DC Comics.
AIPT: Considering the character development that she’s gone through in the last, I think ten years, fifteen years has been impressive to see her, you know, gain some agency and become her own person too, which I’m sure you’ll be exploring here?
TH: Yeah. And you know, Sweeney and I have talked a lot about the Birds of Prey film, and the Harley cartoon is a real gift to adult women fans of Harley Quinn who feel seen by seeing a version of her and those traits. It’s really exciting to be writing her at a time when that version of her is strong in the public eye, right? Where people really see her as like, she’s funny, she’s brash, she doesn’t take crap. She has a girlfriend who she loves very much. She’s not shy about that.
The fact that Willow [Wilson] is writing the Poison Ivy book and her girlfriend has her own book, it’s like these are fully realized adult women in love, such a good time to write her <laugh>.
AIPT: Tini, you’re coming off the Punchline mini-series, too. Do you feel you’re ruling the roost of clown-themed characters in DC comics?
TH: I was saying at one point that writing Catwoman, who very much sees herself as a superhero. Harley, who doesn’t trust her own self as a superhero, and Punchline, who’s just like, “I’m evil, and that’s great.” We’re very “superego, ego, Id experience” for me <laugh>.
AIPT: Right, right. Yeah.
TH: Where Catwoman has a vision of herself as a hero that she’s desperately trying to maintain despite the fact that she knows she’s an imperfect person. But, like, what does that mean? We’re all imperfect people then, to Harley, who like her imperfections, are on her sleeve, and her heroism is a little beneath that. The fact that she’s a hero is sometimes a surprise to her. As opposed to something she’s really reaching for. And there’s someone like Punchline who was like, heroes are what I ate for breakfast. <laugh>.
Courtesy of DC Comics.
AIPT: It must be fun, the differences in all those three characters alone.
TH: When I was growing up writing, there just weren’t that many good stories with women all at once. I love it.
AIPT: Totally. In our first issue, we have Two-Face, what made him the right villain to start this off?
TH: I knew Sweeney would draw the hell out of him. He’s a really fun foil for Harley because he’s exacting in a lot of ways. In the first issue, we see Harley get his goat <laugh> in a couple of stupid ways, but she gets it. She’s crazy too. She knows how to piss off crazy <laugh>.
AIPT: Do we see him again after the first issue?
TH: No, he intends on getting revenge.
SB: He comes back quite a bit. It’s like a skit in a classroom. You say one word or something, he’s gonna just go all in. He’s gonna rage out. And that’s pretty much what he is. <laugh>.
TH: He’s looking for a reason. <laugh>.
AIPT: We’ve got these cartoon fishes popping up. Was Who Framed Roger Rabbit at all an inspiration for the design of that fish?
TH: The design was all Sweeney, but definitely give it a tune town feel. <laugh>.
SB: It’s definitely a lot of that, a lot of like mixing two mediums or like two visual renditions and being able to play with that. We do a lot of that in more and more depth in the later issues.
TH: I’ve written some really weird scripts, and Sweeney delivers. I write things that I wouldn’t know how to draw because I know Sweeney can do it. In my head, I’m like, “Sweeney, I’m not sure if this works, but here’s the vibe.” Like, hmm, I know you can do this. <laugh>.
SB: I was lucky key enough that I worked in video games where you have to draw anything. You have to be able to draw anything. So now when I’m getting a script, I’m like, oh, I did this before. This is great. <laugh>, I can do it again. <laugh>.
AIPT: Speaking of vibe, what is the vibe you’re kind of going for, Sweeney?
SB: So when I was growing up, the stories that I was the most drawn to were stories that were heavier and just maybe dark but with a very colorful visual cuz I love the contrast. With Harley, this is perfect. Cause she’s this like very colorful character and you imagine her being quirky, but also she has so much inside of her that she’s like struggling with, and now it’s going to be really outside of her. Playing with those two, is something that I love to do with my art.
Courtesy of DC Comics.
AIPT: Kevin is also a relatively new character. What made him the right choice for this issue?
TH: I really thought it was important to show that Harley has friends, and I think like a big thing for me as someone that’s, I’ve been open about the fact that I’ve dealt with mental illness my whole life, I have a great life. I’m very happy, I love my life, and there are times when I didn’t know if I’d be here. And now I am. And I’m so glad I am. At the same time, there have been times in my life where I’m like, everything’s great, but I feel terrible, and nothing’s right. And that’s how mental illness is sometimes.
So it was important for me to show that Harley has a girlfriend. She’s a beautiful place, she has friends. The way she’s feeling and the things that happen to her are not because she’s lacking. It’s because of something inside her. It’s something that she’s learning to cope with. It’s because of some huge things that have happened to her and some huge changes in her life that she’s never really reflected on in the way she needs to. Plus, I think Kevin’s a cool character. I think being a redeemed Joker henchman is someone that I think Harley would stay close with. I think she wouldn’t leave them behind.
I think it’s important to tell mental illness stories where it’s not like, everything hates you, and you’re at rock bottom, and that’s why you’re going crazy. Sometimes your brain just jumps the track, man, <laugh>.
AIPT: Speaking of jobs, this issue introduces Harley as a teacher.
TH: You wanna give the characters things that they care about, even if they don’t think they’ll care about it. Harley’s a good person at her core, so she’s not gonna to bail out on a bunch of students. It’s like pulling from my own life a little. I went to community college, and it was a really fun, interesting, weird experience with a lot of different kinds of people that you wouldn’t see in a normal college classroom. It’s funny if you’ve seen Community — I wanted her to feel like there wasn’t just one thing keeping her there, you know?
AIPT: Community.
TH: Yeah. The idea of if you’ve been a person who has mental illness or just anyone, everyone gets overwhelmed sometimes, even if you’re not someone that struggles chronically. Sometimes you’ll have, you know, three things on your plate, right? Like a girlfriend, a friend you’re taking care of and a prank war you’re involved in. You’re doing fine. And then one other thing gets put on your plate.
Community (from NBC).
AIPT: The straw that broke the camel’s back.
TH: I liked the idea that if we’re gonna expand Harley’s world, we have to make sure we’re keeping her busy.
AIPT: Speaking of expansion, we have Tashana coming in as Lady Quark. What made her the right choice for this story?
TH: For one, I love Crisis stories. I love Multiversity. I love that part of the DC universe. It’s a big love letter to the weird side of the DC universe for me. I wanted to bring in a character, our villain, our arch-villain, who was someone to that I could introduce fans to. I really enjoy showing fans new characters that they may not have known before. It’s a kind of gambit you’re making, right? Like, on the one hand, hopefully, some old-school Crisis-heads will come read a Harley Quinn comic for the first time, and hopefully, some Harley Quinn readers will go back and read Crisis on Infinite Earths for the first time. Sweeney draws them so beautifully. There’s an issue they show up in, I dunno if it’s two or three, but it’s just like, we get to see a glimpse of Tiana’s life, and it’s a completely different book.
SB: I’m just drawing what you put on the page, but yeah, there’s like different worlds for sure. And to explore them visually. It’s really, really cool.
AIPT: How long are you guys on the series?
TH: I think we’re here till they kick us out, right?
SB: <laugh> Knock on wood.
AIPT: I know everyone’s probably thinking about crossovers too. I know you’re crossing over Catwoman with Batman soon. Might we have any plans for Poison Ivy and Harley?
TH: We’ll have to see. Willow and I meet a lot. We talk, we have meetings, we do plan, we scheme, which is great though, because it’s like, that’s what I do with Chip and Batman.
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